After all the flying we did getting to Sweden and back we had a stack of frequent flyer points and decided we needed a trip to unwind and take advantage of the points. We settled on the Gold Coast for a few reasons, it was warm and sunny (22-26 C) while Adelaide was cold (9-15 C) and rainy, one of our friends had just moved up there, Kris and I had previously been there for our honeymoon and it housed the Movie World, Sea World and Wet 'n' Wild theme parks.
We booked 8 days, arriving late on the Monday and leaving the following Tuesday. We aimed for these dates as they had the cheapest flights (so we could get them completely free with our frequent flyer points) and it lined up with South Australian school holidays but not Queensland holidays, hopefully meaning the parks would be quieter.
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| Bye to the 'lovely' Adelaide rain |
We stayed in a cabin in Labrador, a few minutes north of Surfers Paradise. It was a comfortable and spacious enough, if a little run down. By the time we picked up our hire car and made it to our apartment it was almost 11pm, but we managed to get settled in quickly and had a good night sleep.
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| Our cabin - two bedrooms (double and single bed in each), bathroom, toilet and kitchenette |
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| The kids were a bit excited to get going |
On Tuesday we were up pretty early and decided to head out to Harbour Town, a shopping area with a large number of factory outlets. The Queensland one opened in 1999, and Kris and I went there on our honeymoon in 2003. It was where I bought my first sword, but sadly there dont appear to be any swords for sale there anymore. We had always planned on a visit to Harbour Town as we all needed new clothes, and we picked it first for a few reasons. Firstly, we wanted to do it before the kids got hyped up by the theme parks and secondly we needed to do some food shopping to stock up for the week.
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| Welcome to Harbour Town |
We ended up spending most of the morning at Harbour Town, stopping for Chinese food for lunch. Cameron got some new shoes (and was happy to throw out his old ones with no soles left):
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| Ceremonial dumping of the shoes |
We all picked up some new clothes and then got our food shopping done. After spending way too much money (but getting some nice gear), we headed back to the cabin to drop off our stuff.
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| Harbour Town |
We then headed down to Surfers Paradise for the afternoon/evening, walking along the beach and stopping for dinner at the Surfers Paradise Surf Club:
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| The kids were excited to get down onto the sand |
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| Surfers Paradise |
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| The kids obeying the rule to keep dry |
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| Sunset and the moon |
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