where to go wednesday. ♥ cairns

i love to travel and i thought something that might interest people is to do a little weekly post about places i love for all those out there with the travel bug looking for the next place to go for an adventure.
for my first post i thought i'd share a place in australia. somewhere i believe is a must see place is the beautiful great barrier reef off the coast of cairns, queensland. the snorkelling is amazing and if you visit you too can look as fantastic as husband and i in our snorkels :)

in order to visit the great barrier reef you need to book a boat trip. you then meet at the boat at about 8.30 in the morning and the boat heads out to the reef for the day. when you arrive you can put on a wetsuit and snorkel and jump right in. the boat supplies lunch and has comfy seating for when you're feeling a bit tired.  if you're the really adventurous sort you can go scuba diving. they also have an underwater glass boat which is amazing.

and once you've seen the amazing reef head back to cairns and you can...

take a skyrail to kuranda and go over the rainforest.

take a boat ride down the kuranda river.

visit the 'village in the rainforest'  and have an amazing mango icecream.

hold a snake at the australian venom centre (note: how much of the snake am i really holding?)

visit the fruit bat rehabilitation centre.

have a look around the butterfly sanctuary ( and spend a long time waiting for a butterfly to land on your hand so you take a photo).

have a day trip and see the spectacular daintree rainforest.

visit hartley's crocodile world and see some super croc jumps.

and have 'breakfast with the beasts' at the zoo- seriously awesome to eat breakfast surrounded by lions.

we went to cairns our 1 year wedding anniversary and i have a feeling we'll be back there soon! it's far too beautiful to not visit again- and it helps my aunty and uncle live there in an amazing mexican style home, free accommodation and time spent with family is always a good thing.♥

next week i'll share a great country overseas.
please feel free to comment below about a favourite place you have been- or hope to go to or link to your blog if you've shared about somewhere special.

tourist in queensland:theme park time.

since the theme parks are not a long drive from my aunt and uncle's home, i was keen to visit some of them. i've been to dreamworld twice before and it's a truly fantastic park and so opted for some different ones this time.  we went to seaworld and white water world (the water attachment to dreamworld). sadly i have no photographic evidence of how much fun the rides at white water world were due to fear to losing my precious camera or phone. but seaworld...

 in my opinion it's not quite as good as dreamworld but if your an animal fan it's got some pretty amazing shows. we saw this fantastic sealion drama, emperor and fairy penguins, touched stingrays, watched a spectacular dolphin show, and saw some stunts on a water ski. we rode a little rollercoaster, went on a log ride that ended with  us all getting pretty soaked and battled each other with loaded water guns around a fake lake...and some instagram snaps too.

tourist in brisbane: southbank

one other thing we did during our holiday was to visit southbank for the day. we swam in the pools beside the river, ate and drank coffee, explored the markets, went for a pretty walk through rainforests and an asian centre and explored the queensland art gallery. the art gallery had some great exhibitions including some interactive ones where everything was made of sugar and one where everyone got given dot stickers and entered into a room filled with stickers. so if you've got a few hours free, i'd definitely recommend checking out southbank on the side of the river in brisbane city.

fun in the queensland sun.

i'm back!
i packed my bags, said goodbye to husband who sadly couldn't get the time off work, and headed up to my aunt and uncle's home near brisbane for a week with the extended family culminating with my cousin's wedding.

we spent most days enjoying the sunshine, eating cheese and crackers by the pool, lazily reading magazines and visiting some of the theme parks. with 21 of us together meals were epically big, it was sometimes noisy, but so enjoyable to spent lots of time together. i slept out in a revamped new caravan with a lovely comfy bed that i shared with my one female cousin and my own tv as my many boy cousins crammed head to head into two little rooms. however i had even more company with some little hens and a particuarly cheerful rooster as my neighbours. this delightful rooster thought 4am was just the perfect time to be alive and tell the world about it.

...and now for some wedding photos.
nb i know the dress i'm wearing in these photos is looking mighty familiar to anyone who regularly reads this blog but it's pretty and i'm a terrible packer and didn't have many other clothes to pick from. and no one at the wedding had ever seen my lovely dress before...i must get as much wear out of it as possible:)

such a beautiful day. i love family time.