Down And Out In Darwin

So the flight from Singapore to Darwin is only like 4.5 hours.  So even with the NyQuil, it's not really a good sleep on the plane.  But I think I did doze off for a bit.  Landed in the pre-dawn Darwin and caught a taxi to my hotel.  So the cab pulls up and there's a sign that says the hotel is closed (and has been for 2 months) until April.  Lovely.  Mind you, it's now 615AM.  And I am stumbling tired and not in the mood for this.  There's another DoubleTree right next door so I go there.  They have rooms available, but I can't check in until 3PM.  Unless I want to pay for an early check in.  Fine.  So I get up to my room, which is stark and sad compared to my junior villa in Phuket, close the curtains, pop the ear plugs in, and go to sleep.  I wake up around 1130 feeling marginally better.

I clean up and I've got two things I want to do.  First I want to check out the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, and second I need to find a plug adapter.  Apparently both of my multi-plug adapters don't work for AUS/NZ.  Lovely.  Anyways, I hope a cab to the museum and it is hot, hot, hot outside.  It's in the mid 90s and with the humidity it's over 100.  Lovely.  The museum is nice.  I really like the aboriginal artwork that uses dots.  I just find it fascinating.  And there was plenty of it.  There was also an interesting exhibit about Cyclone Tracy that basically wiped out Darwin in 1974.  It was a category 5 cyclone that ripped directly through Darwin at a time when building standards were not what they needed to be.  You could go into a dark room and listen to recording of the cyclone and it was a bit creepy.

After the museum, I hit the downtown to find my adapters and some more cold medicine and then hit a local pub for lunch and a pint.  I did see an Irish bar called "Shennanigans" which I thought was hilarious.  Then it was back to the hotel to do laundry.  My cold is still kicking my ass so I basically laid low for the rest of the day.  I did want to find a place for my sunset cocktail, but late in the afternoon a pretty savage thunderstorm rolled into town so I just hunkered down in my room.  My tour starts at 0615, so no late night partying for me.