The problem with WiFi

Monday morning arrived as if I hadn’t had much sleep.

Oh that’s right I hadn’t.

 I headed to bed the previous night around 11pm but knowing I had to be up around 5am for my taxi, I was not getting much rest.
5am came and I was up and ready to leave, was just about to take my suitcase out the door, when Sue appeared to ask if I needed a hand up their 3 flights of stairs. Always nice to have help, she took my case up to the road, and we waited. 5.20am arrived, but no taxi. Suddenly Darren came running up the steps, car keys in hand and crashed into the car parked at the top (He was still incredibly tired and groggy – I might blame the wine from the boat trip but I couldn’t possibly comment). He muttered something about mixing up the time and he’d booked the taxi for 5.20pm so he’d drive me to the airport. Sue took one look at him and said she’d go and get her shoes to take me as he was still in need of more sleep.
So 5 minutes later we were on the way to the airport for my 7am flight. No traffic to plough through we did the journey quite easily. (And I understand Sue had the benefit of a glorious sunrise as she returned back home)


The flight to the Gold Coast Airport at Coolangatta took around 1 hour and 10 minutes, after which I headed to find a bus to Broadbeach to meet Sue Brisco. She has been out here since 1^st February volunteering at the Uniform Centre and loving every minute by the sound of it. Today she was heading up to Brisbane to meet her Hubby who is joining her for the final few weeks as they have a holiday and see pretty much all of the athletics going at the Stadium.We walked along to Southport and found a small café which did Scottish breakfast, so we had a square sausage and egg roll, as you do and sat and put the world to rights.We noticed things happening outside then realised that the Queens Baton Relay was coming past in the next couple of hours (in fact just about an hour later) So we decided to hang on for a bit to watch it. Leaving our luggage in the capable hands of the café staff we went out to watch the baton brought through. Sadly as I raised my camera to take a picture the accompanying policeman got in the way. So I am stealing a photo from Sue’s collection to show it off.
We went back and collected our stuff then headed for the bus to take me out to where my accommodation was. Not totally sure where to get off, but we made it in the end and found the house, where one of my housemates Lesley, was in while the others were out shopping.Afterwards we headed off to find the bus and even though the driver on the way out had said buses were about all evening, we couldn’t find one that headed in our direction, so ended up walking the 3 miles, getting back to our accommodation at midnight. The bonus was it was warm and not raining; the downside was it was warm and hilly.

When I got on the bus I went to pay and the driver said the pay machine was broken so we had to travel for free. Bit of a result that eh?
When I got to Broadbeach, Sue said we needed to get a bus to Southport, and she had a travel card (a Go card) I could use, so more free travel.
We got off a stop early at Southport South, but it meant we walked past the Chinatown area and spotted a Panda Koala (you needed to see it to recognise it was a koala but it did have panda colours).




Sue then headed off as she was making her way up to Brisbane. I’m sure we’ll catch up again before we both head back to the UK.

So it is definite that the accommodation has no WiFi. Grrrrr. Bit of a mis-selling of the property rental really stating there was WiFi for use. Apparently the host forgot she had it removed. Hmmm. Anyway to counter my addiction to Facebook, Ruth, one of my other housemates, and I, walked up to the 7/11 at the top of the road to buy an Aussie Sim, and she was happy to lend me a phone to use it with. So 18gb of Data for $40 is a darn sight better than my 50mb for £20 Virgin mobile decided to charge me for. Gloria our other housemate, and I then had a major rant about our social media addiction, I mean lack of WiFi, and we are planning to complain to both the host landlady and AirBnB and ask for a price reduction as we have had to pay for data that we expected to have included. Watch this space for that one.
By the time we had finished ranting and working out how we needed to fund our eating and who owed what to each other by way of money. (A very complex set of calculations happened to work out that we all owe someone something, but none of us actually have any cash to pay for it all.)

We then were due to head off to the opening ceremony rehearsal, so didn’t have much time to get ourselves ready and out to catch the bus. The 5 of us, including Gloria’s friend Kirsty, set off a little early as I’d misread the timetable so we had plenty of time to find the bus. The driver very kindly dropped us off near where we had to walk to the Stadium and we found our seats and settled in for the evening.


We obviously need to save the surprise of the content so that those who go to the Actual Opening ceremony on Wednesday don’t hear what’s going on beforehand, but it is the usual type of thing for a ceremony of this type, some great bits, some wonderfully moving bits and the usual athletes parade, with more stuff going on after. And I suspect there will be much more happening on the night as not everything can be practiced in the rehearsal.

Eventually got to bed around 1.30am after a very refreshing shower.