The Gold Coast aka Sun, Sand, and Sizzler

After our lovely amazing time at Splendour in the Grass and jumping out of a plane on my 21st birthday, we decided to not end the fun right away and head up to The Gold Coast for a couple of days!

^^Queensland is pretty awesome because they don't have a sign saying welcome they just have this big red thing (which I googled, and I still have absolutely no clue why it's there. But, it's cool)^^

^^In case anyone was wondering what our trip looked like, it was something like this! Except that's all highway driving which means it was probably less straight and more out of the way round-about-y!^^

^^ After 4 days with nothing but rain boots and mud it was SO nice to be able to take my shoes off and dig my toes into the sand. PS, can anyone recommend a good self-tanner? Look at those white feet!^^

 ^^ We stayed at Vibe Hotel in Surfer's Paradise. It was a nice-ish budget hotel, pretty much all we wanted was a nice shower and a comfy bed. It was walking distance from everything in Surfer's Paradise, aka party central! Our room even had a great view of the river!^^

 ^^One afternoon we went to TimeZone which was AWESOME. 4 hours of non-stop fun for just over $50. We even walked away with prizes! We got one of the packages which included bumper cars, a bagillion games, and laser tag which I kicked ass at! I ended up getting first place at laser tag (against Trent and 4 strangers) which surprised all of us! Unfortunately the only picture we got was of me awkwardly busting out my DDR moves!^^

^^Another World's Largest Thing!! Yay! I can't believe there are so many giant things in Australia! Watch out Texas, I'm pretty sure everything is bigger down under! (he he he)^^

^^Blah, soo full after the yummiest dinner at Sizzler! Not gourmet by any means, but they have this gigantic all you can eat salad bar. YUM. That's the most excited face I could muster because holy moly was I full!!^^ 

^^This is on the way back home to Coffs Harbour! They actually burn the fields of sugar cane to make it easier to harvest! It looks so cool to see all of the smoke and the big field on fire, and it smells like candy too!!^^

We stayed in Surfer's Paradise for 2 nights, the first day was mainly spent exploring and at TimeZone, the second day we went to Dreamworld (!! I'll post about that next yay!), and the last day we went and did some outlet shopping on our way home! 

One of the most memorable (and the scariest!) things that happened during our trip was on the way to Sizzler. We got into a car accident!!! We were driving along and a lady pulled out to our left. She proceeded to drive diagonally across 3 lanes of traffic straight towards us! I was on the left side of the car (remember, this is Australia where things are backwards) and I started to freak out because she wasn't stopping! Trent laid into the horn but she obviously did not get the message and her car intersected with the aluminium tray of Trent's truck! Luckily, that tray is virtually indestructible and neither of us were hurt. We pulled off at the next turn and the lady took off! I was so shaken after that, but neither of us were hurt!

The Gold Coast was super fun, and I'm sad we didn't get to see more of it, hopefully our next trip will be a bit longer (and include a pub crawl or two!)

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Ballina aka The World's Largest Prawn!

On our way to Splendour in the Grass (more about that in the next couple of days!) Trent and I decided to extend our trip and spend a night in Ballina. Now, all I knew about Ballina was that it had "a good pub.. I think" (thanks Trent) but from the website I thought it'd be alright! We set out on our journey, more than eager to get out of Coffs Harbour and exlore a little more of this country! After 3.5ish hours (we took the very very scenic route. As in what's that thing? Turn that way!) We finally arrived in Ballina. What had started out as a nice day very quickly turned dark and stormy. Yikes!

We stayed in the Ramada Ballina which I would highly recommend. The bed was soft, the water was hot, and the staff was super friendly. It was also really cool, we had an awesome balcony, the pool was awesome (even though it was too cold for swimming) and it was just a couple minutes walk from Baskin Robins. Always a win! (It's never too cold for ice cream) Before dinner we took an obligatory silly hotel room selfie, is it still a selfie with two people?, and then headed out for some delicious lamb pappardelle and mushroom risotto which I sadly did not take picture of... oops. 

After dinner we explored the hotel, took some pictures around the pool in those weird cone seats and went out for a drive. Driving in the dark in a place you've never been? Not the best case scenario. We kept seeing signs for a lighthouse but seriously, we could not find it. I swear it hides at night (which is totally against  what a lighthouse is supposed to do, right?) The next day after some yummy eggs benny at Brewsters, the pictures you can see on my Instagram, we headed out to try and find the lighthouse again. We found a lucky lookout, and won a free ticket on a scratchie! Yay! After all that, we finally found the teeny tiny lighthouse about a kilometre in from shore. 

After all that, the most exciting part has to be that Ballina is actually home to the World's Largest Prawn! I'm not kidding, this thing actually exists. I made Trent pull over awkwardly in front of heaps of construction workers building the new Bunnings (Home Depot sorta thing) behind us, but I got my photo with the World's Largest Prawn! Awesome!

Seriously, I was thrilled. So if you're ever in Ballina don't miss out on an opportunity to see one of the World's Biggest Things!

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