The first 24 hours of Steph and Anna’s whirlwind trip to Australia!

I am taking a break from my unrelenting research in order to start reminiscing about my amazing week with Anna and Steph. I am afraid that it may take me a few days to get through it all because we did SO much and I am constantly working on my dissertation that is beginning to move from research to outline mode :)

Steph and Anna (as previously noted) arrived early Saturday morning. So early in fact that when we drove to Brisbane (with Todd getting lost for about 20 min ;) ) the shops were STILL not open. To pass the time we walked around this really awesome outdoor market that was slowly awaking (a market that I visited with Steff and my sis when she was here, don’t you just love when you stumble upon an old location just by chance?). At this point it is only 10am or so and we are all pretty exhausted already… bad news. So it was decided that we would just keep running all day in order to make it through!

Our next stop was the Lone Pine koala sanctuary where we pet kangaroos, wallabies, held a koala and gawked at various animals in cages such as Tasmania devils, lorikeets and a dingo. Anna and Steph were very impressed that we jumped straight into an “Australian adventure!” This adventure plunged us into a drowsy state and so the girls slept while I kept Todd awake and headed in the right direction ;) Our next stop was my apartment where the girls called their parents, boyfriends, siblings, other important people on Skype which gave Todd 20 min or so to have a much needed nap (I am not exaggerating about our tiredness…).

Coolangatta was next, the beach town south of Surfers that boasts the Gold Coast airport, amazing surf conditions, and an amazing burger joint that has gluten free buns (Todd’s idea of heaven). We spent a relaxed afternoon in Coolangatta: watching surfers, walking on the beach, eating amazing burgers and watching Todd attempt to catch the very slight gusts of wind with his kite (for kite surfing) but to no avail. The next step in our plan to keep everyone awake was to go home and get dressed up in order to go out in Surfers that night.

None of us are huge partiers but experiencing the club scene in Surfers is a must. It would be like going to Vegas and staying in your hotel room the entire time. After a fun evening of dancing at a place called Waaxys we all fell into bed at 2am. No one can ever say we didn’t make good use of our time! :)