After leaving Byron Bay we headed to Surfer's Paradise for 4 days. We stayed in an awesome hostel and met some really fun people that we spent a lot of time with. Nelly played nightly games of Volleyball with them and we hung out at the bar with some of the people who worked there. Surfer's Paradise reminded me of a wannabe Vegas. I told Nelly that one morning and literally right after I said that we walked around a corner and saw a sign that said "Vegas Paradise".
This entire trip I have been amazed at the lack of sky rise hotels clogging the shorelines, nothing at all like Hawaii. Surfer's Paradise had them and I found out why; most of the resorts are owned by the Japanese, much like Hawaii, and they build the really big and elaborate places.
We spent an afternoon at the beach there but the surf was so rough that we could not go in.
But it did wash up some pretty neat sea creatures!
The following day we bought a pass to Dream World and White Water World. If Disneyland or Great America are Nieman Marcus, then Dream World Walmart. We did get to hold a koala and see kangaroos and tigers which was really special. In the afternoon we headed to the water park where we spent the day on the slides.
Kangaroos are really weird creatures. From the way they move to the joeys in their pockets, everything seems so unreal!
The next day you better believe we found a bar at 10:00 am to watch the opening day Giant's game. Luckily the game was on early because I don't think if we had been there when it was crowded the locals would have sat through 3 hours of baseball!
After leaving Surfer's Paradise we spent 24 hours in Brisbane. We walked around the city for a couple of hours and then went to the movies that night to see Lincoln Lawyer (go see it, it was entertaining!). I took this picture to prove that we actually went to Brisbane and am going to assume that the river is not normally this brown. Kyle?
From Brisbane we headed to Rainbow Beach for 2 nights which is a sleepy beach town that is literally two blocks long. We attempted to lay out at the beach which was comparable to being inside of a sandblaster because it was so windy, so we played in the waves and then spent the afternoon on the grass above the beach. While we were in Rainbow Beach we celebrated Nelly's 31st (and my brother, Zack's, 22nd a continent away). It was rather uneventful compared to the epic weekend of his 30th, however it was still a great day. He has actually been celebrating his birthday for two days now, April 4th and April 5th, which is the 4th in the states.
Nelly does not like cake but devours pavlova, so I arranged for him to have some after dinner. I'm surprised he didn't bite my hand off when I went in for a scoop!!
We head to Fraser Island, the world's largest sand island, for 3 days. Pray for us that the rain stops!
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Location:Surfer's Paradise, Rainbow Beach
Clearly birthday pavlova will need to become a tradition for you, Matt!
ReplyDeleteI dont remember the river being that brown, but I dont think it's every been "swimmable". Anyways, glad you made it to Brizzy. It's a cute city, nothing too special. I lived right in the CBD by the botanical gardens. Yay!
ReplyDeleteKyle