Australia 2010

Well after the complete cluster on Friday we were not taking any chances. The guy that dropped us off on Friday night came back to get us the next day at 5PM. We were at the airport at 6pm for our 9:40pm flight. Needless to say I think we went a little too early but we were first in line to check our bags. The flight itself was okay. We flew Air Asia which is the Asia version of Southwest. It gets you to where you are going but they charge extra for everything. Since it was a night flight the girls did sleep but Kyle and I did not get much quality sleep. Probably had something to do with a family of four crammed into three tiny airplane seats with little to no leg room.

We get to Australia about 7:30am and go to get the rental car. We check in and the lady says "you reservation is at the Brisbane Airport". I look at her and say "where are we?" She says "you are at the gold coast airport". Shit. This vacation is full of surprises. Luckily she is able to set us up with a great van that will hold all of us and our luggage. Bad news is I had planned the itinerary around starting and ending in Brisbane. Oh well, go with the flow. We drive up the coast and stop at a surf club right on the water for brekkie (Aussie term for breakfast). The scenery was amazing and somewhat compensated for the fact that they ran out of pancakes and the food took forever.

After breakfast we headed to Lamington National Forest. What an amazing area of the country. (see O'Reilly's post to come). We then headed back to the gold coast area for a few days (see Gold Coast post to come). Then the day before we left, we drove up to Brisbane for the day. We walked along the Southbank area and it was beautiful. We dropped Wendell and Sharon off at a Best Western so they could catch their EARLY morning flight to New Zealand and we headed back to the Gold Coast so we could also catch our morning flight home.

All in all, hiccups and everything, we had an amazing time. I told Kyle on the flight home that our perspective on vacations must have changed because it was an 8+ hour flight each way which is about like going from Texas to Europe but in my mind it didn't feel like the same.

You can see all our pictures on picasa, see address below. I will also update the album once I get Sharon's photos - http://picasaweb.google.com/heather.liskow/Australia2010?feat=directlink