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Walking up the stairs in our hostel on the way to our room we ran into a couple of familiar faces on the stairs, Canadian James and Andy. Out of all the hostels in Brisbane we were all staying in the same one, lovely.
The hostel itself was a converted old department store (I think) complete with an old lift (with manually opened door) and although it had some character, was fairly run down. The same could be said for the room we were in.
We had arrived in Brisbane in the late afternoon and were planning to have a chilled out night that evening, but having run into James and Andy we decided it would be rude not to catch up with them. Therefore I was in desperate need of some clean clothes and thought I would spend a couple of hours doing some washing. The hostel was a big one and as I already mentioned, run down, this was the same story with a lot of the facilities, e.g the laundry room. Most of the machines and tumble dryers were out of order and to cut a long story short I spent the next four and a half hours walking up and down stairs, back and forth to reception (because machines swallowed my money or didnt work) in order to get some washing done. It was a fun afternoon to say the least and by the end I think I was ready for a drink! Belle spent the afternoon doing a mixture of reading and watching me get sweatier and more annoyed as time went on.
Washing finally out of the way, we all got ready and caught up with the Canadian guys over a couple of drinks.
The next day in Brisbane was our first full one so we decided to head out and have a look round the city. It is a big city with lots of shops, bars, restaurants and people. It was actually a nice feeling to be out in the middle of a city with hundreds of people around us. Although the small towns we have visited have been nice, it was a pleasant change to be back 'amongst it.' Some of the party felt slightly fragile so the evening was a quiet one of chilling out and watching a film.
After looking round the shopping area of Brisbane the day before we decided to head a little further out of the city and find an other side to the city. Before we went further a field though we went back to a shop called 'Country Road' where Belle had fallen in love with a bag she had seen. We popped back in the morning to finally buy one of these bags, but first Belle had to decide on which colour bag she wanted. She stared at the several different colours for about 15 minutes and had narrowed it down to one / two. I decided she needed to take a time out, go for a walk and then come back in a minute so she was 100% positive on the colour scheme. We returned to 'Country Road', colour chosen and the bag was purchased, it took a lot longer than I first thought.
After bag shopping we headed to the Botanical Gardens having a look round a farmers market on the way. Again we were very lucky with the weather and this made our stroll through the gardens even nicer. Walking along the banks of (imaginatively named) Brisbane River, we made our way to the Good Willbridge and looked out over the river.
We didnt really do much for the next couple of days, saving a bit of money was the main focus. The most notable thing was that Joe was leaving us and heading out to a farm (so he could get a second year working visa for Australia). Joe had to leave bright and early to catch the Greyhound bus so we again said our goodbyes before catching a bit more sleep. The three of us had been travelling for around two months, all the way from Cairns, with great times had! The other major event over these days was that we discovered a shop called MYO (Make Your Own). This was a sandwich / salad bar where you make your own sandwich (like Subway) but there is not limit to the amount of filling you put in the thing. The inevitable happened and Me and Belle were left with two sandwich's you could use as door stops. It was so good infact we went back the next day a made our own pizza, again yummy! Bar those existing events we both read, alot. Belle has always been a keen reader and happy to sit down with a book but me on the other hand have not. Through the power of our trip though I have found that reading a book can actually be fun, infact I have never read so much in my life and have actually been enjoying it.
We were originally going to leave Brisbaine after 5 nights and head further down the coast but we found out that Brisbane Festival was running during September, with it starting with an event called 'River Fire', a massive fire works display on Brisbane River. This being the case and due to us missing 5th November in England, we decided to stay a couple of extra nights, the only thing was we had to change rooms. This wasn't a problem as we changed from one four bed dorm to another, just one floor up in the hostel, it was only later on that night we wished we didnt have to move, before that though we headed out for 'River Fire'.
A massive fire works display was promised to us and a massive fire works display is what we got. We again headed down to the Botanical Gradens on the banks of the river with the Storybridge to our left. We got down there nice and early with James and Andy in order to get a decent spot. We sat and waited for the sun to go and watching the sun set and the darkness loom over the city it was finally time. Fireworks launched from the river (off barges) as well as off the bridge itself, with the highlight being a firework waterfall puring off the side of the bridge (quite hard to try and explain, im sure the pictures probably show it better), it was a awesome sight and defiently makes up for us missing fireworks in England.
The fireworks were the evenings entertainment so we headed back to the hostel and it was then we found out the joys of our new room and room mates. Despite our room being one floor higher than our previous it was 100% louder. The hostel we stayed in had a nightclub underneath it and even though we had decided not to visit it that night we had no choice but listen to the music they played, we could hear every song word for word. This started around 10:00pm and finished roughly about 4:30am, severely reducing the amout of sleep we had over the next two nights. As if the noise wasn't bad enough our new room mates somehow managed to make things worse. They were another couple (not a problem) but the man of the couple was what I can only describe as a a 'nocturnal stoner hermit.' As the title suggests he hardly left the room, smoked alot of weed and seemed to be nocturnal. So, when the music did finally stop at stupid o'clock he would be in and out of the room, light on and off and then they would settle down to watch a film on their laptop (without headphones) about 4:35am. This got to the point where Belle actually woke up (from the noise) and had to get out of bed to ask them to turn it down or off, oh the joys of dorm rooms!
Before our second night of minimal sleep and last night in Brisbane we headed for one last look around the city before heading over to Brisbanes 'South Bank' (the other side of the river) where we took advatage of another show piece of the festival, a laser light show. We sat down on the river bank and watched a show of lasers set to classical music lighting up the night sky. It was very impressive, not as good as Singapore (but that is near impossible to beat) but well worth the 20 minute walk from the hostel. It was our last night with the Canadians so after the show we headed to the supermarket, picked up a couple of cheap steaks and cooked up a nice meal of steak, mash and veg.
It was nice to be around people again after a few weeks of small town's and Brisbane is a nice city, with quite alot of free stuff to do (and obviously other activities if you have the money). Being there for the start of the festival was definitely a bonus and despite the two rubbish nights in our second room it was a good week. We did however leave Brisbane in need of some serious sleep, which we feel was a bit harsh as it was not self inflicted.
- comments
del you have much to learn about bag shopping grasshopper. and by the way looking at the reading fc picture book doas not count as reading