Getting to the Gold Coast-Sunday, December 11, 2011When I booked the two domestic flights on VA, I remembered that one left at 9:30am and the other at 9:00am. For some reason, even though we’d already taken one flight I thought our flight up to OOL was the one that was at 9:30am.
While my wife was finishing packing a few things, I was ready and waiting downstairs in our hosts house. Our hostess had offered to drive us to the airport, something we were extremely thankful for, as it meant not having to schlep our stuff on a bus and two trains to SYD.
As I’m hanging around, our hostess suggests that I check in online. It was 8:00am. We were planning on leaving at 8:15 to get to the airport 1 hour before our flight. When I went to check in, I got an error that online check-in was only available until 1 hour before the flight. The system did pull up my reservation though and reminded me that my flight was departing on time at 9:00am!
When I told our hostess of my mistake, she grabbed one of our bags, shouted at my wife to come down asap, and by 8:10am we were on the road driving to the airport. There must be a normal way to go, but we took the local way. We were weaving in and out of small city streets, taking every back road imaginable, and doing it all at top speed! Sure enough we pulled up to the terminal at 8:25am, she gave us AUD$5 for shaliach mitzva, wished us good luck and left.
We, on the other hand, still had much to do. We raced inside, checked in at a kiosk (you cannot check in with an agent, even 1st class), and ran to the 1st class bag drop. The agent gave us some slack, took our bags, guaranteed they’d be on the flight (they were), and gave us passes for priority security.
By the time the finished patting my wife down after security we heard them calling final boarding for our flight. It was 8:50am.
We ran! Granted we only had backpacks as our carry ons (since we were in a rush they didn’t weigh them at check-in), but it was still quite a sprint to the gate. Needless to say we were the last ones on, making it just as they were closing the door. We were out of breath but on the flight.
I’d like to pause and make note of VAs policy for onboard drinks. They all cost. All of them, including water. There are no free options. Period. Since we were late we didn’t have time to fill our water bottles after security, so we went thirsty for the 1:20 fight.
Once we landed in OOL we rented a car from Alpha Car Hire. They were the cheapest place I found and conveniently located at both OOL and BNE. We got our car in no time and were off on our very pleasant and picturesque drive up to the Sheraton Mirage Resort and Spa.
At the time, the Sheraton was undergoing some much needed renovations. The first room they assigned us to was on the top floor (best views) which hadn’t been renovated yet. It was a suite (we were Platinum members), yet it was horribly decorated straight out of the ‘80s.
Our large and dated roomThis was fine for my wife, who, at this point, was blown away with the hotels we were staying in having never stayed at much above Best Westerns, but it was not fine for me. My standards were higher. I went back to the front desk and politely asked if there was another room on a renovated floor.
Sure enough there was, but it was not as large a suite as we had and therefore not considered the best room available. We decided to “sacrifice” the size and moved into the brand new room one floor below.
Our smaller, renovated room
View from new roomSidebar about the kosher food: As a platinum member, the hotel had emailed me before the trip asking if there was anything I’d need during my stay. I mentioned that a kosher breakfast would be nice, but we ended up settling for unlimited bread and rolls from the kosher bakery up there. It ended up being awesome. We only stayed a few days, but each morning and evening they offered to get us a fresh loaf of bread.
After settling in we decided to go to Surfers Paradise to look around. The skys were looking quite ominous at this point, like it could start pouring at any moment. Sure enough, after walking around outside for a bit it started pouring. Not lightly raining, but down pouring including thunder and lightning.
Since we needed to go food shopping once again, we took advantage of the huge mall there to go to the Woolworths in the mall. We spent some time walking around the mall, intrigued by some of the stores we saw.
No, the store is not kosher, they just use the same font; the store is called Universal Store
Apparently Australians feel the need to go shooting while at the mall
Xmas, Gold Coast styleThe one problem with beach towns like the Gold Coast is they lack rain activities. Sure there are malls and movie theatres but neither interested us much. When we returned to the hotel and asked the concierge for ideas they suggested board games. As lame as it might seem, we decided to make the most out of the situation and spent the next hour or so playing Scrabble.
We went to bed that night during a rain storm and woke up the next day to clear and sunny skies.
Tamborine National Park-Monday, December 12, 2011Thank G-d the rain stopped, and we were able to continue with our itinerary as scheduled. After a late start we were on our way to the mountains right by the coast to explore Tamborine National Park.
Once we got to the area near the park, we stopped at an information office to ask about which hikes to do. The guy there suggested we take a few short ones and one longer one. He also asked us if we had salt with us. Umm, no, we didn’t in fact have salt, but why would we need any? Leeches. Lots of them. People pour salt on leeches if they attach to you to kill them. He warned us to be careful, that leeches could bite through clothing and soft sneakers, but not to worry and they weren’t dangerous even if one did start sucking blood.
Our first hike we went on was the long one, Witches Falls hike. This hike starts off right near the road on top of mountain and you hike down. This hike was through the rainforest (first time I’ve ever been in a tropical rainforest) and was stunning. There was thick vegetation along both sides of the trail, yet the trail was (for most of the hike) clearly marked and well maintained.
Witches Falls hike
View from top of hike
Witches Falls hikeWe made sure not to rub against any plants to try to avoid the leeches. It almost worked. Once we made it back to our car and we sat down for lunch, my DW noticed two leeches: one on my sock and one on my shoe, neither one had clamped down yet. I got a little scared and tried to pull them off with a napkin. At that point they decided to clamp down, but since I was removing them they only got hold of fabric, not skin.
Turns out leeches are really stretchy. I guess this makes sense as they do fill up with blood, so it took some prying to get them detached. I threw them out of the car and remained paranoid about finding another one for the remainder of our little meal.
After this episode, we decided to take a break from hiking and headed to the local glowworm cave. Glowworms are indigenous to only a few areas in the world and Queensland, AU is one of them. The place we visited was actually a glowworm sanctuary (no joke) where they built a cave for them to live in as they’re dying out (I forgot why).
We took a tour of the cave and learned more about the glowworm than I thought was possible. Turns out they only have mouths as larvae, but they grow shut as adults. This presents a problem as they can’t eat. For this reason, males usually live 4-5 days in total and females live 2-3 days. Can you guess why the males live longer?
Anyway, it was a really cool activity which I think was pretty unique. We weren’t there for too long, and after we finished there we went on our next hike: Curtis Falls.
This is a short .5k hike to a beautiful water fall. You could keep going on a much longer hike, but at that point we were starting to get tired and couldn’t handle much more than this 545m hike.
Curtis Falls Track
Waterfall at the end of the Curtis Falls hikeKind of tired, we headed back to the Sheraton to spend some time at the hotel. By the time we got back it was about 1 hour before sunset. We went to the hotel’s beach which was pretty much deserted at that time, and spent some time in the warm Western Pacific.
After the beach we wanted to try the in-pool bar. Again, the pool area was pretty much empty, and it was cool to sit at the bar and get a drink in the pool.
The Gold Coast and Coolangatta/Tweed Heads-Tuesday, December 13, 2011On our last day in the Gold Coast we decided to drive back down the coast all the way to Coolangatta/Tweed Heads, the city that spans the border between QLD and NSW with the former in QLD and the later in NSW. On the way we passed Miami Beach and Palm Beach, which got me thinking. This part of the Gold Coast (the part by the water) reminded me a lot of Miami. It was pretty flat, the water was to the east, and it was warm. Whatever.
Miami Beach, QLD
Palm Beach, QLDThe main reason it makes a difference which state we were in has to do with what time it is. Being further north, Queensland doesn’t observe daylight saving time while NSW does. Since it was summer when we were there it meant that there was a 1 hour difference between Coolangatta and Tweed Heads with the former being 1 hour behind.
It’s really cool because the state line actually runs down the middle of a residential street at one point, and they’ve even put up a monument marking the border. When it’s summer and you stand on the border, half of you in one hour ahead of the other. For this reason most stores have two clocks. Also, most tours go by Coolangatta time even if they leave from NSW.
State line
I guess it was 12:30 for me?We spent some time at various parks overlooking the beach. We also went to Chris Cunningham Park to eat lunch and watched people doing all sorts of water sports.
Does anyone recognize this picture? You should...Once back at the hotel, we had a grilled cheese dinner, courtesy of the hotel's ironing board.
Ironing board grilled cheeseIt was a very relaxing day, and we enjoyed our short stay in the Gold Coast a lot.
Final installment coming soon...