Apologies for the lack of updates – I have been superbly swamped at work with aggro and tiredness….not to mention other posts that I wanted posting up immediately!

.

Day 6 was a slow and leisurely morning for us. We had initially planned to drive to Brisbane, but vetoed that after reception recommended that we headed inland towards the rainforest instead, the famed Tambourine Mountains. So off we went, after making a stop at the local HSBC for some cash. We had not gone very far at all when I spotted the below shopfront…

This is the super adorable bright pink http://www.cupcakeshop.com.au/ little cupcake & cookie shop in Southport. I allowed myself one cupcake (it was about 10.30am and I just had cup noodles for breakfast). After some hard thinking (there were LOADS of pretty little things in there!) I eventually settled for the wacky Elvis cupcake – peanut butter and jelly. Yum yumx.

Mid-morning break over, we continued driving inland to the Tambourine Mountains. There is a skywalk there which brings you deep into the rain forest that we were hoping to get on….not too sure why, I’ve had more than my fair share of rainforests! The road there even resemble the roads that lead towards rainforest mountains in Malaysia, i.e. Camerons. How weird is that. There are loads of shops and restaurants on the way, and we decided to stop for a little wander about.

It is just typical that it started RAINING as we got close to the rainforest – it rained, and rained, and rained. Trouble in paradise? We took one picture and had to run for cover from shop to shop at the Gallery Walk street. Sigh. So much for hiking to a waterfall or going on the Skywalk….although I did smirk to myself slightly as I am not a rainforest sort of person .

At the end of the short commercial road, we saw the word DISTILLERY. Oooh. How lovely is that? Headed there with no hesistation at all, helped that it was sheltered. It’s less of a proper distillery, rather, it’s actually a restaurant/bistro/deli/dairy. The Liquid Amber restaurant serves up classy food like steaks and lobsters, whilst the bar serves up regular grub (i.e. burgers…posh wagyu ones) on top of their regular selection of beer. There is a deli/fromagerie as well serving cheeses and other posh deli food ‘for you to take away as a picnic’.

Of course, we went directly to the brewery for beer. For AU$10, you can get a ‘selection’ of 4 1/3rd pints.

Cool. I like it how they provided a small card explaining what the beer is like. Usually a good idea…but just look at bacon’s reaction on the beer…

Hmm. Four beers, and none of them greeted with a smile. I had a try of every one, and hated all of them to a certain degree. It was so bad that bacon failed to finish any of them. Heh. It was suprising to say the least. As we were trying to finish it admist bitter beer face, a bunch of other tourists walked past us shook their heads and said, ‘You too huh? Vile stuff’. So its not only us then.

The beer feels unfinished, a superbly heavy profusion of hops and malts with very heavy bitter aftertaste. No good. Anyway, if you’re heading that direction, it’s a good place to stop and take shelter – the restaurant looks fab anyway. Directions are available at their website here.

.

There seems to be bits and pieces of ‘the old Country’ up in the mountains . Devonshire cream teas??Whatever were they thinking?

After that ‘adventure’, we headed down from the mountains to Surfer’s Paradise – we never really seen it in the day of light and it would be nice to take a walk down the beach when I’m not dead tired! We parked about a mile away from the actual heart of Surfers Paradise – nearer to Main Beach actually, as it was free parking for 4 hours…love the australian system. the nearer you get to the hub of Surfers Paradise the more expensive it is, but 1 mile is not too bad a walk, especially when you’re walking on golden sands next to the rolling surfs.

.

I’m always happier by the sea – it’s like it replenishes my soul. Even in wind, I truly need to belong to the seaside.

.

Bacon seems to adopt quite well to the seababy life; seeing tthat he’s a landlocked bull. No, nothing naughty, he’s a Taurean!

We came across some marvellous sand sculpture….how amazing is that?

Just proof that I was actually there

We walked along the numerous shops and eateries catering to the large profusion of tourists of all nationalities. The shops, especially those selling Australian products like UGGs. You can tell with the Japanese speaking staff in those shops, and the determined smile on the salespersons’ faces to sell you a pair of them furry boots. I was honestly on the hunt for UGGs as my last pair had died a painful death…but their pushiness just pushed me away and I didn’t actually come back from Australia with a pair !! Argh…

By the time we got back to the hotel, it was fluffy white clouds against brilliant blue skies again..

For dinner, I wanted to do something asian again. Yeah. I know this sounds exordinary, but the selection of asian restaurants/food in Australia is about 1000 times better than in the UK – i.e. in Leeds there are about 5 restaurants specialising in noodles, but none of them really tickle my tastebuds. Most are tasteless, some are overly oily but the major problem is they DO NOT GET IT. It never tastes like what it should taste like, and I can only assume they get away with it because people prefer it this way. Oh well.

After long consideration, we popped over to Southport to have a look-see, and this ramen place looked the busiest amongst the rest.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but Ichiban-Boshi was an Australian-wide chain of ramen restaurants. I had, however, have my heart set on Chicken Katsu-ju.

Yumyums. Comes with miso soup as well, which I love. I don’t get restaurants that charge for miso soup – c’mon man, its really cheap to make, and to charge me £2.50 for some miso soup??!

.

Bacon went for the Ramen set, served with a side of rice,pickles and gyozas.

I found it slightly strange that it came with a full portion of rice – were you supposed to eat it just with the pickles?

My Katsu-ju was as what I expected, eggy sticky rice with chicken fried in breadcrumbs with pickles on the side. Bacon’s ramen was shoyu flavour with slices of naruto maki (the spiral steamed fish cake), sice of belly pork and other assortments. He was unhappy with the sweetcorn and seaweed, but seriously, it’s not that bad. I’ve much definately had worse.

And that was day 6 for us!

You know the little Interflora hamper in a wicker basket that I ordered for Mother’s day, which came with extremely speedy delivery, but very strangely had half it’s items replaced? I really enjoyed the hamper and definately rated the contents highly, but it was still strange to have items substituted. Well, after my little blog post last week, I received a suprise replacement hamper today in the post! How wonderful is it?? I cannot think of another company that would do this without even being prompted… AMAZING.

Contents of replacement hamper: Wolf Blass Fizzy Chardonnay Pinot Noir , two chocolate belgian truffles sticks, Lemon & Ginger tea (yay, tea!), bag of jumbo cashewnuts, bag of heart-shaped marshmallow, box of chocolate biscuits and oh, all stuffed in a lovely pink straw handbag, which I am SOOO stoked to receive. Incidentally, this hamper was my initial choice (pretty pink straw bag) whilst browsing through Interflora . How weird was that?

I, of most people, know the value of customer service. For example, I will never, ever return to a restaurant that displays poor customer service even if the food was magnificient. I am passionate about customer experience and doing right by the customer due to my recent work as well….without the customer, the business does not exist. Not to mention online shopping – I think it is fair to say that there is still a large population of people who are afraid of ordering items online as they believe that it would be hard to somehow return it if it did not meet their expectations. I had experienced it a few times myself, and this is WHY you MUST go with someone reputable to ensure that your rights are protected….sometimes saving a couple of bob is not worth it. Not only that, you want to be able to shop with a company that listens to their customers, and take mitigating steps to ensure that customers experience nothing short of exemplementary.

Sterling service by Interflora – I would definately recommend purchasing one of their Gift Hampers for any occassion at all …or their flower delivery service. Incidentally, this was delivered to the father in law’s house, and I think even he’s convinced to shop online in the future after realising the steps that Interflora had taken to ensure that I am nothing short of impressed. I’ve now got my eye on the personalised whiskey that they do for birthdays or even St. Patrick’s Day gift – did you even KNOW interflora does personalised whiskey??!

Best part about this hamper – I am keeping this for myself!! YAY!!

ps: I had not been paid for this post – really. I just HAD to say something because I don’t believe how excellent their customer service is!

It seems that me & Katie of Leedsgrub shared some telephatic cupcake thoughts. I had been plotting all week to pop over to Chapel Allerton on Sunday on my way to lunch for some cupcakery…Katie beat me by ONE day and made it over to the wonderfully vintage little bakery on Saturday! It’s not the first time – I think I missed her at Hansas’ one Sunday by 30 mins!!

As you probably figured by now, I love most stuff vintage-y, cute-sy, yumm-y and retro-y. Even baker-y. Yeah, all good things end with a Y. I’ve done a few cupcake rounds, and have grand plans of spending a day trawling cupcakeries in NYC later this year. So far, I’ve loved the Hummingbird as their cakes are not sweet, which is then nicely tampered by the super sugary icing. Bacon don’t like it as much – he thinks it slightly weird that the cakes demonstrate a total lack of sugar whilst the icing is sickly sweet. I don’t mind it as I can then scrape off most of the icing so I end up with a suitably sweet cupcake. And of course, the fact that their recipes always turn out well and tastes like what they serve in-store. BUT the Hummingbird Bakery is not the topic of my post today – the Leeds-born Sunshine Bakery is.

Most definately a welcome addition to Leeds, I had yet to find something quite like this in the Leeds area…or anywhere near. We popped in on our way to Mother’s Day lunch – very lucky as they are not usually open on Sundays- to pick up some cupcakes. I actually checked their twitter feed before I left to see if they’re open, and as luck would have it, off the back of Katie’s lovely review of their cakes, they were offering a free cupcake to anyone who said they love leedsgrub! How nice is that ??

It was very lovely inside the shop, a certain modern vintage feel to it, from the proper coffee machines to china cups. We chatted about twitter abit (i follow them) , and how more businessess should embrace it ect..I do love speaking to businessess on twitter, it’s very bizzare but lovely! It’s even more wonderful when you see the person behind the twitter account….and especially for a ‘small but perfectly formed’ local bakery like this which I would have otherwise not found out about if not for the fact it had been tweeted around by local tweeps.

More on the ‘small but perfectly formed’ part – they are looking into expanding back and front, with tables planned on the sidewalk and opening up of a secret garden up back now that spring is FINALLY upon us. Wow. I must return when that happens – I do love a good cuppa with cake in the garden! At the moment there are tables inside for you to have your cake, and if the mother in law hadn’t been waiting for us at the pub we would had probably sat down for a cuppa and continue chatting with the friendly cupcake maker behind the counter (which I had very rudely not got his name!!). So we had ours to go for after lunch, packed in a sturdy specially-made-for-cupcakes 4 hole box.

We went away with two double chocolate, one mango & passionfruit and one Eton Mess cupcake. The one with the white rose is Eton Mess

The Mango & Passionfruit is the one with choc bits on white frosting

And of course, the double chocolate

The Mango & Passionfruit was very summery – light, with the right amount of fruitininess. Bacon loved this – and for someone who dislike passionfruit & mango, this is high praise indeed. The MIL gave it her thumbs up as well – her favourite. The Eton Mess was also very, very lovely – a meringue-like frosting with the delicate white rose to top it off….and I love the delicate strawberry flavours that was in this pretty and delicious cupcake. yum yum good.

However, the best of them lot, in my opinion, was the double chocolate. The sponge was light and moist, without losing it’s chocolate gooeyness. The frosting was absolutely DIVINE – I believe it’s very whipped chocolate cream with a glaze of chocolate on top. Chocolate cupcakes tend to get slightly sickly for me with the frosting, however, I could have had 10 more of these. Mm mm good.

See how moist the sponge is? Ohmigod…

The verdict? Bacon gave it his double thumbs up, even going as far to say that this is the best cupcake he had had so far. He’s plotting to send me to one of the cupcake classes that they regularly run . As for me, I absolutely love how everything is so light and delicate, with the right amout of sugar and moistness.

The Sunshine Bakery
182 Harrogate Road
Chapel Allerton
Leeds LS7 4NZ

Just like everyone visits Surfers’ Paradise whilst in Gold Coast, you’ve GOTTA do a theme park whilst you’re there. Dream World, Movieworld, Seaworld, Waterworld ….the list seemingly doesn’t stop! I had not been to a theme park in years, and was quite excited in going to one. I picked Movieworld as it’s a cross between the different worlds – entertaining yet offering the more traditional theme park rides. Also, I love cartoons! Like actual ones with talking animals and stuff. Yeah, I still watch cartoons, so sue me

Up Movieworld’s version of Main st. Can you see bacon on the left struggling with my waterproof bag?

.

The Shrek 4D show – absolutely loved it! I asked bacon what is the 4th dimension – he thought it was smell. However, it was water-squirted on our legs as an imitation of creepy crawley spiders!

.

This was taken inside the Stunt Driver show – if you think Seaworld dolphin shows with cars, you wouldn’t be far off. Very cool though – very fast exploding cars splitting into half ect. Nice.

.

Scooby Doo Spooky Hotel. Hmm. From the outside it looked like a fairly safe ride as you can’t actually see anything and it looked like an auditorium – I was expecting another Shrek-like ride. NOOO! This was a whiplash inducing roller coaster, with the coaster moving in unexpected directions…sharp right and left turns is definately bad for your neck! The forward and backwards motion got me very confused – it was definately my suprise ride of the day.

Bacon getting drenched at the Wild West log ride. I didn’t feel like it…..because I really had no inclination of getting drenched!

Bacon going up, up and up on the lethal weapon ride. You can almost see him clutching on to the sides…I’ve even circled him in red

Although his most favourite ride of them all was the Superman ride

I love meeting the characters…

Although bacon wasn’t so keen…hmm. Don’t know why….not like as if daffy bites!

We even manage to catch the ‘parade’….obviously no connection with the Disney parade whatsoever..heh.

I love Shrek..he was really funny, I had purchased a pair of shrek ears earlier on a hairband, and as he were going past me he actually waved, pointed to his own ears and showed me the thumbs up….let’s see you get that from Mickey!!

Daffy kicking Austin Power’s butt..

Bugs Bunny & Tweety..tweet tweet

The whole day seems slightly surreal – it was Chinese New Year and there were BUSLOADS of chinese tourists – so many that it looked like we were somewhere in China rather than in Gold Coast. The whole place was also understaffed, with a number of concessions and foodstores closed for the day – even some of the restaurants were closed. This gave the place a slightly fly-by-night operations feeling…or at the brink of bankruptcy. Because most of the restaurants were closed, the remaining kiosks selling food were doing a roaring business.

The cartoon characters also seemed to be slightly rushed off their feet – like as if they only had 30 minutes in one costume before needing to run off to change into another character….the Batman ride actually shuts down for three hours in what was already a very very short working day of only 7 hours….either that or the staff are super lazy….c’mon, it only opens from 10 and closes by 5, you’d think that they would work harder.

Concept-wise, I think this place has got it right, but execution wise it really feels and looks like a poor relation of Disneyland – it’s like as if they’ve tried their best, but yet still not got it quite right.

We headed home at around 4ish – and as you could probably imagine, dead tired. We took a nap before heading out for dinner, but not before I manage to snap views from our room:

View of the swimming pool…..nice huh

View of the swiming pool & Biggera Waters, the river that the hotel was next to.

View into the top end of Surfers’ Paradise – the hotel is unfortunately 10-15 mins walk away from the hub of surfer’s paradise…which was not made clear to us when we booked. I guess it’s alright – as we had a car to drive around with.

We drove into Surfers’ Paradise proper in search for dinner….and as proof of how tired we both were, not only did I not remember to snap any pictures of the broadwalk, the night market….I did not even make it to the restaurant that we were supposed to eat at, and ended up eating at a Korean place that we saw on the way. You know its bad when after all that, I don’t even remember snapping a picture of the name of the restaurant, only remembering that it was connected to the other Marriott hotel, the Marriot Courtyard Surfers Paradise.

But I did had yumms bibimbap, chicken and kimchee soup…

The last picture contained the side dishes (okazu in Japanese, not sure what is it in Korean) . One of it was sweet and sour SPAM – how weird and wonderful! We were also served kimchee, wakame salad, sliced konyakku ect. If I am Japanese-food deprived here, I’m even more deprived of Korean food – there are not even imitation Korean restaurants around here…SIGH. Oh well. Anyway, in case you think me strange, there is a MASSIVE Korean community in Gold Coast – lots of Korean convenience stores, restaurants and shops.

We headed back to bed pretty soon after dinner – hanging out with cartoons does that to you sometimes

I don’t believe it’s upon us again! Unfortunately I can’t be with the mom on Mother’s Day – I guess it didn’t matter anyway as the Malaysian Mother’s day is not the same as the English . A card was duly sent – this doesn’t mean that I will be missing out on the festivities as bacon has a mom and a stepmom, making present buying challenging for me!

After my fabulous Valentine’s Day experience, it was time for interflora to come to the rescue again! This time around I thought I should try out their food hampers – plonking for their Sweet Temptations Hamper. This lovely little hamper consists of all things nice and sweet for the sweetest lady in your life!

.

Aww. Bacon’s mom would have the pleasure of receiving this cute little basket…well, except the chocolate peanuts, which I am currently polishing off now. Shh…don’t tell her..

All in all, a very pretty hamper. However, it was slightly strange that they substituted the strawberry bon-bons for golden humbug, the Strawberry and Rose Jam for just plain strawberry jam, the chocolate almonds for chocolate peanuts and completely left out the rosehip & hisbiscus tea. And oh, replaced the honeycomb and chocolate fudge with cranberry & white chocolate fudge. The hamper is still a very good gift, don’t get me wrong.

If you’re wanting to get a gift to your mom, click here for interflora’s selection of Mother’s Day gifts and Mother’s Day flowers. They do overnight delivery, so you’re still in time for Mother’s Day if you’re looking for something reasonable – prices start from under £25!!