Thursday, August 1, 2013
Since we felt guilty ditching our kiddies the day before to go scuba diving, we decided to make this day completely dedicated to fun activities for Ro Ro and Zaydee. Fortunately, our apartment was in the perfect location and we were literally right next to plenty of kid-friendly activities within the Cairns Esplanade.
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| Walking along the Esplanade Boardwalk. |
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| Take the largest playground you've been to, and multiply that by 5! |
For the first half of the day, we took the kids to Muddy's Playground, which well-exceeded our expectations. It wasn't just one playground, or a big-kids and a little-kids playground, like all the parks we've ever been to. It was literally one playground after another after another, mixed in with one water play area after another after another... it was amazing. Here are just a few shots of the playground:
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| One of the water play areas that has a creek for kids to run through and water shoots out of those "poles." |
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| A "rope" playground for older kids. |
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| An even bigger rope playground for the daddies to enjoy! |
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| Part of the "toddlers-only" playground. |
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| Row, row, row your boat... Faster! Faster! |
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| Slide!!! |
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| A cool fish water play area! |
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| "Woah..." Zaydee inside the fish. |
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| Kevin's view from inside the fish. |
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| Zaydee LOVES water, especially "fountains!" |
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| Ro Ro doing a good job not getting his clothes wet! |
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| One of my favorite candid photos taken from Kevin! Watching Zaydee play in the fountains! |
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| Zaydee found another water play area!!! |
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| We better change into our swimsuit for this play area (actually, she was already completely soaked). |
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| Yup, good idea to change into her swimsuit! |
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| Having a great morning! |
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| Lunch time break at Muddy's Cafe. |
The kids had a great time exploring Muddy's Playground in the morning. We took them back for their noon nap, and when they woke up, we decided to explore the other end of the Esplanade Boardwalk that has the Lagoon. What we love about Australia is that it seems like the cities really take care of all the public areas, such as keeping the streets clean, maintaining all the parks, offering free group exercise classes on the Esplanade everyday, creating scenic running paths with exercise equipment along the Boardwalk, and providing the community beautiful free activities like this humongous Lagoon!!!
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| One of the "exercise stations" along the Esplanade Boardwalk. |
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| Eagerly walking to the Lagoon - I see it!!! |
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| Huge. Huge. Really huge. |
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| Fun structures with water that squirts out. |
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| Much larger than any resort-pool I've been to!!! Do you see Zaydee? |
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| Ro Ro's here! Love that there was lots of shallow areas for the kids to sit in the water. |
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| Swimming time? |
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| Water, sand, water, sand, best day ever. |
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| The view from the other side of the Lagoon. Zaydee loved the tiny fountains over here. |
In addition to lots of fun activities and beautiful views, the Esplanade has plenty of good restaurants and dessert shops. We had a pizza dinner from Villa Romana Trattoria, and then ended the day with some excellent gelato from Gelocchio. Happy day for the kiddies; relaxing day for the parents!
