Surfers Held Out for Us
Back from our holiday in the Gold Coast of Australia now but feeling a renewed sense of luck at the gorgeous weather we had after hearing about a storm that is currently ripping through that part of the country. It has already killed one person.
We originally wanted to go this week and tried to book tickets but Air NZ screwed us around and we had to go a week earlier. Lucky or what!
My recollection of the short sunny trip is in the style of Sarah Von’s memory list.
- Getting up at four in the morning is NOT awesome. Especially when you go to bed at one.
- Movies on the plane make it less scary to fly, they’re distracting.
- The Gold Coast is immediately warm when we arrive. It’s 8.30 in the morning their time and the sun is as hot as it gets in Wellington in the middle of summer. Plus there’s no wind.
- It’s amazing how much you remember about a place even though you’ve only spent one week there ever. As we were driving from the car hire place I could remember exactly where the supermarket was up the road from the place we stayed at last time. And I got to have my first cupcake of the holiday. It wasn’t that great.
- Our rooms had amazing views. Chickie Little and the Hubby’s room had views of the beach and the river either side and ours had a wide view of the river. They let us check into one of the rooms early so the girls could catch up on some sleep and the boys could go be hunter gatherers and find us some food.
- The Boy mysteriously forgets that I don’t like to eat onion or capsicum and that I don’t like pineapple on pizza, so he orders dinner from the only place he can find open on a Sunday night and brings home a vegetarian pizza which has tomato paste, cheese, onion, capsicum, and pineapple as toppings. I end up eating pizza base with tomato paste on it for dinner because I’m so hungry.
- I apparently love the fleeting feeling that I’m going to die and subject myself to it occasionally on rides like the Claw and the Giant Drop.
- I don’t know how people met up with friends before cell phones and the internet. Trying to meet up with Gem was a huge failure, the phone number I gave her was missing the country code which ended up being necessary, and we didn’t have internet access so I didn’t get her email saying her nana had died and she couldn’t meet us in Brisbane after all.
- The trip to Brisbane led us to discover one of the three Ikeas in Australia though. Ikea. Is. Awesome. I finally understand why everyone goes on about it. My memento is a black and red striped mat and an Ikea pencil.
- Shopping was great. We went to Pacific Fair, Queen St Mall, Australia Fair, Harbour Town and the general Surfers Paradise area. Harbour Town was by far my favourite. I didn’t buy anywhere near as much I hoped I would. But I did find an amazing new paid of sneakers!
- I think Chickie Little was getting a bit pissed at me for the amount of sushi I was eating. She can’t have any for at least 6 months on account of her condition (pregnancy). The warm weather calls for something fresh and tasty and sushi is always my pick. I went to my first sushi train too!
- The forest we went into up Mt Tamborine was magical. We went for a short walk to Curtis Falls. I kept expecting to see monkeys or fairies popping up.
- Coolangatta airport is tiny and boring. Then our flight was half full with kids. And the In flight entertainment system was screwed and needed to be rebooted. It wasn’t until about an hour into the flight home that it finally started working. No thanks to the kids who kept leaning on and poking the screen despite being told that doing so would men having to start the reboot again. I honestly wanted to slap the little bitch sitting in front of us. I wanted to slap the parents more though. The flight attendants had to come and get the dad about four times after their little toddler son kept running up the aisle getting lost and then starting to cry.
