We never intended to do very much while in Surfers Paradise, we just wanted to blob out on the beach and relax, so that is basically what we did. Wandering down to the beach to stroll along the squeaky sand and people watch most days, and as we passed several gaming halls I was kept happy too, playing a few coins and winning back many more, we just what I had in mind for this week, we are just not theme park kind of people, we love to swim but the idea of a hyper super slide made us feel quite ill, so we found other smaller treats to enjoy.
Every day as we walked through the nearby Mall a nice Asian lady would paint one of my finger nails, just a tester, each day she painted a different image , like flowers, butterflies, stars, so I ended up with most of my nails painted; each one different!
We did have a lovely day at Carrara Markets a really huge largely under cover market place full of small stalls full of everything you can think of. We seemed to dash between all the food stalls, mainly the wonderful and new to us Greek food, there is a custardy pie made with filo pastry we simply loved! Dolmades are also yummy. Didn’t need any lunch that day and not much dinner either.
We also spent a day at Pacific Fair a huge in fact the biggest in Australia market place with over 350 small shops with lots of food outlets too, but no Greek food fortunately! As this day was hot we found the icecream sellers more interesting.
We also spent a great (for me; not Erle) day at Jupiter’s Casino where I managed to play most of the day and only lose less than $5.00, I feel so lucky everything I touch seems to win at the moment, love the feeling.Every day we made for the big spa pool and as we had it to ourselves we could swim in the warm fizzy waters to our hearts content.
The best day we had was the day Erle’s son Gregor and grand daughter Emily came to visit us, we had so much to catch up on as I had only met Emily once before when she was a shy 5 year old now she is a delightful young women. They stayed to go out to dinner with us at the RSL Club, the meals there were superb inexpensive and delicious, a great evening was had by all of us I think. Gregor took this lovely photo of the two of us in a strange iron chair out on the street when we all walked down to Wendy's to buy icecreams to finish our evening off sweetly.
I had hoped to be able to visit a dear friend who had just had an operation on her knee but were unable to, however we had a lovely chat on the phone. Next time we will meet up when she is not so incapacitated.We also had to fun of watching repairs being made to the bulging building wall, from our birds eye veiw, watching the very tall crane was interesting to us and we could do so while enjoying a glass of cool wine from the safety of our balcony. We were never in any real danger.
I am not a big shopper so we only window-shopped as we wandered around the streets, fielding off Estate agents wishing to sell us apartment s in various sky- scrapper both new and old; some of them quite affordable too, but hardly buying anything, a good cheap holiday really.
Queensland Apartment buildings are all actually owned by some big conglomerate or other, but each separate apartment is privately owned from the conglomerate and are furnished and maintained to their standard of personal taste and their bank balance., then the appartments are let out to tourists like us while the owners don't wish to be in them. We feel the folk who owned our rooms were not rich at all and didn’t use the rooms often, there was not a single extra item beside the basically required things in it and lots of painting and repairs were needed, we asked for the three light bulbs that were not working to be replaced, and they were but we just managed with what was there otherwise, we used dining table chairs outside on the balcony as there was nothing else.
All too soon our 7 days were over and we were preparing for the move to Townsville and the rest of our holiday.
