The rest of the holiday!
I’m so slack! I haven’t finished writing about our holiday!
The view from our balcony.
Anyway, where were we? Ah yes, we were on the way back to our resort after picking up some picnic food for tomorrow and a couple of bottles of wine. We took the long way back, getting lost deliberately to have a bit more of a look around. I have a good sense of direction and we had the ocean to orient ourselves, so we didn’t get too lost.
Willow and Dexie on the balcony early in the morning!
My babies. Dexie loved the fence, he ended up dropping one of his little cars over the edge so A rescued it next time he went for a swim.
Once we got back to the resort we went for yet another swim while it was warm enough, then we had dinner at the Mexican restaurant that is part of the resort complex. It had a bar and a pool table as well as indoor and out door eating. We chose outdoor eating as we are wont to do with children. Willow ordered some chicken nachos then promptly ate a metric ton of sauce that came with Dexter’s chips, so I ate hers as well. I had a lovely glass of sangria, then mused that this is the kind of place that I would have loved to spend more time with A, if we didn’t have the children.
You can see the Mexican restaurant in the background of this photo – it was taken from the spa at the southern end of the resort.
But we did, so back to the apartment we went, pushing the pram, loaded down with things we’d taken to keep the children amused. A and I thought that sometime in the future it would be good to go on holidays with another family, so we could take turns to go out and stay back to look after the children. We ended up going for a little walk, I popped into a nearby deli to get some local Brie for the next day. Yum!
Back at the apartment, I had a glass of wine and fell asleep at 9:30pm. There goes my good time gal reputation!
The next day we all got up at about 6am and had another, you guessed it – swim! Honestly, if you could see the resort and I will insert some photos in a minute, you’d understand why we were so keen to make the most of it. We showered, got dressed, ate and hit the road by 9am, on our way to Australia Zoo.
It was the one attraction that I felt we couldn’t miss out on, Willow loves animals, and as much as we don’t overly expose her to media aimed at children, she had some idea who Bindi the jungle girl was!
On the way there we saw the Ettamogah Pub which to me is very symbolic of Australia in a kitschy way!
It was lots of fun, we got into the spirit of things, walked for miles and miles, saw lots of different animals. What surprised me is how engaged Dexter was with the animals. He was quite keen on them, as I remember Willow being at the same age. The little lizards running around everywhere were funny, I nearly ran them over with the pram a few times. It was interesting to spot the difference between what we thought was the older section of the zoo and the newer section. We watched the show at 11:30 and started picking at our food cause we were starving, then we went and had lunch properly at the big pavillion. I was glad we’d brought our own food on seeing the prices there!
Willow patting a lizard, my brave girl!
Willow and the wallaby.
Willow, kangaroos? Meh.
Willow trying to pat the lizard. She actually touched it’s tail!
Part of the show, the keeper stamps on the ground to get the croc’s attention.
The keepers brought around various animals. I believe this was a python.
Dexter at the pavilion. Walking past those enclosures, we didn’t realised there was anyone in them, a different view from up higher though!
You can see one of the tigers here. I would have liked to get closer, but he wasn’t so keen.
Willow posing on the statue with A and Dexie in the foreground.
Exhausted, we trudged through the giftshop on the way out where Willow chose a pink Bindi cup as her souvenir. She calls it her Bindi cup.
I’m pretty sure we went for another swim once we got back to the resort. A wanted to eat in, so Willow and I went down to get Thai takeaway from the restaurant that was also in the resort complex. Very handy. We brought it back and pigged out. I wanted to go for a walk, to make the most of our time there so I took Willow down to the resort playground. On stepping through the gate to the playground I saw some of the bark chips move, then I realised that they were cane toads. Being from SA, I’d never seen one before. Ugly things. Willow was quite fascinated with them and promptly decided that the biggest one was the Daddy, the middle one was the Mummy and the little one was the baby. Very cute!
You can see the playground in the middle of this photo.
Then it was my turn to go for a late night swim, since A had been the night before while I’d flaked out. It was so peaceful swimming from one end of the lagoon to the other, looking up and wondering what people were doing in their apartments.
This is the bridge over the lagoon. You basically had to go over this bridge to get to most of the apartments.
The next day we started off with a swim as it was our last day and we wanted to say goodbye to the pools. According to Willow anyway.
One last photo of Willow in what she called the hot pool. It was interesting going from the spa to the heated pool to the unheated lagoon. Much more fun going the other way!
Previous mornings we’d had toast in our apartment, but we headed down to the little cafe and ordered pancakes, egss and bacon and french toast for everyone. Plus two strong coffees for A and I and a hot chocolate for Willow. We headed off back towards Brisbane, purposely getting lost around Caloundra for a bit of a sticky beak.
Where am I?
I’m not even sure where I took this photo, possibly across from the resort, but more than likely at Caloundra.
Then it was back on the highway again. We stopped at a lookout, but realised that to get to the look out it was a 2 or 3km walk, so we ditched that idea.
We ended up getting into Brisbane a different way to the route we’d taken to get out, it was much more suburban and more to look at, but driving an unfamiliar car on unfamiliar roads, I couldn’t look around as much as I’d have liked. We finally go into the city centre and tried to find a park, but the cost was unjustifiably exorbitant, so we drove onto Spring Hill and had lunch at a posh cafe in a shopping centre with free underground parking. If I was on my own or it was just A and I, I would have been tempted to walk into the CBD, but travelling with children means they have to be your priority. Plus I was exhausted from driving!
So we enjoyed our lunch of wedges and Waygu beef burger in the breeze and decided to head back to SouthBank where we knew what the parking was like! Our flight didn’t leave til 7pm, so we had a bit of time to kill and figured that if we left SouthBank at 5pm that would give us plenty of time, even with the afternoon rush.
We spent quite a lot of time at the Museum, which thrilled Willow. I laughed at the irony of spending all day yesterday looking at live animals, now we were looking at dead animals! Once we’d had our fill of taxidermy, we wandered over to the Gallery of Modern Art. I always seem to hit Art Galleries or Museums when they are moving exhibits (Guggenheim, NYC, 2003 and MOMA, NYC 2003) and this was no exception. There was enough to keep us occupied, even Willow.
We were exhausted by this time, we still had to get home tonight!
We drove to the airport, dropped of the rental car and found out the the $300 deposit wouldn’t be available for 4 days! We really could have used the money by this stage of the holiday. Oh well, we dragged the bags and the children through to the gate and grabbed a sandwich for dinner. I have to be honest and say that I wasn’t looking forward to the flight. As I expected, Dexter cried, as much as I tried to feed him and ended up exposing myself to anyone who looked to see where the screaming baby was.
All the tips that I read about travelling with children say to take things to keep them amused. I found it very difficult to get things out for Willow and more difficult to engage her to play with whatever it was that I offered her. At least I wasn’t sitting behind a knob who thought it would be a good idea to recline his seat. Dexie feel asleep about an hour into the flight and then I couldn’t move. Being in the aisle seat, A couldn’t get to the toilet, so he missed that delightful experience!
We made it off the other end. Trudged across to the long term parking and drove in my older but more powerful car and collapsed in my own bed in my own home. I love holidays, but I love being home more!
