Last Sunday we stopped in for our mid trip break in a Surfers Paradise apartment. We got it on eBay for a decent price and were looking forward to 7 nights of living indoors, having space to spread out and not having to worry whether it was cold or raining.

We were all looking forward to it, but it’d be safe to say that we’re all glad to be back in camping mode these last two days.

The apartment had some things going for it:

– it was bigger than the camper

– it had a dishwasher

– it had a TV that worked

– the bathroom was close to us

– we didn’t have to clean it

But we discovered that for various reasons it just didn’t excite us and we don’t see ourselves going back to Surfers Paradise any time soon. Why?…

– Surfers is like a city on the beach and the traffic was terrible. We traveled at an average of 30km/hr everywhere we went.

– The noise was incredible. Between people yelling, sirens going off and night club music we often found it hard to get to sleep. If you left your windows open during the day you couldn’t have a conversation.

– The bed was crap… what can I say? That is the pits. Our camper bed is really comfortable and we expected it to be at least comparable. It was springy and unstable so we kept rolling.

– You couldn’t tell the kids to ‘go and play’ because the only space they have is indoors or the balcony. When we are camping they find so much to keep themselves amused. So they ended up watching TV… not what we would hope…

I enjoyed a couple of good surfs down at Greenmount (Superbank) and we took a drive up to Mt Tamborine and enjoyed some spectacular scenery. We took the kids to Seaworld and they loved it, so there were some good moments, but the big citylike feel was what ultimately undid us. It was like living in Northbridge on Scarborough (for those west ozzies who know what I mean)

If we had our time over I think we might hang out in Tweed or somewhere smaller for a few days, but we would avoid Surfers all together.

I think we will be hanging out in smaller, quieter spaces for the rest of our time…