Bunking in Brissie

Lindsay and I arrived at our hostel in Brisbane around 7 am in the morning. Our room was obviously not ready at this hour but we enjoyed a dip in the spa and some complimentary Internet time while we waited. We met with Josh (the hostel's resident travel expert) around ten to provide us with some information about trips we may be interested in taking while visiting Australia. Little did we know we would be spending $800 and booking a months worth of travel, excursions and lodging. At the end of the hour with Josh we had booked ourselves a trip to Mooloolaba with accommodation, a trip to Hervey Bay and Fraser Island (the largest all sand Island in the world) which includes 4 nights accommodation, our trip to Cairns including our dive, hostel and some meals, our trip to Cape Tribulation (the rain forest), as well as 3,000 km worth of travel on the Grey Hound bus. After the shock of spending about 1/3 of all the money I have to travel for the next couple of months I was settled by two thoughts: first, these were the main excursions we had planned to take anyways and the price we got them at seemed like good deals, and second, we would be having to do a lot of Wwoofing.

We spent the rest of the day wondering around the city taking care of some business such as going to the bank and buying a cell phone. Our hostel was in the Valley which is right near China town where we enjoyed a light and cheap lunch by splitting pad Thai. We headed back to the hostel for an afternoon snooze, but had plans to "go out" that night as we were informed the best way to avoid jet lag is to drink the night you arrive in Australia.

After waking up from our naps we headed downstairs for $3 steaks, salad and chips. A word of advice, Never Eat a $3 steak (which is actually like $2.50 US), it was pretty bad, hard to cut, hard to chew, and hard to taste, but I don't know why we were expecting more of a $3 hostel steak. After dinner we went back upstairs and met our bunk mates for the night. They were three very friends English girls all about 22 or 23. They introduced us to Passion Pop, which again I wouldn't really recommend unless you find yourselves backpacking Australia, it's a $5 bottle of very sweet sparkling wine and tastes as such. We spent the evening in the bar called Birdie Num Num. Everyone in Australia is so nice and friendly, even though most people we have at our hostel are not Australian.

Day 2 Brisbane

The second day in Brisbane we had really nice weather, it was a bit cool but sunny. We walked down to South Bank which is a really pretty man made beach along the river with shops and restaurants. We split a burger and chips (fries) for lunch from a vendor along South Bank and the women working there was the first mean Australian we met. She yelled at us for taking ketchup packets, apparently they are 30 cents each, and then yelled at me when I tried to pay her for them and our burger tasted like meatloaf. We walked back along the pedestrian bridge that crosses the river and through the botanical garden. I love that Brisbane has a lot of parks and green space. We stopped in a supermarket to buy food for dinner and lunch the next day, no more meatloaf burgers for me.

Day 3, 4 and 5? (all kind of a blur it was two weeks ago)

Unfortunately, the next couple days we were in Brisbane it was both pretty cool and rainy, but we still managed to get out and do things and not sit in the hostel drinking from 5 pm onward, which seems to be a backpacker trend. On Sunday night we went to a venue called Powerhouse that has free music and comedy shows every Sunday. Powerhouse was a really amazing space; it's kind of like a huge remodeled warehouse on the inside, boasting tons of performance and rehearsal space. It's right on the river and has a delicious looking restaurant that was not in our backpacker's budget. To get there we took the City Cat, which is a pretty fast catamaran style motor boat (that might be a terribly false description), on the boat we had beautiful views of Brisbane and the Brisbane bridge all lit up. We just got to Powerhouse in time for the comedy portion of the event. One of the comedians was really funny, and we aren't sure if the other two were funny because we couldn't understand them. We came back to Powerhouse the next day to walk through the photography exhibit they had. I wish we had been in Brisbane longer because they had some really amazing dance shows coming. The only other noteworthy that happened in Brisbane was that two guys were placed in our all female dorm which I think was more awkward for them than it was for us. As last word of advice when Aussies (not from Brisbane) tell you "Brisbane is shit" don't believe them, from what I saw it's definitely worth a visit.

cheers,
Laura