East Coast: Brisbane

Thursday 13.12.

When we woke up in the morning we had a nice surprise waiting for us: It had rained during the night and all of our laundry, that we had left outside to dry, was soaking wet. Fortunately they had dryers so we used one to dry most of our clothes while we had breakfast and got ready for our drive to Brisbane. It was only 300km from Hervey Bay to Brisbane, so we arrived there right after noon. Finding our hostel was relatively easy – we made only one mistake turning to a wrong street – but it took a while to find the right parking hall. Being Palace Backpackers guests we got discount when parking at a certain hall so we naturally wanted to park there. Our hostel was located right in the city centre, and it was a nice old building with five floors and an old style elevator (using the stairs was quicker). After having some lunch at the hostel we started to wander around the city.

Palace Backpackers

First we checked out the Queen Victoria Mall, which is a walking street full of shopping centres, food courts and stores. There´re some nice cafes in the middle of the street and we had coffee at one of them. We kept walking around the city centre and saw some old buildings, squares with Christmas trees and more stores. We would´ve wanted to check out this casino, but weren´t allowed in because we were wearing thongs. Then we randomly found a Hertz office and went in to ask for our radio pin number. They were helpful and gave us a pin that would most likely work for Toyota Corollas. Before it got dark we headed to Eagle Street that is by the river. There´re many nice looking restaurants and ferry wharfs there. All in all, it didn´t take long to explore most of the Brisbane city centre, and to be honest I think there´re more things to do and see in Sydney and Melbourne.

At the city centre

A cute teddybear store

After preparing pasta at our hostel we changed our clothes, crabbed drinks (we hadn´t drunk any of the drinks we had bought for Fraser Island so we brought the cans back and kept carrying them with us – actually, I still have one of them in my fridge at the moment) and went outside. We wanted to finish our drinks before getting to the train, so we took this escalator up and ended up to a random inner yard of some office building. We sat there for a while before taking the train to Chinatown. According to Lonely Planet it was one of the main partying areas in Brisbane, and we walked around looking for a nice place to have drinks. We found this club whose decorations we liked and walked in. After sitting down we started talking with this British guy, whose company was having its Christmas party there. We got to know almost everyone from the party and they bought us drinks (vodka with soda water – I couldn´t finish mine). It was fun chatting with them and we stayed there almost till midnight. Then we took the train back to our hostel, where we used the internet for a while.

Friday 14.12.

We woke up fairly early and headed towards Botanical Gardens. The weather continued to be nice and sunny so we had a nice walk around the gardens. There´re so many beautiful flowers, trees and plants here, especially in the summer! We were given a private tour around the Parliament House, which is located next to the gardens and is very similar to those I had seen in Canberra. Also the Queensland University of Technology campus is right next to the gardens, so we walked through it. It looked just like a normal campus. We also took this short board walk through some plants growing in the river before heading to Eagle Street to take a ferry to South Bank. The ferry trip lasted only for 20min but provided some nice views of the city. South Bank is basically a street next to the river with green parks, plenty of restaurants, a few shops and a big artificial swimming area. We sat by the pool for a while before walking over a bridge back to the city centre.

Showing off my skills

A view of Brisbane

The South Bank

We checked out a few squares – open areas with some sort of monuments and sights – and went to eat lunch at one of the food courts. We had big portions of Japanese food, but there´s always room for dessert, so we had these huge pieces of cake at an outdoor café at Queen Victoria Mall. Mine was called 5-chocolate cake and I guess it´s needless to say how delicious it was :P Then we walked around a bit more and checked out some clothing stores. I had made an appointment to get my toe nails painted and Juulia decided to come in with me. The Chinese girl misunderstood me in the beginning and started to do a pedicure, until I noticed it and corrected her. I got my nails painted with dark purple colour, after which we headed back to South Bank for markets. They were good markets indeed! We spent quite a while wandering around and fell in love with these cute hand-made bags. Juulia bought one, while I decided to save my money and luggage space till Asia. We also found this place selling nuts, dried fruit and yoghurt covered things. They had samples of everything and we ate tons of them! We did buy a box of dried banana slices to snack in the car, though.

From the markets we walked back to our hostel. Because of having such a huge lunch we didn´t feel like eating any dinner. There was a nice looking bar downstairs so we went there for a while. All backpackers bars sell basic drinks for so cheap! It didn´t help us much, though, because due to our tight travelling schedule we hadn´t time for drinking. We both preferred having only one or few drinks per night so that we could get up early the next morning to drive and do things.