Sunday, May 2, 2010

ANZAC Weekend part 1

Monday 5.3.10


Holy wow, I cannot believe it is May already.  I am fairly late with this post, but only by a week, so it's all good ;)  And I assure you this will be much more interesting than that long quiz which I expect nobody to have read completely!  I just haven't done one of those in ages... or since high school, haha.

But anyway, onto the first bit of my ANZAC weekend!  So, every April 25th Aussies remember the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. BTW, I ripped just about that whole sentence from THIS site. It's pretty interesting stuff. AND, best of all, ANZAC day has it's own delicious cookies! Okay, so maybe not the best part, but I still love this country's use of coconut in it's desserts!

A few months ago we were invited to a 21st birthday party for one of Jo's friends he use to work with at Blockbuster. Seeing as the Gold Coast is a 2 hour train ride for us, we decided to make a weekend of it! Since all of Australia's best theme parks are in the Gold Coast, we took advantage of the Queensland VIP pass promotion which gives you unlimited entry into Sea World, Wet'n'Wild, and Movie World.

So when that beautiful Saturday morning arrived, Jo and I woke up a little earlier than what we prefer started our journey to Sea World!

Despite Sea World being American, this was my very first visit to one! I was pretty excited and the weather was perfect!

It was just before lunchtime when we arrived and decided to get some grub firstly, on our way we passed by the stinky Pelican Bay...

And we went past the lazy dolphins...

We pressed a "penny"...

Then we stuffed our faces with overpriced theme park food!

After grub time we almost got trampled by every single toddler in the park when Grover and Cookie Monster decided to make an appearance!

After fleeing the scene, we ran into our good friend, the sting ray.

Then we stopped by to wish a happy ANZAC weekend to this gang of penguins.

After the dolphins stopped being lazy, they put on a grand show for us!

After the show we went to explore some more and went through the Sesame Street Beach!

Cookie Monster even had his own Carousel

Then we found the more "adult" rides!

The Jet Rescue was by far my favorite! It definitely made it on my list of favorite coasters! And I love me coasters! It was the perfect mixture of fast, twisty, and feeling like you're going to fall out any moment! The ones that feel the most unsafe are always the best!  I wouldn't be surprised if a coaster is going to be the death of me....

After all those thrills we went to the Sea Lion's Fish Detectives show!

Sorry Dolphins, but the Sea Lions won me over with their show!

Before leaving we had to see the sharks, even if it meant missing the Pirate show! Little did we know we only went to see the Bullshark exhibit and completely missed the Shark Bay!

Like all the good theme parks do, we were suckered into buying some souvenirs before leaving with their conveniently placed shop that you must go through to exit. Fortunately for us, and it being the off season, there was tons of stuff on sale! And we couldn't pass up these cute polar bear pillows! We got matching ones for our bed :)

After our housemate, who we were sharing a room with for the weekend, picked us up we headed to check out our AMAZING room that we got in the world largest residential building, Q1. On the way the sky was gorgeous and so was seeing the Pacific ocean!
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