Nights in Surfer's Paradise (Jan. 20)

(Surfer's Paradise at night)

Early into our first week of classes, my roommates and I decided that we were going to need a serious celebration after surviving our first week back at school. It wasn’t hard to decide that the best way to celebrate was with a Lamington cake and a night out in Surfer’s Paradise. We ended up holding off on the Lamington cake for fear that we wouldn’t make it into our dresses, but the night in Surfer’s was a success.

Surfer’s Paradise is the more touristy companion to Broadbeach, just a 30-minute walk up the shore, and the best of the clubs and bars are clumped together. On Thursday nights most of the bars have specials for “the ladies” and we were determined to take advantage of them. Once we were all ready to go, we hopped on a bus down to Surfer’s Paradise, but we mistakenly got off the bus too soon and were wandering down the street in the direction of the bars when we ran into two people standing on the corner. They were marketers for a club down the street and were letting the first 30 girls in for free and offering free drinks for as long as you could keep track of the free glass they gave you. Our first trip up to the bar we asked the bartender to make us his favorite drink, which was some concoction that include lots of pineapple juice and tasted amazing. We made several more trips for the same drink before moving on to the next bar, Shooters.

We spent several hours there as we danced the night away, and met some nice boys from Australia and Germany. After leaving the club, we stopped for pizza and water before hopping another bus and heading home for the night. The night was a blast and just the ending we needed to our first week of classes.