HOLIDAY - Brisbane

So my mom came to visit Australia during my 2 week holiday. I was excited to not have to travel around by myself for that long, and we've never taken a trip just the 2 of us so that was fun. She got here Monday and for a couple days we just went around the Brisbane area.

Monday, June 30 – Mom arrived in Brisbane. We picked her up and drove to Mt. Cootha since I hadn't been there yet either. She didn't have food poisoning like I did when I arrived luckily haha. It was a really cool view from up there and it was very clear because it was pretty windy. That was a pretty big detour so we went home after that where we just chilled for a bit. Mom wanted to take A&S out to dinner so we went to Sunnybank and ate Thai food that was delicious! We had a sweet pork dish, cracked pepper chicken, a green bean dish that had some kick to it, and fried rice. All of it was so good, I really like the Asian food I've eaten here! Mom was pretty dead after all of that and keeping her up until past 9:00pm, but when we got back home we ate some Tim Tams and Mint Slices.

Top of Mt. Cootha, overlooking Brisbane.

Tuesday, July 1 - A&S trusted us with their car since mom drives manual, so we took their car and went to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary for the morning. I was so excited because I had been wanting to go there since I got to Australia and I hadn’t really seen kangaroos yet (only a few wallabies at Daisy Hill). The place was pretty much a zoo and we saw tons of kangaroos (I even took an awesome selfie with one), some emus, dingos (I really like those wild Australian prairie dogs), Tasmanian devils, a wombat, platypus, birds, bush turkeys, and of course lots of koalas. I got to cuddle one for a few seconds with a photo op and that was awesome. A&S joked with me about drop bears before (and I completely believed them for a little bit until I looked it up and realized they were completely pulling my leg) but koalas are extremely lethargic and cute. After Lone Pine we drove into the city and parked up by the temple. We ate McDonalds for lunch since it was up there and walked down Kangaroo cliffs and across the bridge to the botanic gardens before eventually making our way back to the car, getting stuck in traffic, and making it back in one piece to the house. I was pretty nervous at times with mom driving but she did a really good job. I had to keep reminding her to stay left since everything is opposite here, but I was impressed. We ate roast lamb that night and it was tasty!

Kangaroo selfie!

Cuddling a koala :)

Brisbane temple

City view

I swear there are more McDonald's per square mile in Australia than in America...

Finding Nemo?

Wednesday, July – We went to Byron Bay! Finally, this is a place I wanted to go for awhile as well. It was absolutely gorgeous there. We parked the car after about 2 hours of driving south into New South Wales and enjoyed some great ocean views before we started the walk to the lighthouse. I got mighty sweaty but it was enjoyable and I couldn’t get enough of the views. We saw some whales from the top and a school of dolphins as well. We then parked the car more in the small town to find some food, and we had looked in the tour book for some ideas. Mom really wanted fish and chips and the book mentioned this one place that you could take your food out and eat right on the beach. We couldn’t find it and were about it try to find an ATM to get cash out to eat some kebab when we walked right to Fishheads, the place the book mentioned. There were lots of people there which can only mean it is a good place, and we took our fish and chips and cokes out to the beach and ate on some rocks overlooking the ocean. Beautiful. We then started toward the Gold Coast. We ended up changing plans a bit and stopped off at Coolangatta instead, which gave us a great view of the skyline of the Gold Coast from a distance instead of having to deal with the traffic. Plus, I had been to Surfer’s Paradise already and it’s not a very special beach except it has a cool name. Plenty of other cool places to go and Mom didn’t care about seeing it. So we stayed there for a little bit and it was worth it. We then headed back and ate Works burgers at home. We thought the last State of Origin game was on that night but turns out it’s not until next week.

School of dolphins. 

Fish n chips on the beach!!! Pretty great.

At Coolangatta with a view of the Gold Coast skyline.