Surfers Paradise

---

Got up and decided we'd get the bus to Surfers Paradise. Lucy was quite sad to leave Byron Bay in the end, even though she said she really didn't like it when we first got there! Think it might have had something to do with the cool American she found though ...

We had breakfast at the hostel before we left - Lucy had a fruit salad and I had the $15 mega fry up! I AM my father's daughter.

Arrived in Surfers Paradise which reminds me quite a lot of Benidorm. It's all high-rise buildings of apartments and tacky shops, but the beach is actually nice. We got dropped at the bus station in town and then got picked up by the hostel bus that then took us all the way out of town again, so much for being central!! We had a dorm to ourselves though as it was so quiet and we just flopped on the bed and chatted for a few hours before going into town. We had a browse around the shops and found a classic souvenir shop that had the hugest amount of tat in it - i wish I'd bought the "Uluru Rocks!" bag. We also walked along the Esplanade where we heard there were some night markets. Unfortunately everything was majorly tacky! One guy selling stuff also had a sideline in books that he'd written, one of which was a true account of when he was a Qantas pilot and had a compulsion every time he flew to shut off all 4 engines in a 747 on takeoff. He apparently told Qantas that he was not feeling well and they didn't take him seriously so he flew "until he could no longer stand the terror"! Mum's essential bed-time reading!!

We then saw an advert for a Bavarian theme restaurant, just the sort of thing that we LOVE so we hot-footed it over to the "Bavarian Haus" where we weren't disappointed - girls in dirndls, men in lederhosen singing covers of some classics (the addition of a Swiss cowbell can liven up even the dullest tune), beers in Steins etc... We couldn't face any sauerkraut and boiled pork so we had chicken schnitzel which was shockingly bad but the guy in lederhosen singing Edelweiss made up for it (he also did a 'Maroon 5' song, bless him! and if he'd of had a beard I think I might of cried through the sheer emotion of it). Far better than the massive pubcrawl that the hostel was trying to flog us that night!! We're so anti-social :-)

We also found a "psychic fair" in a shopping mall where i was tempted to get a reading, but Lucy dissuaded me - the psychic party pooper! Apparently all the psychics were 'internationally renowned' but why they were therefore doing readings sitting on plastic garden furniture at 9pm on a Wednesday night in a tacky shopping mall is unclear.

---