Nambour Train to Caloundra and Mooloolaba: The Sunshine Coast

I went up north to the Sunshine Coast this weekend with three other girls from school and had a great time. Train ride was good, only $6.50 for the whole thing that takes about 2.5 - 3 hours with the bus transfers. Much more affordable than charter buses. I stayed with my friend Chris I met in Brisbane a couple weeks ago, which was really cool because he grew up there and knows all the good things to do. We hung out around his apartment complex for awhile the first night and I met some of his friends and they were all really chill and fun to hang out with. Also went out to a bar in Caloundra that night called Tonic. Much smaller than the places in Brisbane, but Caloundra is a much smaller city (it seemed to be like comparing Palo Alto to San Francisco, suburbs and a big city). Thinking about it now, Caloundra did sortof remind me of a city like Palo Alto, everything else on the main street there was pretty dead except this place (like that Japanese place on University where people do sake bombs and dance on the tables but everything else is closed). I tried this drink called Vivenza, which is a premixed Jose Cuervo with lime soda and it was really good. Usually I hate tequila but it was a good combo I would say. It was a fun night, danced for awhile hung out with Chris' friends.

The next day was pretty sweet. Chris lives a block away from the ocean and we just got up and went swimming in the morning. How cool is that, any time you want you can just get up and walk to the beach? Very neat. Chris had some stuff to do during the day so I caught the bus up north further 20 minutes to Mooloolaba and hung out at the beach there with my friends from school. Swam a lot and took a nap on the beach, it was really nice. The hostel that my friends were staying at lets you have free surf/boogie boards to take to the beach, so i boogie boarded for a long time. We tried to surf for a bit but concluded that short boards are really difficult to do anything with, especially when we just suck to begin with. Later on in the day there were random rain showers. The rain here is weird, its sunny one minute and then pouring sheet rain really hard the next but for only a couple minutes. The hostel had free dinner which is always good, so we had hot dogs with bread for dinner (they don't use buns here). We met a bunch of Canadians, Kiwis, Europeans, a bunch of people from Wash U, and some other Australians at the hostel and had a good time with them. We played King's Cup with really gross energy drinks called 'Elevate' - don't every get them. The Canadians definitely had some different rules for that game, it was funny to play with rules like you can't ever look one person in they eye if they draw an ace. I really like hanging out at the hostels, you meet such fun random people. We went out to meet Chris at the bar he works at in Mooloolaba called the Wharf Tavern. It is pretty much the biggest place to go on the Sunshine Coast and Saturday nights there are pretty huge. It gets packed and there were probably about 3,500 people. I met more random people, listened to a band that was playing, hung out with this girl having her bachelorette party (she had this veil headdress thing made out of condoms, i don't know if that is an Australian thing or what), and just had an all around good time.

Next day was cool, we went to the downtown markets that happen there every Sunday and walked around the vendors for awhile. There is an election coming up there and many of they candidates for mayor were walking around talking with people. There were some bands playing too, and we got some awesome chicken kebabs and watched this country group for awhile. America needs to get kebab stands, they are everywhere in Australia and its pretty much the best food ever. Sorta like gyros because its a lamb/chicken/beef/falafel wrap, but you can put all these other sauces and ingredients in it and they toast it and its just super tasty. I recommend the chicken-vegetable-pineapple-sweet chili sauce combo. I caught the train back at about 3 with one of the girls from school because I had to make it home for water polo. Slept most of the way home and was refreshed and ready to go for my first wopo game. It was a lot of fun, our team is pretty horrible with almost no polo experience (we lost 2-18), but the other team had Australia national team people on it so I don't feel that bad. I also tried out playing touch rugby for my college, and that was really cool. It is a really fast paced game and I hope that there are more pickup games organized because I am away on a field trip during the week of the tourney here and can't play on the team. I might also try out rowing down on the river with the sharks, it sounds like a good time. There are so many inter-college sports here, it's awesome. They are mostly only a few weeks long too, so you can just go try a bunch of different ones. I just went and watched a Netball game today, it's weird, like basketball with extra rules (only girls play it usually - you can't dribble, there is no backboard, and you can only shoot inside they key). Union won by a lot and it was cool to watch. Anyways, all good stuff, life is pretty good right now I would say.

Pictures here are of the beach, hostel New Zealander/Canadian wearing a fur hat, and people out at night (some from Brisbane, some from Sunshine Coast). Sorry yes that one is inappropriate, but I found it so funny, I had to put it up.