Bye Bye Byron... Hello Surfers!

---

Woke up after a awful night's sleep - Daniela was sharing a double bed with me and definitely wanted to kill me I was moving around so much! Took the bus from Byron Bay up to Surfers Paradise. The bus trip took about an hour and a half, and we are now in the state Queensland, which is also a different time-zone, even though we're no further east. The name of Surfers Paradise is kind of deceiving. This place is incredibly commercial, with tons of high-rise buildings, tourist traps everywhere, tons of fast food and everything. Everywhere you go someone is trying to sell you something. Luckily the weather was nice, and the beach here is still gorgeous, so we spent the afternoon on the beach, just relaxing and reading. Lisa and Daniela and I went swimming, and the surf was a lot of fun to play in- enough waves to keep us diving around and knocked over, but not so much as to be scary. After I had soaked up enough sun I came back to the place we're staying, the Islander Resort Hotel. It is a hotel and backpackers in one building, so our room clearly used to be a hotel room - we have our own TV and bathroom, which is really nice, and then there are two sets of bunk beds. I came back to the resort and was disappointed to hear that there was no wireless internet to use. I write all my blog entries on my computer as the days go by, and I really have a lot to upload! I went for a bit of walk, saw all the shops including the fancy ones - Dior, Coach, Vuitton, clearly here to appeal to all the Asian tourists. Came back and got showered and changed, and we went down to the Esplanade where there was a night market. There were a lot of cool things for sale, and a lot of awful tacky things too. I bought a really sweet fabric purse with bamboo handles from a woman who sold all sorts of beautiful handmade things- it made me miss crafting! After that we walked around for a while, and finally found a restaurant called Picasso's where we decided to have dinner. I was sort of nervous because the place looked empty, but in the end we all had large pizza's that were delicious and huge- we all have a couple slices left over for lunch the next day. Even though it was Friday night we were all pretty wiped so we just came back to the ho(s)tel and watched the movie Flight Plan before going to sleep.

---