SPRING BREAK!!!!

9.27.10

Well,

This was the weekend that Erica finally arrived in Australia. Her flight landed at 6:20am Friday morning. After meeting her, we took the train back through the city and a bus back to King’s. Luckily, King’s had an extra room for her to stay in while we were in Brisbane. Once she got settled in, we headed out to check out campus and the city. In campus we went to the main places I knew including: the music building, the Great Court, the books store, etc. Then we headed out to the UQ lakes. We spent a while at the lakes being entertained by the ridiculousness that is the birds of Australia. For lunch we went to the Pizza Caffé on campus and had pizza. Once we finished our campus tour we boarded the CityCat to ride to the city on the River. In the city, we had fun taking pictures with large silver hands and walking around Queen St. Then we crossed the bridge and got a look at Southbank. After this long walking adventure we went back to King’s and crashed.

On Saturday, we got up, had breakfast, and headed to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. We spent about 4 hours looking around, feeding and petting kangaroos and emu, holding chicks and guinea pigs, and of course, holding koalas. Once we finished there we were hoping to get up to Mt. Coot-tha but unfortunately, missed the last bus up there. Instead we headed back into the city to walk around. We headed for the botanic gardens but were unaware of the music festival that was happening and instead walked back to Queen St. There we went to O’Malley’s Irish Pub for dinner and had some steak. Once we were full, we went back to King’s and watched The A-Team on my computer. Once again, due to exhaustion, we crashed.

Sunday came and we were able to make it up to Mt. Coot-tha. Thankfully, the weather cleared up a bit and was not cloudy and gloomy like it had been. We took in the gorgeous view and headed back to King’s. For lunch we ate in the Vil at La Porchetta. We both had some pasta and it was delicious. Now, it was finally time to head to Surfer’s Paradise so Erica could see the beach. Our journey was supposed to only be bus-train-bus but that was not the case. Due to construction and repaving across the tracks, we had to transfer to a bus halfway to Surfer’s and bypass the construction. Because of this, the hour and a half trip took about 3 hours to complete. At around 5pm, we finally were at the beach. We both dipped our feet in the ocean and played some Frisbee for a while. Then we walked around the little malls and adventured. We had dinner at a Chinese and Malaysian Cuisine place called Ocean Seafood. We had Mongolia beef, honey sesame chicken, and fried rice. It was really good. We then get back to the bus station for the journey home. Once again, we were hoping for bus-train-bus but, again, were wrong. We managed to easily get back to the train station we started at but the buses that went back to UQ stopped running 3 hours before. We then went adventuring and managed to walk back. When we got back, I went to do laundry and pack my suitcase for Sydney while Erica packed stuff and cleaned up here room. Once everything was done, it was time for sleep.

Monday Morning came bright and early so we could catch our 10am flight. We grabbed some food and Erica said here good-bye’s to King’s. We managed to time the bus to train transfer perfectly; we had no layover or wait at the train station. On the way to the airport, we talked with another train passenger and found out that Virgin Blue had a computer failure of their flight schedules and everything. Therefore, we transferred to Qantas. Because most of the Qantas flights were full from the Virgin Blue crisis, Erica and I were booked on two different flights an hour apart. She flew out at 3:15pm and I flew out at 4:15pm.

After we both landed in Sydney, we grabbed a cab to the Travelodge. We dropped off our stuff and started walking around the city. By this point, it was dark so the city was lit up. We passed Town Hall and continued walking to Circular Quay and to the Opera House. We spent a long while walking around and taking pictures of both the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. Seeing the Sydney Opera House has been one of my life goals that I am happy to say I have checked off my bucket list. Then we figured grabbed a train back to Town Hall to the Woolworths to shop for dinner. We ended up getting some Ramen noodles, pitas, and hummus. It was delicious.