Gold Coast

Monday 5th - Thursday 8th June 2017

After getting the long train, then a few buses to get back to the turtle beach resort, I was exhausted! At one point I thought I was going to be locked out of the resort, but I snuck in and waited outside the  rooms, trying desparetky to get ahold of wade or Mary! Eventually I did and the boys gave me a super lovely greeting... telling me all about their adventures over the weekend and saying that they missed me! They are pretty cute!

The following day we made our way to Sea world. I was a bit dubious about going, due to the animal cruelty side to it, and if I had to buy a stand alone ticket I definitely would not have gone, but I went along with the family as I got a ticket for 70 bucks to enter 3 parks which wasn't pretty cheap!and actually, I am pretty glad I did as the kids had such an awesome time it was lovely to see!

We watched the sea lion show, which was pretty cheesy and we kinda regretted sitting in the sun for it as it went on for ages! Then we had a look around Nickelodeon world, I would've loved it here as a kid! When the spongebob characters made an appearance, Spongebob ran pasts all the kids and went straight to hug me... pretty weird! I don't want to think about who was in that costume!!!

They had a deal on where if you bought a drink for $13.99 it had unlimited refills all day, so I took that as a challenge and got in 6 refills!

After lunch we went on the big rollercoaster, and took Darragh with us. He sat next to Wade, and was slightly unsure at first but saw it as a boat and seemed fine. Then we went up, high, and he started panicking a bit less him! He freaked out at the end with the big splash! I had forgotten how much I actually enjoy rollercoasters though!

We stayed and watched the dolphin show, which made me think about my decision once again as there is no way those poor animals have enough room in their enclosures. They're pretty talented though! The worst bit though was seeing the polar bears... like why on earth do they have polar bears in Australia!!!!

We then headed back to the hotel after a long, busy day got changed into slightly warmer clothes, as it gets pretty cold in the evenings, and then went out to grab food. The pub we went to had a kids entertainer and they had a free buffet for the kids on a Tuesday, so we picked a good day to go! The boys even had their faces painted!

Wednesday morning we headed off to movie world, and I have to admit, I was probably just as excited as the kids if not more so! It's pretty similar to Disneyland, but for warner bros, (sadly no Harry Potter though!). We watched Looney tunes 4D as we walked past it just as they were showing it, it was pretty good! I haven't watched the looney tunes for ages, and I'd totally forgotten all about it!

We then went to the kids section, and Darragh bravely tried out the smaller rollercoaster after his borderline traumatic experience the day before. He loved it! He ended up going on it like 6 or 7 times! We spent most of the morning there, before going to the stunt show. The stunt show was mega cheesy, but when they were actually driving the cars it was pretty cool!

After grabbing a bite to eat, we explored the rest of the park. Mary and I took Darragh on the scooby do ride (Cillian was too short much to his dismay!) as he had a new found love for roller coasters. I thought it would be a ghost train, I did not realise it would be as intense a rollercoaster as it actually was! Poor Darragh hated it, but I loved it! 

We then made our way to the Wild West area, and went to go on the big water flume. Darragh, still not quite recovered from Scooby, was not up for going on another ride, but because Cillian was allowed on this one, we persevered and he (very) reluctantly got in the boat! Cillian sat next to me, and he enjoyed it at first, until we went backwards and down a pretty steep drop! Then it was just tears all round from the pair of them! They were totally fine though! 

After this, we headed for the Arkham asylum ride. Wade was super keen and I said I'd go on it with him, but as we got closer I got more and more nervous. It's the first virtual reality rollercoaster in the aouthern hemisphere, and I kinda wanted to try it, but I forgot to bring the five bucks with me and to be fair I think it would've messed with my head a wee bit! I was freaking out. I was sitting in the roller coaster wondering why I was doing this to myself. The only thing that made me do it was thinking about my bungy jump and how the scariest thing turned out to be one of the most amazing experiences! And, yet again, I'm really glad I did it! It was soooo much fun! (Even though I did scream all the way around). 

We popped back to the kids bit for a bit after that, and met Batman on the way out! The kids were super excited about it, it was really cute! 

The last ride we went on was the justice league ride, pretty similar to the buzz light year ride at Disney land! There was only room for four in the cart so I went by myself and had a great time shooting all the starfish things - I doubled up with two guns! At the end Wade and Mary seemed confused, turns out they didn't realise you could lift he guns out and they were for shooting! So I made ya go on it again, and th boys loved it!

Oh and also I topped up my drink twice again (took me a while to find the refill station) so I totally got my money's worth haha!

We went back to the same pub we went he previous day for dinner, and the rest of eh family joined us there. It was such a lovely last day of the holidays!

The following morning we got a late checkout so we just chilled at the pools for a bit. Then we went shopping back at Pacific Fair and I finally bought myself a cheap coat! We then dropped the hire car off and headed backwards to the airport to the land of the Kiwis!

Australia, it was a blast. See you in a few months!

Queensland

Thursday 1st  - Friday 2nd June 2017

Finally the day was here to get a bit of winter sun over at the sunny Gold Coast in Australia. We had a chilled out morning picking the car and doing a few bits before driving up to Christchurch to the airport.

The flight was just under 4 hours and I ended up reading half the novel I brought with me in that time... it was supposed to last me the whole week! Jetstar isn't the most luxurious of companies, but it does the job! We landed in Coolangatta at around 5ish there time, it took us a while to find the shuttle to the rental car place but Darragh was super excited to see that there was a tv in their playing Mr Bean!

We then drove down to Turtle Bay Resort, it looks pretty cool! There's s splash zone with water slides and things for the kids as well as three other pools. We grabbed dinner at the restaurant there, I had a pizza, it wasn't he nicest in the world but I was so hungry I didn't care! I was pretty paranoid he whole time about spiders though... luckily I didn't see any bigger than we get in England but I still made sure everything was zipped up! We had a little wander around before heading up to the room for the night - it had been a pretty long day!

The next morning I repacked my bag as I was heading up to Noosa to visit Lily and Sam for the weekend. I walked down to 7eleven to grab a go card, kinda like an Oyster card for Queensland. There was a huge shopping centre on the way, so I had a quick look around. The place was so big that I got a wee bit lost a few times! It was so nice to see a load of shops that I actually recognised!

I then walked back up and grabbed a sandwich for lunch. Wade and Mary dropped me off at the train station I needed to go to, as they were going to a shopping centre nearby. It only cost me just under 11 bucks to get a four hour train... I can't believe how cheap it is for trains here!