Monday 29 August 2022.
Highlights: Exploring Darwin, Darwin Harbour Night Cruise.

Today we went on a small walk before breakfast to figure how to get to Hilton Darwin Hotel. Knowing it would be very warm and humid you want the most direct route. Once we found the hotel I got my Hilton membership attached to the booking, fixed the room from King to Double and organise a very early check in time based on membership status.

We had a great included breakfast at the Vibe Hotel overlooking the Wharf area and said farewell again to some of the AAT King Tour members. We then explored the Wharf area to determine the location of how cruise tonight.

We then did the 15 minute walk to our new hotel carrying our bags in the humidity at 10.30 am was an effort. But the air conditioned Hilton with their check-in gift water bottles, the very nice room, and the free drinks in the Executive Lounge make it worth it. We also organise for The Ghan transfer to occur from The Hilton on Wednesday instead of Travelodge as listed.

From here it was a bit more exploring the CBD and in particular the shops for souvenirs and a very light lunch i.e. ice cream based :). Then it was back to the hotel for some swimming to cool down and relax before tonight cruise.

The walk to the cruise dock took around 25 minutes a little tough in the heat and humidity but we were refreshed. The cruise it’s was very enjoyable. We meet a few people who are going on The Ghan on Wednesday so we was nice to exchange expectations and ideas on the excursion options.

The Darwin Harbour is magnificent and during the 2.5 hour dinner cruise we got to see some great sights including briefly dolphins, the city view, the dark blue water and the sunset.

After the cruise we walked back to our hotel and found we had each done over 20,000 steps for today. A record for this trip and probably not ideal in these conditions hopefully we will not be negatively impacted tomorrow.