Scaryman and I went to the Gold Coast (Brisbane) Australia for 5 days. 
We arrived at 5pm on a Wednesday and got through the airport quickly as we had only hand baggage so were ahead of those who had to wait at the baggage claim. We got an airport shuttle direct to the hotel so that we could leave our bags and explore. The Sheraton Mirage hotel was very nice and had a well stocked fridge. We knew the bottles in the fridge would be expensive so we left them alone but the bottle of water on the dresser we thought was complimentary- wrong.... when we checked out we found it cost $AU7.50- what a scam that water cost about four times the supermarket cost!
So back to what we were doing. It was a nice mild evening so we went for a walk to explore. We were surprised by how early it got dark in Brisbane as we have lived our whole lives with daylight saving and Brisbane doesn't do it. Actually it was nice that it felt late because we were tired from the 6 hour drive in New Zealand (to Auckland) and the 4 hour plane trip so we got some food from a dairy and went back to the Hotel about 10pm (that would be an early night by our standards!). 
The next day we took a bus to Australia Fair (the second largest shopping mall) and bought two large wheeled scooters and a bag to carry them back to New Zealand in. We really don't do shopping like girls do. We just walked briskly through to find what we wanted, got some printing done and then went back to the Hotel. Then we went exploring on the scooters. That really beat walking. We zoomed along the footpaths at running speed with minimal effort. The footpaths went alongside the beach for miles so we scooted to Surfer's paradise and went into some shops but mostly just looked around. The kite surfers were cool to watch. The temperature was a mild 22 degrees C(70 degrees F) so we were comfortable in shorts and t-shirts but needed sweatshirts in the evening. We took a bus to Pacific Fair the largest Mall complex on the Gold Coast. We thought American malls were huge but this was colossal. The locals never wore sweatshirts. In the evening some wore jeans with their t-shirt but we were definitely foreigners wearing sweatshirts! Ben looked even more out of place as his choice of sweatshirt was padded checked shirt. We looked for a sweatshirt for him but none of the clothing shops had any. Not even One! There were T-shirts by the thousand, Jeans, shorts  but no long sleeve garments of any description anywhere. It is semi tropical in Brisbane but not really hot like it was in California. So we needed something else to hunt for then providentially my watch strap broke. So now we had a goal to hunt down a watch strap. We discovered that the strap was too unique to the watch to be replaced neatly we decided to get a new watch for me and shorten the broken strap on my old watch and give it to Ben. So we walked around on a watch hunt! (Witch hunts are out of vogue). Actually we hunted out some small presents for the girls back home too but they were small game- mostly we were just exploring. Most of the people in the mall were teenagers and most headed for the cinema complex so we had a look but none of the films interested us. So we came we saw we didn't get excited about the mall so when the shops closed at 9pm we headed back to the hotel by bus.  Buying stuff is a popular pass time but we really couldn't see the attraction of a huge mall it was kind of just more of the same- it had no theme or distinguishing feature- we have malls in New Zealand- they look the same everywhere. I was expecting to be wowed by the architecture like people who go to Las Vegas with no intention of gambling they just go to admire the glamorous buildings or like people do when visiting a gold covered temple in Asia- they don't believe in the God of the Temple but they  travel half way around the world to see it. So we went shopping- it's just the holiday thing not that we believe in it or anything!!!
  The next morning we spent at  the conference then headed off to Seaworld for the afternoon.
The Dolphin show was the best. Their trainers rode in on the dolphins. Dolphins can swim really fast even when pushing a person along ahead of them, the ladies even stood on a dolphin and surfed along the pool. At one point the dolphin took a trainer deep into the water and then pushed him up so that he shot about ten foot into the air. It was very spectacular. The Dolphin's really enjoyed themselves and so did we!
We spent about 4 Hours running from ride to ride to show and quite enjoyed it. We didn't have time to go swimming but saw a lot in the time we were there. It was fast moving around with no little children. It was expensive enough paying for two people I'm glad we didn't have the whole family! We enjoyed the rides but we decided that rides were not really exciting for us. We've done things like riding go carts down step hills and canoeing real rivers so the safe artificial version of roller coasters etc seemed a bit lame. Queueing isn't our thing either- fortunately there wasn't much of that as it was a week day. The sharks and the seals were great. On our way out a dolphin threw us a basketball. He played catch with us for quite a while until he threw a wild throw and then didn't realise the ball had landed back in his pool - he was evidently disappointed we didn't return the ball. Dolphins are so like dogs they love to please and love to play.
   I'll stop there and refer you to Scaryman to tell the rest.
For more about our trip see Scaryman's blog- hit the button link.

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