Gold Coast Honeymoon, Part 3.

The epic conclusion to the three part trilogy!
As in the last instalment, titles are hyper-linked to relevant websites.

White Water World – Theme park number 2. We decided to leave it at that, as Wet ‘n Wild and Movie World very similar to what we had the parks we had already visited, and we just ran out of time for Sea World. But we definitely went for it on this one. I think we rode every ride at least once. We started with the Green Room, which launches a donut tube down a thirty foot drop into a swirling funnel. Unlike at Dreamworld, the exhilaration of this ride just spurred us on to do the rest of the park! My favourite ride was the BRO. All you did was race against seven others, each of you on a foam mat, through a tunnel coming out on a long straight, where you inevitably got a face full of water. We did that one twice. There were some downsides that prevented this from being a 10/10 experience. As always, huge lines were an issue for most of the rides, and because the day was so hot and the experience necessitated bare feet, you would think designers would consider the need for a foot surface that doesn’t absorb sunlight and hence burn your feet to a crisp! But when your feet had had enough there was always the Cave of Waves or the Big Bucket (getting hit with 1000 litres of water is more fun than I had imagined, like taking all your showers for the year at once.) to give them a much-needed rest. 9/10

Sushi Train – Damn, I love sushi train! It’s pretty self-explanatory : there’s a little ‘train’ of sushi that comes around on a belt, like a luggage carousel. You just pick a plate that interests you and get stuck in. There’s something ever so satisfying about finishing a meal and having a stack of tiny plates before you. You can look back at those plates and reminisce, ‘oh yeah, that light blue one was the soft shell crab. Good times.’ It’s almost like a miniature tower of your gastronomic achievement. I found out that there is a Sushi Train in Auckland – the only one in New Zealand – and now my life is about finding reasons to go there and get sushi! I suggested to sushi that she could get ‘making sushi’ lessons in Japan and open her own Sushi Train one day (ostensibly so I would get free sushi). But apparently it takes years and years, plural. Not one year. Dumb. 9/10

Surf Ink Tattoo – I flew solo on this one, as Cush’s interest in tattoos is not as highly developed as mine, shall we say. The main thing I learnt in this experience was that there isn’t a lot of point going to a tattoo convention if you don’t intend to actually get tattooed. I would like to get some more tattoos someday soon, but I’m a big believer in preparation. I saw a very sensible gentleman getting words scarred into his back by a Norwegian man who is apparently very talented at this. I saw a man with horns like Satan and I wondered where he worked during the day. Does that count as cosmetic surgery? I noticed a lot of girls were dressed like they were pinup girls from the 1950s (but with all the tattoos making them look like some sort of biker gang). This seems to be part of the culture, but it was also interesting to see a booth selling ‘makeovers’ in this 50s style. Something a bit different. 5/10 (Probably would have been a lot higher had I got a tattoo)

Timezone – Surfers Paradise has the biggest Timezone in Australia. If you think that is quite odd for a tourist destination based around swimming and big fun outdoor theme parks, you are not alone. I felt the same way. But it turns out, when you’re put and about in Surfers Paradise, in the middle of the day staying inside Timezone can be a great idea. I got pwned by this little kid who followed me around in LaserStrike (didn’t help that I was wearing a white t-shirt that literally glowed in the U/V lights they use to illuminate the maze. Everything else was good fun, but I have to tell you about CircleDome! Delightfully named, as domes other than the circular variety are quite uncommon, CircleDome’s unfortunate moniker belies the ridiculous addictiveness of the machine itself. It’s pretty simple, you roll coin-shaped tokens through slots in the side of the machine onto a sweeping metal plate. As you fail (which you will. A lot) the coins build up at the end of the sweeping plate’s arc. Eventually you will get that one token in place that causes a whole bunch of other tokens to be swept off the side of the platform. That is called a win. There is some other stuff with numbers on an LED display and a jackpot function, but really all I needed was my tokens and my sweeper. That machine... damn. It got its hooks into both of us. One of those crafty devices that bridges the gap between gaming and gambling. It’s a small gap, only a ‘b’ and an ‘l’ away. 8/10

Circle Dome - You delicious temptress, you.

Harbourtown – This place had promo posters all over the place, proclaiming it the ‘shopping adventure of a lifetime’. I don’t know what they think constitutes a shopping ‘adventure’ but to me it conjures images of women flinging cell phones, throttling each another with designer scarves or driving stiletto heels into one another’s eyes in pursuit of elusive bargains. Which coincidentally would be more enjoyable than a trip to Harbour Town, voted by me world’s worst shopping mall 2010. I’m not proud to say it, but I threw a massive three-year-old-style tantrum after about 25 minutes at this place and made my wife take me back to the bus for the 30 minute ride back to Surfers Paradise. That’s right, it took us longer to get there than the amount of time we spent there. I hate you, Harbour Town. Disclaimer: it was my idea to go there, so I earned all the pain that came to me. 1/10 It gets a 1 only because it had an Asian grocery that sold Panda candy.

La Porchetta – For our last night in Broadbeach, I had only one request: I wanted some delicious Italian-style pizza. I have fond memories of it from my childhood, but they just don’t seem to make pizza the same way in New Zealand. It’s all about the ham. La Porchetta definitely brought the experience back to me. Mmmmm. Why can’t we have proper pizza in NZ? 7/10

Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary – Unfortunately this was one of those days where it was really just too hot to do anything. We trudged around the Wildlife Sanctuary, I think quite admirably, eschewing the miniature train. The weather also caused many animals to hide out, understandably. Disappointments in the hiding area were the Tasmanian Devil, the dingo and the platypus. I most enjoyed the reptiles (I don’t care how cuddly they’re not, just admit they’re fascinating.); the kangaroos, with their effortless cool – aren’t they just like the leather-jacket wearing James Dean of animals; and the echidna, getting into its mango in a big way. And of course the koala, who can make dropping a dozy poo look cute. They’re really more cute than any creature has a right to be. What is the purpose of being so cute? Is cuteness a useful, darwinianly-relevant survival trait? 8/10 Disclaimer: ‘darwinianly’ may or may not be an actual word.

This is a selection of the more exciting or noteworthy adventures we had on our honeymoon. These experiences create strong memories that we can look back on forever. But the best times, in my opinion, are the quiet times when it is just you and your partner and the world is about nothing else but the two of you. I jealously keep these to myself.
Josh