Australia

Belated greetings from Australia. Our NZ friend Mouse arranged for us to stay in an apartment in Australia, the Chevron Renaissance near Surfers Paradise. Beautiful place on the 23rd floor, great views as you can see below. Full Kitchen, 2 bedroom, 2 bath...amazing place for $100 per night. There was a market (and liquor store) on the ground floor, a bakery, donut shop, hair salon, and a raft of clothing stores, everything you could need really.

Kitchen area.

Living area and private balcony.

We went on a boat tour of the back bays and chanels near Surfers Paradise. It was an upscale tour, not what we are used to. The captain drove the boat and gave commentary on all the interesting sights...but, he didn't have to tend bar as well.

White house, white boat, talk about monochromatic.

Chateau (with solar panels) on the bay. Beautiful, but odd?

Floating church.

The Versace Hotel...6 star hotel folks.

Surfers Paradise.

Surfers Paradise.

Surfers Paradise.

Kirra beach, south of Surfers Paradise.

Beach near Coolangata, 30 minutes south of Surfers Paradise (you can see it in the distance). We loved Coolangata, it is more laid back, easy going little town. We found mexican food there, which we were craving.

Sail surfer.

Sail surfing, he is way out there.

This was our first trip to Australia, we enjoyed it very much. We celebrated Judy's 5 year cancer-free anniversary while we were there, no words can properly explain what that means to me, to us. Another blessing.

Lucky enough, we had an Australian junior cheerleading team (13 to 16yrs old) with us on the flight from Sidney to Honolulu. It was the red eye flight, 9 hours. The girls were about 3 rows behind us, of course their coaches were 15 rows in front of us–smart! Chatter boxes, I figure they stopped talking for about an hour, between 3 and 4 in the morning. Very memorable.

We are enjoying Maui now, will post again soon.