Winter beach break

Although our planned catch up with family in Brisbane has not worked out, it's still been rather lovely to have some mid-winter time at the Gold Coast over the past few days. We started the road trip North with a stay at Coogee on Monday night, getting down to the beach just in time to catch a rainbow sky over the iconic Rainbow Walkway ............

 

We drove 800klms along the A1 on Tuesday, arriving at Coolangatta around 3.00pm - a pretty easy drive for us seasoned road trippers. After a long day's drive though we were very happy with the view from our room 405 at Mantra Coolangatta.

The light was just amazing on our first night - perfect for a sunset stroll along the beach .....

..... a walk we've repeated every night since - winter sunsets are the best!!!

The view from our balcony is stupendous no matter what the time of day.

We've had beach and water time too most days. Not really swimming (the water is mild but the air temperatures are a bit cool 19-20oC for us to get fully immersed), but we've been able to dunk a few body parts in the water and survive. It's mid-week and mid-winter so the beaches are almost empty and the water is so calm and clean .......

Rob took this unposed picture of me on the beach yesterday - I had to get my phone out to check on reactions to the announcement of the new RBA Governor (isn't it tragic to be that interested in the current news cycle?). But I was very happy to hear that we now have our first female Governor of the Reserve Bank!

This is a great spot for long walks too - both north, along the esplanade towards Kirra and Bilinga Beach, and south, past Rainbow Bay, Greenmount, Snapper Rocks and Point Danger - all beautiful walks.

Not every day has been blue sky sunny; we've had some cloudy, cooler weather too this week ......

We've spent two mornings at Burleigh Heads - Thursday we did an oceanfront walk and enjoyed a nostalgic coffee at our fave Commune Cafe near Fourth Avenue. This morning we had a longer visit, checking out the excellent Farmers Market in the grounds of the Burleigh Heads State School. It took us ages to select our breakfast menu from the excellent foodie offerings while admiring the mountains of fresh (cheap) strawberries crowding the fruit stands. I wish they sold them loose like in the French village markets - but even packaged up like this the fresh strawberry fragrance was still heady and strong (irresistible).

On our first morning walk we gravitated to Cotton Patisserie in Kirra for our coffee fix. That was our fave "local" last year when we shared a holiday at X-Kirra with Ros and Pete, but we were happy to find an even better coffee fix closer to us here in Coolangatta at Three Sons Coffee Cartel. That's made a real difference to how we approach each morning!  We'll be heading back to Sydney on Monday for a few more days there before heading back home. It's a good break for us from Canberra's winter cold.