While Mikael was busy doing business, mom and I decided to venture down south. The weather was beautiful in Broadbeach, we put on swimmers and went down to Coolangatta, just to get off the bus an hour later where storming winds were raging!
Coolangatta is such a pretty place. But so far away from Central Gold Coast. Isn’t it crazy that the Gold Coast reaches a massive 70km along South East Queensland’s coast? Beaches as far as the eye can see ❤️
Continue readingLast weekend, we were invited to a full day of birthday celebrations of a friend that I met through beach volleyball. I think all of our friends so far are through beach volley. It’s such a friendly community and very easy to meet new people.
Saturday was such a beautiful day, around 25C, no clouds, slight breeze. Just perfect conditions! First, a bunch of us met up down in Coolangatta to hang out by the beach and of course play beach volleyball. I only used sunscreen twice in the morning, and actually got a little bit red on my shoulders, but that was gone by Sunday. The sun is very strong. The UV index has been around 3-4 these past three months, but now it has increased to 7. I have started to wear a hat! I usually hate hats. But I will definitely be a full-blown straw hat person by the time summer arrives. Of course, we also went into the water which was incredible! The ocean was so calm today and the boogie board was of no use. Although people wanted to swim out to the whales with it, but never did.
The morning was perfect in itself. Sun, warmth, ocean, beach volley. But what made it truly magical was the extreme amount of whales swimming so close to shore. I started seeing them as soon as we arrived at 8:30am and they just didn’t go away. At one point, there were a couple who were so active that one of the guys brought out his drone and filmed them from above. And that was just so cool! I have posted the video he sent us on my Instagram highlights (down under) and also added a few screenshots from it at the bottom of this post.
We had lunch at 4 Pines and then drove to Pickleball up in Miami. I’ve never played pickleball and the reason it became popular during covid was that there were specific rules about very specific sports you couldn’t play. And pickleball wasn’t a part of them, even if the court is smaller than tennis and you are two people playing together. Funny how rule works. Anyway, it is like tennis, but you play with rackets that look like they came from the beach game and you also hit a floorball, plastic one with holes in it. My still twisted ankle (after 2,5 months!) didn’t like it. But it was kinda fun. Very specific rules, but I think I got a hang of it eventually.
Last stop of the day, was a BBQ at Daisy and Arthur’s (one of two birthday boys). Our very first Australian BBQ. Super nice!
Really fun day with fun people 😊☀️
These are screenshots from the drone video Jack shot. MAGICAL!
Even when we are sleeping in, we still manage to see and do lots of stuff. It was super cloudy this morning anyway, so we didn’t miss too much getting out at noon. We had brunch at Cafe Kirra (pancakes and smashed avo sourdough) and then walked to Rainbow Bay Lookout and over to Snapper Rocks. Two lookout points south of Kirra, where we are staying. When the sun came out, it was so warm and lovely today.
And the best part about today? We saw whales and dolphins! At first, we saw them breaching. I saw a really big one jumping and splashing. Mikael missed it but saw the splash. So wow! When we got to Rainbow Bay Lookout, we saw plenty of whales blowing water far out. Still super cool! Then we also saw dolphins breaching, I think three at most. I’ve missed seeing whales and dolphins, it’s been 9 years since my last year in California.
Rainbow Bay Lookout:
Whale blowing water!
Dolphin (above the surfer). Unfortunately the best I could do as I only filmed and these are screenshots.
Snapper Rocks:
And yet another sunset picture of Gold Coast:
Yesterday was the shortest day of the year on this side of the equator. Back home, everyone was celebrating Midsummer, the longest day of the year. But down here, today was just like any other day. We decided to not celebrate Swedish Midsummer, even if there was celebrations in Gold Coast.
We only had one plan and that was to watch the latest sunrise of the year at 6:38. So we walked out to the pier below Kirra Hill. As usual, the sunrise was incredible!
For brunch we went to Haig’s again and had the smashed avo sourdough. I think we are eating avo’s almost every day here, they are just too good! The rest of the day was very calm, Mikael had a massage and I have spent a lot of time reading on the balcony. Even if it was 24C, it was windy and surprisingly chilly so even if I at first thought that I would want to be at the beach and in the ocean, that didn’t happen. Oh well, it is midwinter.
These pictures are from Mikael’s fancy Sony camera:
Bemm 