The planets aligned on Monday morning, and we escaped sodden Sydney for the Sunshine Coast without a drama. Our Noosa holiday begins!
By contrast, my mother-in-law, in town for our son’s wedding, had a misadventure-filled trip back to South Australia culminating in a $200 taxi ride. But who cares, because 2167 kilometres to the northeast, her daughter and I stepped off a plane into glorious Queensland sunshine!
I think the sudden rush of Vitamin D must’ve gone to her head, because as soon as we’d checked in at the Sofitel my wife declared we had to do a mainy.
That is, a full lap of Hastings Street, which set off a tiny series of shopping orgasms in her solar radiation-addled brain. It all proved a bit much and she needed to have a quick lie down.
But in the process she forced me to spend $600 on shoes.
I now have Birks in ink blue (which is not a bad thing) but also bought my first pair of Old Man Shoes — Ecco Biom H4 GTX golf shoes. Sweet jebus are they comfortable. No, I don’t play golf. So yes, this is officially the beginning of the end.
Once she’d recovered, we lunched at Cafe Le Monde and later took our dinner at Rococo Bistro & Bar, both solid contenders for sub-4 star reviews.
My beer-battered fish at Le Monde escaped the fryer and made a dash for the beach only to be hauled back to my plate after tasting freedom in the surf. It was wet. Great chips, but soggy fish. Urgh.
My rib-eye at Rococo was medium-rare, so tick that box, but the steak knife was so dull I basically had to punch the meat off the bone.
What made it worse was the woman at the next table, who made bedroom-eyes at me while I jiu-jitsu’d the steak. It would have been okay had she not been in her 80’s and as ugly as a hatful of assholes.
So, yeah nah.
Also during meals, I’ve noticed my wife has started doing that thing where you photograph your food before you eat it. I don’t get it, but (golf shoes) I’m not the arbiter of what’s cool anymore so don’t ask me shit about anything!
And, to be honest, I wasn’t the arbiter of cool before I began wearing comfortable footwear anyway.
Here’s another glib falsehood: Because we woke before crack-o-dawn to leave for the airport, we both went to bed early after our first day in Noosa. That’s false because (golf shoes) we always go to bed early! Geography is irrelevant.
Before going to bed, I half-watched some cooking show by a guy pretending to be interested in Country Women’s Association biscuit recipes by an old bird with bad teeth and a young chick with poky nipples.
I can imagine him getting into his 2007 Camry after the show, crying quietly. “I won Season 2 of Masterchef and all I got was a lousy half-hour on SBS!”
Because my wife and I are planny, our itinerary for the next day (Tuesday) was toight.
Breakfast at 6:30am at Noosa Beach House followed by a vigorous 8k walk through the National Park, a smoothie on the beach, 2hrs of shopping and a dip in the pool before our midday reservation at Season on Main Beach.
We made up for all this anality by not planning anything for the afternoon, which (planning to not plan) admittedly is still fairly anal.
So to prove I am capable of spontaneity, I saw a guy carrying a hydrofoil and thought (spontaneously) “That looks interesting!” but then realised they cost $18,000 and changed my mind. Eighteen thousand dollars just to make sharks work harder?
That’s just stupid.
But this place sure is beautiful.