Brisbane one last time!

11.29.10

Well,

Friday morning we woke up to rain. But all we were doing was going to the airport to fly to Brisbane. Our flight was not delayed due to the weather and we left at 10:05am. We arrived in Brisbane about 12:30pm and grabbed a taxi to the Ibis Hotel. After dropping our stuff off, we went next door to Subway to get some food. Then we went to Queen Street to look around. My parents decided that they wanted to do their entire souvenir shopping then since we were out. After finding some great deals we dropped our stuff we went to dinner at Vapiano. Vapiano is an Italian restaurant where they give you a credit card thing and when you order, you place the card on a reader and it loads the card and when you leave, you swipe the card and it lets the person at the register know the total cost of everything ordered. Also, once you order, they make the food right in front of you. The place looked like an upscale restaurant but it was very casual. We all had some variety of pasta and it was good. On the way back to the hotel, we listened to the Salvation Army band, watched some Latin dancing, and watched a guy spray paint a dolphin using newspapers and a trowel for effects. After that we returned to the hotel and went to bed.

The weekend arrived and it was time for day trip excursion adventures. But before those began we decided to walk through the South Bank markets. They did not open until 10am, so we walked around South Bank to waste some time. Once they opened, we look and we were ready for our day trip down to the gold coast. Thankfully, there was no construction on the tracks and did not have to transfer onto a bus like when Erica was here. Unbeknownst to us, the Gold Coast was going to be full of schoolies. Schoolies is the week after high school graduation where you go to the beach to party. After dealing with some of the schoolies on the bus, we headed to Hungry Jacks for lunch. After lunch, we went to the beach. My mom really enjoyed walking on the water’s edge. After about 30 minutes of that, we headed up to the Q1 building to QDeck. It was beautiful outside and we could see a lot. Once we were done there, we decided that we would rather get dinner back in Brisbane instead of dealing with more schoolies. We got back to Brisbane about 8pm and one of the only places open was Vapiano. This time, we ordered some pizza. Then we returned to the hotel to go to bed.
Sunday, we took a day trip to Fraser Island. We met our guide Eugene and the others taking the tour at the Roma Street Station at 7am. There was a couple and a girl from the UK and two girls from South Korea. The two girls from South Korea spoke almost no English. We headed out towards Gympie. Before reaching Gympie, we stopped for a bathroom/brekky break. This was about two hours into our three hour journey to the island. About a half hour after we headed out, the engine on the car started smoking and we had to evacuate the car on the side of the road. After 10-15 minutes, we tried starting the car but were unsuccessful. WE were hoping to get a replacement car from a city close to Fraser but were unable to and had to wait for a car to head up from Brisbane. This meant we had to waste about 2 hours. We walked across the road into a forest-like area and the guide showed us some trees and plants that we would see on the island. Before getting too far away from the road, we returned to the car to make lunch. We had ham sandwiches and when we were done eating, the replacement car arrived. WE hopped on and our journey to Fraser continued. To get to Fraser, we had to take a barge from the mainland. When we got to Fraser, it was high tide and so we couldn’t drive along the bottom of the island. They had another road that we could drive on during high tide to give us access to the beach that we could drive on. We drove about a quarter of the way up the island before headed passed the resort and to Lake McKenzie. This was a freshwater lake filled with only rain water. The sand on the beach around it was very fine and felt great on my feet. We spent 45 minutes there and then we took a half hour rainforest walk. At this point, we were running late for our barge back to the mainland. We hurried down the beach and were only 20 minutes late and thankfully the barge waited for us and didn’t strand us on the island for the night. On the way back into Brisbane, we stopped at a truck stop to grab dinner since most places in the city would have been closed when we got back. We had MacDonald’s. We finally got back to the Roma Street Station at about 9:30pm. Then we walked to the hotel and crashed.

We were able to sleep in on Monday since we did not have any time commitments. This was the day we were going to King’s to pick up my stuff. We got to King’s at about 10am. We dropped off the empty suitcases in the storage room and I gave my parents the grand tour of the place. Lucky, most of the people I wanted them to meet were working so they could meet them. After our tour, we went to grab lunch. I was hoping to take them to the Kebab place in the Vil but it was closed and we ended up at A Salt & Battery. After lunch, we went back and filled the suitcases with my stuff and then I said my final good bye to the college. From there we took the bus back to the hotel to drop off my stuff. Now it was time to take the CityCat. We took the CityCat around the city so my parents could see the Story Bridge and from there took it back to Campus. Now I gave my parents the full campus tour. I showed them where all of my classes were and all of the important places. We also stopped into Student Flights so I could say bye to Stephanie, the travel agent that has been helping me book all of my tours and whatnot while I was here. From there we walked by the lakes and caught the 109 from the UQ Lakes bus stop and headed back into the city. We went to dinner at Little Singapore. Little Singapore was next door to Vapiano. After dinner we went to Woolworths to pick up food for breakfast. Then we returned to the hotel and went to bed.