No Title Will Do This Justice

This morning I woke up in my own bed in Sydney and wept with relief. I may also have been weeping a little from tiredness, as even my delicious ten hour sleep did not compensate for the full-body exhaustion of our trip to Surfers Paradise.

And then I got out of bed and stepped on my bathroom scales and wept for real, because I realised that the energy value of hot chips and ice cream every day for eight days is, weirdly, not offset by the energy burned by the terror induced from freakishly sicko rollercoasters.

Who could have predicted that.

Of course, I knew what I was getting into when I signed up for a trip to Surfers Paradise with three children in the Christmas holidays. But then, I 'knew what I was getting into' when I had a baby, right? NO! WRONG! DON'T BE RIDICULOUS! One never knows what one is getting into!!! It was all a horrible, HORRIBLE mistake! (The trip to Surfers, that is. Not having children. Mostly, anyway.)

A Water World Ride.
 (Family shown not blogger's own (because much better looking than blogger's family (and considerably older too))).

We decided to go to Surfers this year for three important reasons.

1. We thought the kids would really enjoy the theme parks

2. We found really cheap flights on the internet

3. We got to stay in my grandparents' apartment which was FREE.

4. Did I mention the accommodation was FREE?

5. There is a lot of ice cream in Surfers Paradise.

6. I like ice cream.

There is so much to say about our week in Surfers Paradise that I couldn't possibly reduce it to one blog post. And besides, I've been awake for an hour already, and I need to go back to bed. It's going to take me DAYS to get my strength back. As for the kids, they are lying around the house, weak and listless and pale as ghosts (except that they're actually really tanned, because... you know... we've been in the sun for a week).

But to keep you going until my next blog post (which will come when I can write about the holiday without my chest constricting as I have hideous flashbacks to my monstrous ride on Arkham Asylum), here are some choice highlights:

1. Surfers Paradise is Tattoo Central. I mean, really. If you don't have a giant tattoo of an Eternal-Life symbol embodied in an 'arty' theme all over your shoulder, then you have a tattoo of a massive angel / butterfly / cross / something-that-looks-exactly-like-the-one-your-mate-has all over your back, and if you don't have them, then you have your kids' / lover's / mother's / Brotherhood's names in humungous giant font all over your arms. It's like a uniform. My husband amused himself in the lines for the theme park rides by playing 'I can't take a breath until I see a tattoo' and he never once died.
THAT's how many there were.

2. The theme parks are insanely expensive. Oh, it doesn't cost that much to get in, but once you're through the gates the food / fast passes / drinks / souvenir fans / basically everything you don't wish to shlep with you in your backpack getting hot and heavy for eight hours as you walk around a fun park is LAUGHABLY dear. I mean, $6.00 for a single scoop of ice cream? That melts before you can eat it? I SCOFF IN YOUR FACE, SEA WORLD (after, you know, buying the ice cream and all).

3. The theme parks during the Christmas holidays are feral. FERAL I SAY. Packed to the brim with feral families pushing their feral kids into lines, yelling 'GO Shareen! Run to the front!' and 'Jethro, if you kick me one more time I'm gonna fucking smash ya!', and  ramming into people with their feral strollers full of feral babies drinking Fanta. It was about as relaxing as spending a week in hell. Which it actually was.

4. Arkham Asylum is a sick fuck of a ride and should never have been built. But that's for another blog post.