Week Nine

A Wild Wallaby

Main Beach

Q1 Building

Surfers Paradise

Hey all! Welcome back to my blog! I would just like to start off by apologizing for the delay in Week Nine's entry being posted. I've been a bit busy this week, and to be honest, I seem to keep forgetting.
There isn't much to discuss in this week's post as my first week back after break has been pretty monotonous, so this week's post will be a bit short.

As I've spent the past two entries discussing the two highlights of my trip to the Gold Coast (the rainforest tour and Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary) I suppose I should talk a bit about some of the other things I did during my five day stay there.

Outside of my visits to the hinterlands and the wildlife sanctuary, I'd have to say my favorite thing in the Gold Coast was the beach. As the city's name would suggest, Gold Coast is very much a beach town. There were several very popular beaches in the area, but Main Beach was the one that I chose to visit, as it was very close and easily accessible from the hostel I was staying at. While the weather wasn't exactly hot on the days I visited, it was pleasant and sunny and the water wasn't too freezing.

The place I stayed in was a very nice and pleasant hostel called Gold Coast Backpackers. Having always stayed at hotels during my vacations, the concept of a hostel was very foreign to me. For those of you unfamiliar with what exactly a hostel is, it is basically very affordable accommodation where you share bedrooms with strangers. I would probably prefer to stay at a hotel, but very fortunately, everyone I have stayed with so far has been very nice and courteous. In fact of the four nights I stayed at this hostel, I only had to share my room once.

The hostel was located in a place called Surfers Paradise, which is the main commercial district in the Gold Coast. It was very tourist-oriented, there was a very convenient tram system that actually stopped right outside my hostel. In fact, Surfers Paradise was so tourist-oriented that it really seemed to me like an Australian approximation of Los Angeles, with the way the buildings looked and they manner in which they were arranged. Regardless, however, it was a very nice area to stay in.

As you can tell, while I enjoyed my tour of the Queensland Hinterlands and the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary the most, I thoroughly enjoyed my entire stay in the Gold Coast. Just for the clarification, the building pictured above labeled "Q1 building" is the Queensland One building, the tallest building in Australia and the entire Southern Hemisphere. It was formally the tallest residential building in the world until just recently.

That's it for this week guys! You'll all hear from me again next week, and I'll try and publish my post a bit earlier in the week. Thanks for bearing with me!