GIRLS TRIP TO THE GOLD COAST

What a great lot of holidays these have been.  Unfortunately, my mid year holidays no longer coincide with Steve's.  My friend Jannett approached me earlier this year about a girls trip to the Gold Coast.  We did this a few years ago and had an absolute ball...

Jannett organised the Unit and Carolyn and I hired a rental car for us for the week.  It was a really lovely little car, very easy on fuel, and had an enormous boot which we totally filled along with half the back seat as well.  

Our Rental Car for the week. 

We booked to fly to Brissie on the first Saturday of the holidays and stayed with Jannett's sister overnight.  We did this because we wanted to go to the Carrara Markets on the Gold Coast on the Sunday and we weren't booked into our hotel until 4pm on Sunday afternoon.  

Jannett's sister Christine lives right on the water.... not far from the Gold Coast...  It is the most peaceful place and their back yard backs onto the water ways...  I couldn't think of a more perfect spot to live...  I sent Steve photos telling him that he would never sleep in again if we lived there.  I am sure he would be up early each morning to put the crab pots out before he headed to work, and he would be home early each day to go and collect his pots....

Our views from Christine's front yard.

 We set off early Sunday morning around 7.30am, and Jannett's sister Christine joined us as well for the week.  It was so nice to have her along.... We arrived at Carrara Markets around 9am and easily found a carpark....
These are great markets and we always find bargains...
The very first place we walked into we found things to buy.....

Ohhhh Ahhhhh a nice blue bag.....

Of course she liked it,   it was blue, her very favourite colour....
I bought this little owl bird candle holder for Chloe.  It is actually really vibrant in real life and I am sure she will love it... Jannett loved the big mosaic fish and thought it would go really well in their beach home...

some of the many colourful things we saw in the first shop we went into. 

We headed off to get some fresh fruit and vegetables next.  We wanted to make sure we got them before they all went.... Ihe cherry tomatoes we got were beautiful,  so sweet,  they must have been home grown, as you don't get tomatoes like that out of the supermarkets.  The strawberries were really sweet also...

Fresh fruit and vegetables...

We found some flower markets too and decided to splurge out and buy some tulips to decorate our unit for the weeks, 

Then we wandered around and checked out lots of different stalls,  founds lots of interesting things..
I bought sunglasses, scraves, lace, ribbon, light, mug and some other bits and pieces. 

some of the stalls around the markets...

 We stopped for morning tea, and tasted some really lovely apricot, and fig loaves,  hot chocolates and cappuccinos...  We wanted around a bit more and then enjoyed a very healthy lunch of salads and wraps. 

Time to eat...

We found this really lovely toy stall with all wooden toys and puzzles.... Those of us with grandchildren bought gifts.. Lots of the things here reminded us of toys we had when we were young..

Shopping at the markets...

We thought we would just spend the morning there but it was after 3pm before we left...

Wandering around the markets...

Time to head to our Hotel..... We had bags of gear,  goodness knows how we will fit it all in the car... It was already overflowing with all our gear and we were all nursing packages as it was..

Time to take our shopping back to the car...

We arrived at our hotel and our room was still not ready,

Our Hotel

Aerial View of our Hotel...

so we decided another coffee in the coffee shop in the foyer was in order....  They had lots of delicious looking slices also, so we decided to get one and share it amongst the four of us.... Just a bit size piece..

Enjoying coffee and sweets, before checking out the hotel

 Reception came to the coffee shop to let us know when our room was ready..
Time to unload.....
Before heading down to the car, we checked out the pool and outdoor living area...
It was really lovely... Pity the weather was so cold....
I am pretty sure that none of us were going to make use of the pool in this weather...

Pool Area at the Hotel...

 Then it was down to the car park to unpack..
Oh my goodness you should have seen all the stuff we had for six days on the coast...
We needed two trolleys to cart it up to our room...

Loaded to the hilt....

 The Unit was absolutely gorgeous with amazing views of the ocean, mountains, and water ways...
Our whole living area was all plate glass windows and we had a view which ever way we looked...
Our hotel was situated right across the road from the Q1...

The views of the coast from our balcony....

 Took these photos at Sunset too....  We could have sat out on our balcony and taken in this view all day ( if it hadn't been so cold.)

Sunset and sunrise over the ocean,,,

 The rooms were lovely with views all round..

The insides of our unit,..

 Their were no vases in the Unit but we did find a coffee plunger, so it became our vase to hold our beautiful tulips... Took lots of photos of them....

Our beautiful flowers...

More photos of our flowers

Still more photos.... You can tell we were enjoying having them in our unit.....

 Our feet were killing us, but when we booked into the hotel, reception informed us that there were night markets along the esplanade, so we decided to walk down to Surfer's Paradise to check them out.....

Night Markets at Surfer's Paradise

checking out all the different stalls

 We checked out the markets and then headed into Cavill Avenue, where we had ice cream, and went looking for toothbrushes and tooth paste.  It was after 9pm before we got back to our unit and our feet were killing us.  We struggled to walk the last block... We had been on our feet walking around markets for hours and hours....

None of us slept well that first night,  our feet ached, our legs ached, and I think we were just too excited to sleep too much...
We were up to see the sun rise over the ocean....
It was a perfect day, so of course we took more photos of the views from our room....

Rooms from our balcony.

Views from our living area...

 We had another big day planned for our second day on the coast... We wanted to head to Harbourtown to the Discount STores there and make the most of the end of the year sales and bargains... We also need to do a grocery shop.  We left the unit around 10.30am and didn't get home until almost 6pm that night, but oh did we have fun, and once again our legs and feet were killing us by the time we got home..... 

We had a boot full of shopping, always lots of good fun, and always a show and tell when we get home.....

We decided a quiet day was in order for the following day.  We looked at getting tickets to go up to the observation deck on the Q1 Building and it was definitely in our price range....
We really didn't want to do much walking so decided that perhaps a movie was in order also.
More about that in the next post....