24 hours In The Gold Coast

With only 24 hours in the Gold Coast, I spent a lot of time just walking around and exploring the city.  I visited some of the same places at different times of the day and loved seeing the differences.  On my first night, I walked from the SkyPoint to Cavill Mall and Surfers Paradise.  The liveliness of the area really made me feel that the Gold Coast was a resort town. 

The next morning, I left the hotel quite early as I was still adjusting to the time difference.  I was shocked to find that the streets were packed by 8am.  Many stores weren’t even open yet, but a lot of people looked like they were getting ready to head to the beach.  I supposed it gets too hot later in the day and people must go back to their hotels or homes to relax around lunchtime?

For breakfast, I went to a favourite local café called Bam Bam Bakehouse in Mermaid Beach.  It was really early in the morning (on a Friday) but the café was packed with people.  I was fortunately enough to snag one of the few empty tables and enjoyed a nutella cruffin and a mermaid latte.  I was slightly disappointed at the visuals of the latte as pictures online looked much nicer.

After breakfast, I made my way back to the SkyPoint to go up to the observatory for some views of the city.  I had contemplated about whether or not to do the bridge climb, but in the end, decided that it was a bit too pricy for me and chose not to do it.  The views from the observatory were already quite fantastic, so I was happy with my decision.  The only thing that I was disappointed in was that the observatory didn’t have any open air areas for you to go out to take pictures.  The entire observatory was enclosed and the windows were not that clean, so a lot of my pictures had shadows and reflection issues.

I took a quick walk along Surfers Paradise for a new vantage point of the beach, as the night before, the area was overflowing with people due to some sort of event that was taking place.  The morning provided a much calmer setting.

Lunch time was approaching and I decided to try a burger place that I had read about.  Little did I know back then, but I would enjoy this burger so much that I had to have it again in Brisbane.

I ordered the “Betty’s Classic Stack” which is a classic burger (angus beef and cheese) and a shroom burger (fried mushroom patty with gouda and gruyere cheese) combined, along with lettuce, tomato and Betty’s special sauce.  The shroom patty was the winner here, as I’d never had anything like it before, but I found the classic patty to be a perfect companion as it gave that extra bit of texture that made the burger perfect.  I am still drooling when I think about this burger and it would be at the top of my list to eat if I am ever in Australia again.

After lunch, it was time to head off to Brisbane.  The Gold Coast was exactly what I had expected it to be.  Laid back, great weather, amazing scenery.