Checking out Brisbane

Monday, November 10th

The dorm mates actually didn't wake us up last night. This could be a result of a few people departing this morning to their next destination. We woke up around 6:45am to get ready and eat our breakfast. Unlike the previous night, we took our food out so we could take it with us. We hopped on the greyhound at 7:45am, and started our journey up north to Brisbane. The journey is 3 hours, but we gain an hour going there since Queensland practices daylight savings, unlike New South Wales & Victoria. How strange. But it's true.

The ride was pleasant. We got some beautiful scenery of Surfer's Paradise beach and other's I'm not sure about. The water was actually a beautiful blue that we didn't get to experience at Byron Bay. It was a pretty comfortable ride. We got dropped off at the transit station at Brisbane, where we sorted out how we were getting to the Australia Zoo, Steve Irwin's zoo. We realized it was too late to get on the next bus at 12:30pm, since it takes a bit more than an hour to get there and it closes at 5:30pm. We decided to go early morning the next day, and skip out on checking out Hervey Bay. There's not supposed to be much at Hervey Bay anyways besides as a stop off to get to Fraser Island.

Since we have time at Brisbane, we decided to just check out Brisbane for the day. The first stop was to our Banana Bender backpacker hostel. For AUD28 a night, we had a 3 girls dorm, so we basically had the room to ourselves. It was very clean, even the shared bathrooms. The only complaint was the bathroom has a window with a sheer curtain that the neighbors can look into it. It's situated right next to the Brisbane transit center, so pretty easy for us to walk to except when we have our giant packs and need to walk up a giant hill. Steph had to take a break on the top of the hill, luckily the hostel was across the street from the hill. All in all, pretty happy with the hostel.

After we checked in and settled in our room, we took a stroll down Roma street to find some lunch. We went to a cafe across the street from the transit station, and it was delicious. I had a yummy grilled chicken wrap that tasted like a thai wrap. With full tummies, we walked through the Queen Street mall, a pedestrian mall with many shopping centers and shops. It sort of reminded me of the street in Miami where it's blocked off for dining.

The Queensland art gallery was next. We had to walk towards south bank to get there. On the way we passed by the casino that was an old bank building (like the Deutsche Bank building on Wall Street), and crossed over the river via a bridge to get there. (By the way, it was a beautiful sunny day in Brisbane, much better than the weather we had in Byron Bay.) We then walked through the whale hall, like the museum of natural history, where huge whales were hanging from the ceiling and there were whale noises as you walked through the long hallway. After all that excitement we reached the art gallery.

I enjoyed this gallery more than the galleries in Perth and Melbourne. I enjoyed the watercolor works of Eugene Carchesio. He is a Brisbane-based artist and musician who exhibited and performed in the 1980s. His practice reveals the sublime in the mundane. He uses modest means to explore the essence of things, to seek the metaphysical and to suggest what is beyond physical nature. He does drawings, watercolors on paper, and small cultural cardboard constructions.

I also really liked Picasso's La Belle Hollandaise. His early works are less abstract, and I really liked the layer of paint in this painting. There was also art work of Otto Dix, a German war soldier. Some of it was graphic, it reminded me of the designs of Ed Hardy.

We then strolled around south bank and checked out a Nepalese temple that looked like a wooden Chinese temple. Then we had time to waste before taking the city cat boat (water taxi) up the Brisbane river. We heard it was a good way to see the city and it was cheap, AUD5.80 ($4) for unlimited ferry, boat, train, and bus ride for the day. The boat ride was nice. We got to see the city's skyline and the suburbs area by the river. Needless to say, lots of beautiful houses with private docks. I also got to enjoy a nice conversation with Alan on the boat ride.

We decided to hop off at the Pavilion wharf to walk around. It reminded me of the Docklands in Melbourne. Lots of expensive cute shops, restaurants, and gourmet grocery stores. It wasn't crowded at all since it was Monday afternoon...and people do work here.

Since the sky looked like it was in our favor that day, we wanted to try to catch the sunset before getting back to the city. We took the boat to the Riverside Walk and walked on the river. Literally, there's a walkway on the river, both sides are surrounded by the river. Pretty cool. Brisbane folks seems to be very health conscious, as we saw tons of people going for their after work run. Made me jealous that I'm not running too. Well, at least I was able to enjoy the walk by talking to Erik for parts of it. From there we walked all the way to the CBD (central business district) to eat dinner.

The sunset didn't work out for us after all. The buildings blocked it and there were no more clouds to show beautiful colors. We are just unlucky with sunset/rise.

The CBD is like NY's World Financial Center. Right besides the tall building there are restaurants that overlooked the river. It got a bit chilly there, but we still sat outside eating our pepperoni pizza, salad and fries with aioli. Steph and I also shared a jug, which we realized later is a pitcher, of Brisbane's local beer XXXX gold. It tasted like a better stella.

By then we were all a bit tired, but it was only 7:30ish. We did have an early start. We took the boat back to the city, and tried to catch a bus to the hostel. After roaming around for a while around the bus station and not finding it we just walked back. Basically we were being lazy because our transport tickets included buses. The walk back really wasn't bad at all.

Back at the hostel we just cleaned up, packed and got ready for bed since we had an early start again the next day to go to the Australia zoo.