Disquiet and dramas in Paradise . . Yes, the Taylors/Vincents have arrived!

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An emotional reunion was on the cards . . .can you blame me? I haven't had a family roast dinner in six months so it was bound to get teary!
Meeting up with my dear ole ma, Aunty Chris and cousin Hayley was one of the best moments of the trip and reverted me back to a 5 year old wishing to be cuddled and spoilt rotten now I was back in the family fold again.
Staying at the Surf Regency Apartments that overlooked Surfers' beach, we experienced another 2 weeks of pure indulgence with our own room, wardrobe and hangers! Most important of all though was the fact that for 2 whole weeks the kitchen became off limits, whilst my mum, aunt n cuz toiled their little hearts out producing the cuisine that we had so missed, namely, roast lamb, cottage pie, stir fry and fry ups! Makes you salivate just to say it!
Besides filling our faces for a fortnight, we did also manage to leave the dinner table and venture out, heading to Pacific Fair shopping centre (between Surfers and Broadbeach), Broadbeach and Australia Zoo.
Australia Zoo was a bit of a rip off (53 dollars entry and no monkeys or lions!) and totally exploits all things Steve Irwin, with footage of him and his kids being shown at different points all over the place. To say it got a little bit grating is an understatement.
We also headed down to Byron Bay for the day to suss out accommodation options for when we would be staying there in a couple weeks. Mum et al were very impressed, cooing at the plethora of little gift shops and surf dudes alike.
Broadbeach is a lovely place to go for dinner (yes, back to my favourite subject) and we went there twice, to Koi Restaurant and then latterly to Sage Restaurant - both of which were fairly posh but the food was lovely and I finally got to sample the infamous sticky date pudding. Heaven.
However, our quiet little reverie of eating, sleeping, sunbathing and eating again was soon to be interrupted when Aunty Chris suddenly fell ill and required an ambulance to the hospital. What could have caused this upset? Well, of all things it was a kidney stone that, probably inspired by Chris's travels across the globe, decided to get on the move itself! Poor old Chris spent a couple days laid up in her room but luckily enough she n mother n Hay managed to get down to Sydney to have a look around before the pesky stone started playing up again.
Whilst the threesome were in Sydney, the arrival of brother Bloom meant only one thing. A night out. With it being Paddy's Day it would have been rude not to have had a couple green pints so we managed to get around a few of the pubs but if you ask me what they were called, I couldn't tell you. Not because I was drunk, but because Surfers seems to have more irish bars than Ireland and to remember their names is some feat.
With Chris fully recovered (it later transpired that the kidney stone was likely to have been dispersed with somewhere between Surfers and Bali) we spent our few last days relaxing by the pool and had a lovely bbq on our last night, where we positively milked being cooked for one last time.
It was then an extremely sad farewell to my dear family which was somewhat tempered by the arrival of another lil guest from home at Brisbane Airport. Yes, ginger is in season once again!

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