Tag Archives: Surfers Paradise

Wednesday Wander – If You Could Be Anywhere…

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if-you-could-be-anywhereIt’s Wednesday, so time for my usual Wander, and it’s also day twenty-eight of the 30 Day Writing Challenge. Today’s prompt is: If.

Initially, I considered the Rudyard Kipling poem If, and doing a Wander related to that. But Kipling was so well-travelled I couldn’t really settle on one place, and unfortunately I’ve not yet been to India, the place with which he is most often associated. Then I considered – if I could be anywhere, where would I be?

This was a tough question to answer. At the moment, I’m pretty happy where I am. And if I did go anywhere it would be somewhere I’ve not visited before, so I couldn’t post about it anyway. I decided to look back through my posts for inspiration, and realised I’ve taken 54 Wednesday Wanders so far – just over a year’s worth of posts! So, as it’s the last Wander of 2016, I decided to look back at the top ten most popular posts, based upon the number of likes, and leave the answer up to you. If you could be anywhere, where would you be?

Starting with the tenth most popular, here is the list of favourites for the year:

The Lion Monument, Lucerne, Switzerland

The Twelve Apostles, Australia

Surfers Paradise, Australia

Coventry Cathedral, Coventry, England

El Morro, San Juan, Puerto Rico

Manyana Beach, Australia

Stonehenge, England

Paris, France

Ancient Rome, Italy

And the number one post was:

Niagara Falls, Canada

Thanks for coming along with me on my Wednesday Wanders – I’ve seen a bit of the world but there’s still a lot for me to see, so I’ll keep posting as long as I have places to share

See you next year! xx

If you enjoyed this post, you can find me on Twitter @AuthorHelenJ,  Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Plus my latest book release, A Thousand Rooms, is now available on Amazon.

Wednesday Wander – Surfers Paradise, Australia

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It’s the destination. The place that all the tourists know, heading north from the cool chic of Sydney to a place where gleaming towers line a golden beach, blue waves rolling in. In this shot, taken a little bit further along the coast, Surfers Paradise shimmers like some mythical Oz on the horizon, a place of light and dream.

The first time I went to Surfers was for a friend’s wedding (and that’s a whole other blog post in itself). We (hubby and I) rented an apartment on the 35th floor of what was, at the time, one of the tallest buildings there. The apartment was straight out of The Golden Girls, with rattan furniture and palm leaf prints, shell sculptures hanging on the walls. There was also a huge terrace with views on three sides, and a dizzying drop to the beach below.

Surfers Paradise

When I was younger, my great-aunt used to live in Florida, and we went to visit her several times in her condo near St Petersburg. Surfers Paradise felt so similar in every way that I had to stop myself several times and remind myself that I was not, in fact, in Florida. But the streets, the architecture, the palms and blue water, were just the same. And yet… Australia has a flavour all its own – if you’ve been there, you’ll know what I mean.

Thanks for coming on another Wednesday Wander with me – see you next time!