Perfect Palm Cove

Hello my friends and family.  After my epic amount of blogging while we were travelling, I have kinda "dried up" on the writing. However, I am attempting to get back my blogging mojo, starting today. 

It has been almost three weeks since I last wrote about our New Years Eve, so what have we been up to since then? Philip and I continue to make our own busy and each and every day we seem to have something on our plate.  It's a good thing really.  We plan it so that our mornings are busy so we can relax in the afternoon.  Most afternoons, after 5, we go for a walk along the beach or a swim in the stinger net.  However the last week we have had quite a lot of rain so our walks have come to an abrupt halt.

Mondays we now go to a Gentle Yoga Class beachside here at Palm Cove.  Our yogi is Beth and I adore her.  Her classes are for all levels of yoga and I also attend a class on Thursday mornings that is a somewhat stronger class that really strengthens my body.

Philip cycles whenever he can and has returned to his cycling group in Port Douglas.  He said the first ride, after a long absence, was gruelling but also invigorating.  I try to walk on the five days that I don't have a yoga practice and I have three set routes.  There are 4km, 5km and 7.5km.  The 5km includes a good hill climb but the other two are on level ground so are quite easy.  All the walks begin and end on the Palm Cove Esplanade that looks particularly lovely at this time of the year.

Philip and I decided to challenge ourselves last week and walk the Earl Hill track.  There was a bit of confusion between the two of us as to where to begin the walk and we ended up starting at Half Moon Bay.  Oh....my......god.  This was definitely a bad choice.  It was all up hill with a gazillion steps - well equivalent to 28 flights of steps, and when we reached the summit we found we weren't on Earl Hill at all!  We were on Little Earl Hill!  Turns out that we walked the Bakarra Track. The views were pretty spectacular though.....

There have been quite a few appointments on our calendar - Optometrist, Audiologist, Doctor and we have made quite a few trips up to the storage shed and Port Douglas over the past couple of weeks.  Philip bought a timer to keep our caravans Lithium Battery charged.  It has been a bit of trial and error to see how how long we need to set the timer to keep the right amount of charge in the battery but I think we finally have it sorted.  

Last week when we arrived home from Port it was almost lunch so we decided to head to Vivo Restaurant for lunch.  Vivo is right beside us so it is a very convenient restaurant but the meals here can be a bit hit and miss.  Unfortunately our mains were a hit for Philip but a big miss for me.  We both ordered the Salmon Sashimi for starters and neither of us could fault this.  It was 100% delicious and I would gladly order it again......

Philips main was the Duck Leg on Rosti and it was perfectly cooked and a well balanced meal.  I tasted it and the flavours were all there.  5/5

For my main I ordered the Crispy Skin Barramundi.  The only good thing I can say about this meal is that the skin was indeed crispy but the fish itself turned to mush in my mouth.  I can only think that the fish had been thawed and re-frozen or never frozen properly in the first instance.  It was a very disappointing meal.  It came with an Orange Fennel Salad that was okay.

So that's a wrap for the last couple of weeks.  It is taking me longer than expected to settle back into normal life after living in the caravan for all those months, most particularly around my cooking.  I have this huge fridge in the apartment but when I open the French Doors I can count on two hands the number of items in it.  It comes from being frugal with fridge space in the caravan and I probably won't go back to having a full size fridge packed to the brim again. I don't think it is a big deal really and it will certainly make it easier when I have to transfer food from a big fridge to a caravan fridge the next time we travel.

Cheers everyone!