Our holiday apartment
On our second day, I woke up early and took photographs of our holiday apartment. This is the front of the apartment – we were upstairs.

The kitchen area had all the usual facilities – fridge, dishwasher, microwave, stove. We soon filled the fridge with goodies – leftover pizza, ice cream, some vegetables to make salad, bread, cold chicken and cheese.

There were fans in the lounge, bedroom and even out on the balcony, which I thought was a great idea. There was an air-conditioning unit in the lounge that was very effective in cooling the whole apartment down, and there was an air-conditioning unit in the bedroom as well. it was pretty humid, of course, so all these cooling options kept us very happy andd comfortable.

This is the front door, and the dining table, which we didn’t use as a dining table – most of the time we ate meals at the coffee table in front of the TV.

I don’t usually watch much television, but when I’m on holidays, if I’m not actually out and about playing tourist, you’ll find me stretched out on the couch watching TV – and if there’s Foxtel (cable / pay TV, for the non-Aussies) available wherever we’re staying, I’ll be watching cartoons on Fox8 – The Simpsons, Family Guy, King of the Hill… We did have Foxtel, and I did watch lots of cartoons. There was a DVD player there as well – we brought along a stack of music CDs and each chose a DVD. I brought along Water Rats Season 5 and Jac brought a DVD I gave her for her birthday – The Best of the Country Music Channel 2006. She played that a few times on this holiday!

There was a spa bath in the bathroom, which we did make use of :-P. I like baths, but I must say I think spa jets are a bit too noisy for my liking! There’s a shower in the bathroom too, not shown in this photo.

This was the bedroom, with a door leading out to the balcony, and ensuite folding doors opening to the bathroom. My sister CW may recognise the book on my bedside table! It’s the book she and M gave me for my birthday. :)

We spent a lot of time sitting here on the balcony. The morning I took the photos featured in this post, we both woke up at around 4am before the sun had risen, thanks to some very noisy birds. Jac suggested we share one of the Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and that’s what we did – we sat there in the dark out on the balcony in the cool crisp early morning air, munching on our shared doughnut, drinking cups of hot tea. It was still fairly dark when we finished our little snack, so we tidied up, brushed our teeth and went back to bed again! Oh, and there was a brand new Beefmaster barbecue in the corner of the balcony, but we didn’t have the time to use it during our stay.

This is the view of the saltwater pool and gardens from our balcony. There are actually two pools – one being a shallow “baby” pool. We used the pool regularly during our stay. I just loved sitting in the baby pool and relaxing. And luckily for us, most of the time when we were in the mood for a dip, we happened to be the only ones using the pools.

A morning walk
We decided to take a drive, park the buggy and then walk around. This is a view of the water at the marina.

We walked down to the beach, where there are lots of very tall coconut trees.

Take note of this little island, as it will feature in an upcoming post.

Breakfast – pies and sausage roll from the Bakery
After our walk, we were definitely ready for something to eat. Before we got food, we stopped by the Marina Deli and grabbed a couple of juices. They’re quite expensive, I suppose, at $8.00 each, but they are freshly made and come in tall cups. On the left: my Deli Delish – watermelon, pineapple and apple; on the right, Jac’ s Vegorama – cucumber, carrot, beetroot, ginger and celery. Mine was really refreshing, and I enjoyed it – but Jac’s was a little too heavy on the ginger and was quite “hot” as a result. I thought it tasted rather like a weird sort of spicy medicine, actually!

This is the bakery where I bought that yummy bun the day before. I was eager to have a bakery pie for breakfast.

We each chose a pie and decided to share a sausage roll.

The pies were branded with the Hamilton Island fish symbol. This was Jac’s vegetable pie, with a light sprinkling of poppyseeds and sesame seeds.

The pie filling was very simple – peas, carrot, potato and corn in a creamy white sauce.

The chicken and vegetable pie had the same filling as the vegetable pie, but with chunks of tender chicken.

The sausage roll looked temptingly homemade, complete with a pattern made with a fork.

The sausage roll filling was nicely seasoned and very tasty.

This holiday, I wore my black Havaiana thongs just about everywhere. It’s the next best thing to going around barefoot – which I would do if I didn’t have such soft feet along with the fear of stepping on broken glass or something else hurty.

As we ate our pastries, this hungry crow stalked our food, edging closer and closer. We didn’t feed it, though. There were lots of birds hanging around the marina, all hoping for a bite.

Dinner – Fisherman’s basket from Popeye’s
Dinner that night was from Popeye’s, a takeaway place at the marina that sells fish and chips, burgers and whole roast chickens. We ordered a fisherman’s basket to share. I was a little disappointed with this, to be honest. For one thing, the menu clearly listed scallops as one of the items in the fisherman’s basket, but there was not a scallop in sight. So maybe they’d run out of scallops – if that was the case, not a big deal, but they could’ve said something! The prawns and squid tasted like very average-quality frozen seafood. The fish wasn’t that great either. Our local fish and chippie at home is far superior.

To go with our fisherman’s basket, Jac rustled up a very simple salad of lettuce, tomato, cucumber and avocado.

I ate a piece of fish, a prawn and a squid ring with chips, salad, and some buttered fresh multigrain bread we bought from the bakery.