My last week in Sydney was very low key, which was a welcome reprieve after my action-packed second week. I didn’t really do anything exciting until Wednesday, July 13, when we visited the Olympic Stadium for a field trip. I love watching the Olympics, so it was cool to see the entire compound where the 2000 Games took place. At one point in the tour, we got to walk out into the stadium from the tunnel with simulated crowd noise. Even though the crowd noise was fake, it felt awesome to walk out onto the grass of the 80,000 seat stadium. I even got to stand on the actually Olympic medal podiums!
Going for the gold!
Thursday night, our last night in Sydney, we went out to dinner at the SkyTower. It’s the tallest building in Sydney and we ate at the revolving restaurant at the top. We had great views of the city, and we were able to pick out all of the different areas we’d been to the past 3 weeks. It was a great way to end our time in Sydney.
Fun Story: The restaurant was buffet style, and we all stuffed ourselves. There was a dessert bar and I, of course, went there first. At the end of our meal, all of us were just sitting there, groaning because we had eaten too much. I’ll admit it, there was a 5 minute window where I thought I was going to be sick and was deeply regretting that last scoop of honeycomb ice cream. But, no worries, we all made it out alive.
No Furbies allowed on the airplane. Or old school Gameboys.
Friday morning, bright and early, we got a van to the Brisbane Airport to fly up to Gold Coast. We stayed in a town called Surfer’s Paradise, which is basically a giant tourist trap. They have a bunch of clubs, a Ripley’s Believe It or Not and a Hard Rock Café. While we were there, we took a tour of Palazzo Versace and had afternoon tea there. The entire hotel is decked out in Versace furniture and the employees wear Versace designed uniforms. They even have a signature scent that permeates throughout the hotel. I like to say it smells like money. We got to go into one of the condos and the Imperial Suite. If you want to drop 3,000 a night, I highly recommend staying there.
The lobby of Palazzo Versace. That chandelier is from Versace's house.
Saturday we went to MovieWorld, one of the many theme parks in Gold Coast. It really wasn’t much, they had two big rollercoasters and the rest of the rides were kind of lame. Australian theme parks just don’t compare to the ones we have in the States. That night we did some club-hopping, which was a lot of fun, but it was nothing too crazy. Sunday was just a lazy day, we walked around the town and ate dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe
We're tough.
Fun Story: In Australia, meat pies are kind of a big thing and you get them topped with mashed potatoes, peas and gravy. In Gold Coast, there were three locations of a chain called Pie Face…and we all became slightly obsessed with it. We ate there twice in one day, and yes, I am slightly ashamed of that. It’s just so good. I’m going to open one up in the States, I am currently taking applications for business partners. We’re going to be rich.
I just got back from my two day trip on the reef, and let me tell you it was amazing. I’ll save the details for my next post. I only have two days left here, and tomorrow I’m going to do something crazy, but you’ll just have to wait and see what it is!
-Haley
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