Gold Coast

As if the Syndey weekend wasn't enough, this past week we spent at the Gold Coast!! http://www.surfersparadise.com/
The flight was out of Sydney airport, so we decided to head up to Sydney on Friday since Matt hasn't been there yet and go out to the casino/bars for the night and stay in a hostel.  Our friend from South Africa, Jade, came with us and we got to meet her family who were super nice and drove us to the city after feeding us dinner! Saturday we spent walking around the city and just looking around the Opera House and went back to the Rocks section of the city for our lunch. The flight took off at 6PM and was a short hour which was nice! Once we got to the airport at Gold Coast, we found our way to one of Nick's roommates houses because he was up there for the week too and said we could stay with him which was awesome! We got to go out in the city with people who already new what to do and where to go and everything plus we had a free place to sleep! :) Everyone that we were with was incredibly nice and were so much fun to be with too! They took us to the beach, we got some pizza and just hung out for the first 3 days of the week. Unfortunately, I lost my camera though while we were there so the pictures we have are on Matt and Nick's cameras (I'll just steal them once they put them up on facebook and put them up on here though).  Tuesday we decided to go stay in a hostel so that we could go to the theme parks which is what the Gold Coast is known for, and just do some touristy stuff that obviously people who live there have done 1,000 times.  So, we went to a place called Infinity which is absolutely insane. You walk into all these rooms and it just looks like they are never ending because of the way they have the mirrors set up, and its pitch black and you wear little gloves and booties that light up.  Definitely click this link because it's really hard to describe but is so cool! http://www.infinitygc.com.au/
Then that night we walked to a casino called Jupiter's and ended up meeting a couple of other Australian people our age who were staying the casino for someones birthday and invited us up to have a drink which was super nice of them! After that we weren't so lucky at the casino and all ended up losing unfortunately :( Then the next day we bought our theme park tickets and spent the day at Sea World!! It was so cool!! http://seaworld.myfun.com.au/ Definitely not AS good as the one in Disney, but still really cool! The best part was a jet ski stunt show, they could do crazy flips and dives into the water.  After that we went back to the hostel and relaxed for the night! We had planned on going jetskiing the next day, but it got cancelled due to rain and wind :( so we just hung out and got some extra sleep which was nice! Also we all picked our classes for next semester (no friday classes for me :)) and the next day went to another theme park called MovieWorld! It has some awesome roller coasters and we saw a 4D movie and a stunt show! http://movieworld.myfun.com.au/ Of COURSE we got lucky enough to be in the very front row for the SuperMan ride...joy. But it ended up being awesome even though I was practically shaking before it started.  That night we relaxed again and packed up all our stuff since it was already Friday! Saturday we got up and went jetskiing!!!! It was my favorite part of the whole trip although the fact that there were jelly fish EVERYWHERE was really scary because I was just so nervous to fall off (they didn't tell us till after it was over that they didn't sting). Nick and I shared a ski and switched off with driving and Matt had his own. We all loved it so much. At this point, it was Saturday afternoon and the flight home was Sunday at 6AM, so instead of renting a hostel for the night decided to just camp out outside the airport until it was time to go check in.  We hung out for the day in a park near where the jetskiing was, then took the bus back to the hostel that all our stuff was at, grabbed our stuff and hung out talking and watching Nick and Matt do tricks with all their luggage...We were so past tired by the time we got on the plane that from the second we took off to the second we landed the 3 of us were completely passed out. It was 740AM when we landed, so we went and got Subway breakfasts :) and got on the train back to Newcastle.  When we got back to Evatt House we all crashed IMMEDIATELY and it's 7PM on Sunday now and I'm finally awake! The trip was amazing and it felt like we were serious backpackers for the first time since we were constantly moving around hostels and everything and that made it even more fun I think :) All of our bank accounts took a nice hit, but it was all worth it for sure!! It feels good to be back in my own bed finally though after 8 days of random sleeping conditions!