Saturday, March 16th – Monday, March 18th
We went to the LA airport late on Saturday, taken by someone from church, who had auctioned trips to the airport in our church auction. Our flight was around midnight. About 2 hours after we got on, we were served another dinner and then we all slept for 6-8 hours. However, when we woke up it was still the middle of the night in Brisbane. About 2 hours before we arrived, we were given breakfast, and then we landed on time at 7AM, Monday morning, Brisbane time and date.
After clearing customs and getting some cash from an airport ATM, we connected with our rental car company. Unlike in New Zealand, we have an automatic car, which makes driving on the left side of the road a bit easier.
So at about 8 something, we headed south to Burleigh Heads. Taylor has Monday and Tuesday off, so she was waiting for us when we arrived about 9:45. We looked briefly at her apartment, and then headed over to a local café for brunch. Afterwards, we drove around a bit to familiarize us with the roads and to see her restaurant, The Fish House, from the outside. Burleigh Heads is a much bigger city than I expected. I was thinking a quiet, tourist town, but this is a town with high rise apartments lining the ridge above the beach. Interspersed are small houses that haven’t been knocked down, but most of the buildings near the beach are holiday rentals.
The town before Burleigh Heads, Surfers Paradise, has more skyscrapers clustered together than Irvine. They rise up in the distance.
We then drove to a local mall, one Taylor can ride her bike to, and purchased a sunscreening outdoor shirt for Nina (she had found in the drive up in the car from Brisbane that the sun was too intense for her) and simcards to convert Haywood’s and Nina’s iphones to Australian cellphones. Nina’s # is 01161402374485 and Haywood’s is 01161413217076.
It was finally late enough to check in and we found our apartment for the week to be especially nice. It is on the 3rd and top floor of a building. Haywood has a room with two twin beds and bathroom on the ground floor of the 3rd floor, and Ted & Nina have a queen bedroom and bath upstairs. They also have a spa tub out on an outdoors deck. There is also another deck off the living room/kitchen.
We then hung out/napped until it was time to walk downtown and eat pizza at Justin Lane, a new, trendy pizza place. Taylor knew the owner, who came over to talk to us. We then headed back and were in bed by 8PM.