Ho, Ho, Holiday in Australia, 2 - Beautiful Brisbane, Gorgeous Gold Coast

In the last post, I mentioned about the arduous planning involved in a DIY, self-drive holiday. However, for those who prefer not waking up in the early morning to catch the coach, the rushing around and your chosen of preferred food, it is all worth the effort.

In this blog post, I will do a brief write-up of the highlights of the first day of the self-drive holiday in Brisbane and Gold Coast. Sit back and enjoy!

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Day 1, Sunday, 11 Dec 2011. It was a midnight flight from Singapore to Brisbane. As it was a direct flight, the journey was about 8 hours long. So we boarded the plane and had our good night sleep onboard.

Brisbane

We arrived at Brisbane airport at around 10 am - Brisbane being 2 hours ahead of Singapore's time. Thanks to the good advice of our colleague, we had applied for visa via the Internet beforehand. Not only did that save us money, it also made the crossing the immigration checkpoints seamless.

The first thing that we did was to look out for their local phone operator - Vodafone which had an outlet in the airport. We bought a pre-paid sim card for our iPad 2 which would help us to get around in Australia at a fraction of the mobile cost.

As it was still early to check into our accomodation in Gold Coast, we browsed a free copy of the guide around Brisbane and decided to head down to South bank. Thereafter, we proceeded to pick up our rental car, which I nicknamed "Must Be Very Sexy. We fidgeted with the GPS and our iPad before we embarked on our journey.



We explored the South bank on foot for about an hour before we headed to New Farm Park and had lunch at New Farm Fish Cafe. The seafood there was great. After lunch, we drove to Gold Coast which was about an hour or so drive.

Gold Coast

When we arrived at our accomodation, we were somewhat taken aback as there was no reception. It then dawned on us that it was a Sunday afternoon. So we pressed to talk through the intercom, who guided us to open up the safe to pick up the keys to our apartment. I knew I had booked a 2-bedroom apartment with ocean view. Still, I was blown away by the postcard perfect view from all vantage points in the apartment - from the living room, kitchen, master bedroom and the kids room. It was simply breaktaking complete with the sound of the waves crashing in. Welcome to Surfers' Paradise.



We lazed around for until evening time before we drove around and chanced upon Cav's Butchery and Steakhouse. The steak and Yahoo Pork Ribs were simply yummy. Thereafter, we hopped onto our car again and were on a lookout for a grocery store to buy some fresh milk, chocolate bars and cereal for our morning breakfast the next day.