Up at the Goldie

Its finally begun, a month and a half of holiday time!! I arrived in Surfers Paradise 2 days ago (Monday) and its been pretty good so far! Being on a family holiday with my folks is pretty strange because we hardly go on family holidays. Its funny seeing the idiosyncrasies of your parents when you go travelling with them…its almost like you’ve seen a new side to them. The view from our apartment is amazing. We have the beach view from our balcony where we have breakfast every morning, and my bedroom has a view of a river…its really nice here!

Yesterday, we manage to hit Dreamworld and made a massive day of it. Glenn and I managed to convince my very cautious and safety conscious mother to get on the ‘Tower of Terror’ (TOT). I was saying that it was like a ‘very quick train trip’, and Glenn was saying that it wasn’t that scary and that it was not going to go for long. If you’ve been on the TOT, it accelerates very fast up to a vertical peak, and then you go heaps fast backwards coming to a sudden halt to where you began. The photo that was taken in the tunnel showed my folks crapping themselves and me having a ball of a time! It was so funny seeing the dirty look my mum gave me after the ride, but it was worth a million bucks!! I think my mum liked it, but she blames me for the sore shoulder she has due to the ride….


After the TOT, we cruised around and saw heaps of animal exhibits. We saw a cool tiger show where they did all these really cool tricks and jumps, and then afterwards we got to get close to some cougars. There was a really cool looking white tiger. Llamas are always cool too look at, though I was afraid it was going to spit at me. I got to pat a baby crocodile, which was very cool. Another spinout was that we got to visit the Big Brother House. It was quite surreal that I was standing in the middle of the house of a reality TV show…hmm.


Today, I woke up and hit the beach, which is 1 minute walk across the road from our apartment. It was a bit cold outside (Not as cold as Sydney I’d imagine), but I couldn’t resist getting in the water and catching a few waves. I reckon the water temperature was warmer than being outside. The surf was great and was a great start to the day! After a kick ass breaky, we hit Sea World. I actually enjoyed Sea World more than Dreamworld because I love looking at marine animals, which was what we were doing for the majority of the day. We saw an awesome dolphin show, where they did all these somersaults, belly flops and other tricks, that was cool. There was a seal show, which was pretty cool because seals are funny creatures, but I was a little bored with their story of finding some stupid ‘Golden Seal’.


The coolest part was seeing a white (well kinda yellow) polar bear and seeing an underwater aquarium, which was filled with tropical fish and sharks. I spent a lot of time looking at these awesome fish, just gobsmacked by the colours going past me! The sharks were massive and scary looking as they swam among the schools of fish. It made me really want to get a tropical fish tank…something I’ve been thinking of doing for a long time.

Lastly, we got to sit in a 4-D cinematic presentation where we had to wear 3-D glasses. It was a pretty cool show because we got sprayed on by sprinklers when a polar bear sneezed and there were smoke machines. 3-D movies are way cool, they should do a horror film in 3-D (if they haven’t yet) because it’d be way more scarier (though it may literally give you a heart attack). It gives you the sensation of something protruding out to you from the screen and you can’t get away from it (ie: ducking or moving away).


Tomorrow, we head for Australia Zoo where we’ll see more animals. Then who knows what next...keep you posted!

d

PS: for some reason, this computer at this net cafe is being very silly, so I can't upload pics...but i've been using Gloria Jeans hotspot so its all good now....!! How Nerdy! :P