Tag Archives: Kirra

Rainbow Bay and Snapper Rocks

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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:

Winter Solstice 2024

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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:

Kirra

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Four weeks down under has gone by so fast and we have made our first move. We left our tiny granny flat in Mermaid Waters this morning and took an Uber down to Kirra in Coolangatta, the most southern part of Gold Coast. It only took 30 min, but when we are standing on the beach here and watch the skyline, it looks so far away.

I got one last beach session in with Cici and Katja at Surfer’s and we all had lead legs for some reason. Might be the cold. It’s really cold right now in the mornings. The sunrise was incredible as usual and I’m not even sad to have alarms set at 4:45am when I get to start my day with 1,5h of beach volley practice while the sun is rising.

Mikael and I cleaned out the AirBnB and had the luxury of checking in at the next place as soon as we arrived. And what a place! We have a room in a two bedroom apartment on the top floor. We are staying here through a friend of a friend of a friend and she matched us up with another friend of hers that plays beach volleyball as well. But she doesn’t seem to come until the end of the month so we have this two story apartment to ourselves for a bit. We can see the ocean from both balconies and it is super cosy with ocean theme.

Bye granny flat!

We packed up and then went out to explore a bit. It is truly beautiful here. Much calmer, not as many and not as high skyscrapers and they are not as tight together. We had lunch at Haig St Cafe and Restaurant and wow, we are definitely going back. Everything on the menu looked incredible!

We walked past the beach volleyball nets, walked all the way down to New South Wales and then a quick shopping on the way back. Right in Coolangatta, there is a state line which means that we walked to NSW today. Pretty cool!

The public restrooms are really nice here! Our first koala! Central Gold Coast looks so far away. QLD and NSW boarder.

The sunset on the way back was amazing! We are a bit further east than the rest of the Gold Coast, so we saw the skyline being lit up by purple and the sun set behind the mountains. Even if the sun sets behind land, it still colors the sky amazingly!