Golden Birthday in Australia

I've been looking forward to this day for over a decade. I felt sorry for people who had their Golden Birthdays when they were too young to do anything cool. But not me. I'd be 30. Old enough to plan something spectacular and enjoy every minute of it. I never knew exactly what I would do, I just knew it would be awesome, unique, and memorable.

And it was.

First of all, without even doing anything, it's arguably the best birthday ever because I spent the whole day with the woman I love. Isa is amazing. She's beautiful, fun, creative, and a slew of other adjectives that make normal people say "Cheese!" But that's ok. Because I love her. And she loves me. And that's an awesome feeling to have on my birthday.

And then there's the fact that we're in Australia! Again, hard to go wrong there. So we took advantage of it. The father of one of our co-workers picked Isa and I up and took us on a tour of the Gold Coast. He first took us down to the Highlands Ecovillage down in the Currumbin Valley. The village is completely sustainable and really modern and cool. And since everything is so natural and wonderful, wild animals tend to hang out there. Like these guys:

They were really chill with us, as long as we stayed on our sidewalk. Sometimes kangaroos look silly with their skinny little arms. Watch the youtube video I made about my Golden Birthday to see what I mean. We hung out there for maybe 20 minutes and then went over to another town to see our driver's sister. She said koala bears are frequently in her backyard trees, and we may be able to spot one. And we did! They're really hard to pick out. They camouflage really well. But with the help of some binoculars and some patience, we found them. Here's one of them:

Aren't they so cute? They look just like little teddy bears! So we saw wild kangaroos and wild koala bears for my birthday! How cool is that?! Who needs the Australia zoo? And as if that weren't enough, while we were hanging out there, a Kookaburra bird flew over and hung out with us for a while:

Isa had a little staring contest with it for a while, but I told her to smile for the picture, so I guess the bird won. Sorry, Ees.

Then we came back to Surfers Paradise (home for us for the time being) and Isa took me up the Q1 Tower. It's the tallest building in all of Queensland, and I was super excited to see it. We've been to the Top of the Rock in NYC, so we weren't expecting this to be anything amazing, but it was AWESOME! The observation deck itself was really modern and cool, so we really enjoyed just being up there, even without the view. But the view was really awesome too. Looking up the coast was really cool:

Doesn't it look fake? So we played around up here for a while and took LOTS of pictures. We waved in the general direction of our home in NYC:

And we stayed there until sunset and until all the lights in the city below started twinkling like they do.

And then we came back down to ground level and found some fantastic italian food. Did you know they don't tip here? Not at all. Which isn't a huge deal when you realize the waiters are paid $20/hr, but still, it's a little weird to not leave money on the table.

Then we went to the store where Isa had set up a movie (Juno - one of my favorites) with blankets and we hung out some more. I really do love her.

So to sum it all up. Best birthday ever. Thank you Isa for making this all happen and for loving me. Above all else, seeing your smile on my birthday was the best gift of all, and the rest of this was just icing on the cake. I love you.

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