A swap from London Gatwick and Oslo to a long layover in Brisbane. We departed Dubai at 08:30am and it was 13 hours and 51 minutes over to Brisbane International Airport in Australia. Landing in the early hours it was straight to the hotel, and I ordered some room service for breakfast and slept for 3 hours before getting up to make the most of my time and not sleep my day away.

Waking at 1pm, I got dressed and had arranged to meet some of my extended family who relocated to the Gold Coast almost two years ago. I took the train to Helensvale not far from where they live and they met me on the platform and we drove into the centre of the Gold Coast doing a quick car view tour of some of the sights.

First view was of the Palazzo Versace, which many of you may recognise from I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here as the hotel the celebrities stay in before and after the jungle. It’s a very fancy hotel, which I would have loved to have wandered round.

We then drove along the coast and parked up and ventured up the Q1 building. The Q1 building, an abbreviation of Queensland Number One, is a 322.5m skyscraper in Surfers Paradise, Queensland, Australia. The residential tower on the Gold Coast lost its title as the world’s tallest residential building to the 337 metre The Marina Torch in Dubai on 29 April 2011 (no surprise Dubai has the tallest residential building). It is now the sixth tallest residential tower in the world and is the tallest building in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere, and the second tallest free standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere, behind the Sky Tower in Auckland, New Zealand.

We wandered around taking in the very impressive views and Sue was ever so informative for me. It made me feel I need to step up my game when I’m in Dubai and have visitors!

Coming back down the Q1 we strolled along the beach front. The weather was perfect, not too hot, not too cold, and we were chatting away before we decided to stop for a bite to eat.

Opting for a restaurant that had a bit of everything, we grabbed some drinks (myself a refreshing fruit cider that just made me miss beer garden weather in the UK) and scoured the menu. I couldn’t resist the pulled pork pizza and before long the food arrived and we tucked in. Sadly I forgot to take a picture here…

It wasn’t long until the sun went down, after a beautiful sunset out into the Pacific Ocean and we walked back along the beachfront to the car and they dropped me back off at the train station.

When I got back to the hotel room I fell straight to sleep, and I must have been beyond exhausted after a long flight paired with a busy day and little sleep as I slept right the way through to the wake up call the next evening. A solid 18 hour sleep! So nothing was done the next day other than wake up and get ready to take the flight back to Dubai!

A great layover exploring the Gold Coast, it’s a beautiful place and it was so nice to catch up with some extended family that I hadn’t seen in such a long time! Thank you for being such fabulous tour guides David, Sue, Josh and James! Can’t wait to come back and visit again sometime soon.

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