Surfers Paradise 2 – Philipp's TravelBlog

At first I planned to either spend 1 day in Surfers Paradise or completely skip it. Then I decided to stay for 3 nights and use the hostel’s special “Book 2 nights, get one free”. Finally I extended my stay to a whole week 😀 Surfers is really nice.

The day after our tour through the hinterland was nice and sunny, so Nicole and I spent it at the beach. Later in the afternoon we went into town again for some free gift shopping 🙂 I now have a white dolphin attached to my keyring that turns compeltely blue when in the sunlight.

And I bought a really cool tshirt from the Hard Rock Cafe in Surfers Paradise.

Yesterday it was too cold for the beach, so Nicole and I hired Eco-Bikes to explore the area behind the coast, which is traversed by heaps of canals. There are lovely villas owned by Jackie Chan, Sean Connery and so on. The Eco-Bikes were really fun to drive – the battery accelerated you up to ~27 km/h in no time, it was really no effort.

The australian traffic on the other side was really adventurous. Driving on the left side is one thing, but the way the traffic lights and the signs are placed is different and not as easy to spot as we were used to. We also did not know when to drive on the street and when to drive on the pavement. At some point we drove on the highway with our bikes – we didn’t see the sign that for that specific part we were supposed to share the pavement with the pedestrians. Australians drivers are not used to cyclists at all, they neither pay attention nor care about at all.

We managed not to get run over by a car or cause an accident ourselves, but it was thrilling. Cyclist lanes suddenly disappear or are blocked by a huge bush. The traffic lights for the pedestrians that the cyclist have to share rather often are as worse as those in Sydney. I can’t get over it! But we’re getting better in safely crossing the red light 😀

This morning I finally checked out at my awesome hostel, took the courtesy bus to the transit centre and am now on the PremierMS bus (like Greyhound, but cheaper) to Brisbane, where I have booked the Yellow Submarine hostel for 4 nights with Nicole. She went on the OzEx bus an hour ago, will meet her at the hostel again.

So much for now!

From 2011-06-11 Surfers Paradise 2. Posted by Philipp Hübner on 6/11/2011 (32 items)