Gold Coast 2014

Just got back from our long weekend vacation at Gold Coast. Such fun and relaxing 5 days!

We left Sydney at around 9pm on Thursday, 18 Apr. After a quick stopover at a Shell station in Thornleigh to fix Ethan's iPad cradle, we headed out to the Pacific Highway. We travelled for about 12 hours with several stops - three 10-min toilet breaks at random fuel stations, a 1.5 sleep break at the BP station at Coffs Harbour, and another toilet break at one of the rest areas past Byron Bay.

I drove the first 300kms from Telopea to Taree, then Papa drove 150kms to Kempsey, then I drove again to Coffs Harbour (100+kms) where we stopped for a 1.5hr sleep. After that, I drove the remaining 325kms to Surfers Paradise, Gold Coast.

We arrived at our rented apartment - which Ethan calls our "vacuation" hotel - the Chevron Renaissance Tower at around 9:30am on Friday, 19 Apr.

The long drive was tiring so we were all asleep 'til mid afternoon. We got up around 2pm and went down to the hotel pool with Ethan. At around 4pm, we headed out to Surfer's Paradise Beach and the nearby shopping centres. They had a night market going on so it was great timing.

On Saturday, we started our day with worship service at the Gold Coast locale. Then went on to enjoy the day at Dreamworld.

On Sunday, we headed to Whitewater World park, just beside Dreamworld. Ethan enjoyed this more and he even found himself a new friend - Jordan. I managed to get Ethan to go on 2 rides with me - the Little Ripple and the Hydrocoaster. He loved them both but won't do second rounds.

On Monday, we headed back to the 2 parks. We ticket we had was good for 3 days on either, so we spent the morning at Dreamworld then the afternoon at Whitewater world. Capped the day with sand play at the Surfer's Paradise beach which was cut short by a minor medical emergency - Ethan's skin got irritated by the saltwater.

We were up early today as we had to check out at 10am. After a quick trip to Coles, we were on our way home around 9:30am. We planned to do minimal stops since we (drivers) were very well rested. But with kids on tow, we knew it wasn't going to be easy. Our first stop was at the Byron Bay exit which was just 1 hour into the trip - a toilet emergency for Ethan. Second stop was at Coffs Harbour for a McDo snack, toilet break and a short 15min rest for me. Papa also took the wheel at that point until our third and last stop was at Kew (Lakewood). We were aiming for Port Macquarie but we missed the exit so we exited at the next one. I took driving duty again after the break and drove the rest of the way (345km) without further stops. We reached home just past 9pm.