Tourists for a day

Today we were tourists, armed and ready with cameras, credit cards, and discount vouchers from travel guide books, but without the matching track suits, walk shorts and golf caps. ;-) We decided to knock off all the Surfer’s Paradise attractions in one go. First stop, though, was Pancakes in Paradise, especially for my sweetie, who is a pancake boy. $A8.95 for all you can eat pancakes and maple syrup and my sweetie was in paradise, managing to devour eight buttermilk pancakes before we moved on. My lemon and icing sugar crepes were divine, and I even manage to prise one of my sweetie’s buttermilk pancakes off his plate to try for myself.

We wandered around Surfer’s Paradise centre for a bit. There is a lot of construction work going on in and around the centre of this suburb, with luxury resorts as far as the eye can see and more on the way. It was quite overcast today and the cooler temperature was a welcome relief. We quickly popped into the Hard Rock Café to look around. There was a small range of memorabilia, with quite a few Australian artists (as expected), but nothing quite like the Melbourne or Los Angeles cafes I’d been to. We spent a couple of hours with someone trying to sell us luxury accommodation for the next 30 years in exchange for a ludicrous sum of money, all in the name of claiming a free week’s accommodation on the Gold Coast which we had ‘won’. (We’re still deciding what to do with this offer – it would be great to come back for another week.) No deal.

The highlight of our afternoon was Infinity, the home of optical illusions. The time sped by as we explored room after room of mirrored optical illusions, each time looking for the door to the next room. Very clever and lots of fun. Directly across the road is the Haunted House, run by Dracula’s. Five stories of scares and thrills and very clever special effects. The strange thing is that neither of us actually found it scary, even the Dare Doors, which were supposed to house the scariest features of all. Maybe we’re getting a bit too cynical (or technical?) in our old age?

A friend had recommended Cold Rock for ice cream. This is where you get to pick the flavours you want, add some ‘mix ins’ (which could be chocolates, confectionery, fruit, nuts, biscuits, or fudge), then watch the staff smash it all together on a ‘cold rock’ to make your very own flavour of ice cream. We tried English toffee and cookies ‘n cream ice cream with a Kit Kat and Tim Tam ... yum!

And, finally, we crossed over to the Wax Museum, the largest wax museum in the southern hemisphere. With memories of the now closed Movieland Wax Museum in Anaheim, I’d looked forward to this. Some of the characters were quite life-like; the others were less realistic. One of the models was one of three created by the famous Madame Toussaud of herself. We were surprised to be allowed to take photos in this area as we tried to overcome low lighting and glass panels. We then went down to the Chamber of Horrors, an historical tour comprising the only display of its kind and featuring human torture and cruelty through the ages, right up to modern day genocide. I found this quite disturbing. I contemplated leaving at several stages, all the while finding myself disgusted at the cruelty of humankind. Unbelievable.

We still haven’t made it to Jupiter’s Casino yet to gamble away our $20 limit. Maybe tomorrow?