Brisbane or Bust

After a rocky start (I missed the check in for my flight by 5 minutes and therefore my flight), I finally got underway to Brisbane.  I arrived at the hostel and inquired as to if Mark (my friend who was meeting here) had checked in, and was told that he had not.  That got me worried, because he was supposed to check in on the 23rd and it was already the 24th.  So, in addition to feeling bummed about missing my flight earlier, and depressed that I was not with my family for Christmas, I was worried about Mark.  I paid to set up wifi and found out that he was trapped in New Zealand due to the earthquakes.  Thankfully, it just meant that he would arrive a bit late in the evening on Christmas Eve.  So, I had the day to roam around Brisbane and get a feel for the city.  Overall, it was very beautiful and clean.  

This was a really interesting pedestrian bridge that I took over to the other side of Brisbane.  

This was the museum of modern art, which was really inviting, but unfortunately closed during my stay here.  

I thought the architecture here was great.  It married new age, sleek buildings and traditional style.  

This was just down the road from our hostel and was the beginning of Queen Street.  This is where all the shopping and many restaurants are located.  

More of Brisbane.  

This was a park area near the waterfront.  They had these trellis' all over and they covered the walkways offering relief from the sun.  Near here was a great market, lots of funky shops, a public pool area, and many gardens.  

Seriously, everywhere that I travel seems to be filled with ferris wheels.  I'm not sure what excitement is for foreigners, but they're all over Japan, and now I'm finding they're ll over Australia.  

This is a Thai Temple that was located across the river near the gardens.  It looked really old and was very beautiful.

As soon as Mark arrived, we headed out to find a place to eat our Christmas Eve dinner.  Nothing seemed really special, so we decided to stop at Harajuku Gyoza.  After a quick look at the menu, I was thrilled to discover that they not only had gyoza that was NOT made with pork, but they also made it from hand too.  Of course, this was the perfect place to eat.  We found out that the owner visited Japan and loved gyoza, so he started to open these in Australia.  Now, I'm hoping that he opens some in Japan, so I can eat some pork free gyoza!  

Here is the Christmas Eve feast.  Beer and turkey gyoza with cranberry sauce to dip.  We had a fabulous time catching up about our weeks in different cities.  I told him all about my diving experiences and he told me all about bungee jumping.  I was very thankful to have someone to spend my holidays with, even if it wasn't family...good friends are a close second.  

We woke up on Christmas Day and needed to find some food and fast.  So, we stopped down the street at Pie Face, which became our go-to place to pick up food.  I had the chicken pie with mashed peas and potatoes in honor of Christmas morning/afternoon.  Honestly it was delicious, which is good, because it was about the only place that was open for business.  

On Christmas Day, there wasn't much to do, so we took the public bus up to Mt. Coot-tha to get the most beautiful view of the city.  It looks so huge, and is actually the size of Chicago, but there was absolutely nothing to do.  We didn't find much night life and even the cultural side of things weren't exciting.  It was a running joke that many people called it Bris-Vegas, but in fact, it was so boring here.  

Hanging out in Brisbane reminded me of when I was a kid.  Things closed really early (like at 7 pm) and most things were closed on Sundays.  It was definitely a wake-up as to the way that America has started doing business.  While staying here, I also found out about Boxing Day.  Essentially, it is exactly like our Black Friday.  Everything is on sale and since it's a holiday here, everyone is also off work to hunt for bargains.  

After getting our fill of the view and the people watching, we decided to take a hike.  Little did we know that the hiking trail would take us down to the near bottom of the mountain.  It was quite an adventure.  

First, I noticed this bird.  It looked nothing like anything that I had ever seen before.  I know the picture is out of focus, but I had to include it.  This bird was like half black crow and half colorful pheasant.  It could fly and hop and it didn't stay still for long at all.  

As we continued to hike further and further down the trail, we came across a clearing.  Mark says how nice it is here and how that would be a great place to camp and then we happen upon a stream with a bridge across it.  And what pops up from under the bridge, but a snake that was about 9 feet long.  Now, many of you know how I like to exaggerate, but seriously.  This snake was at least 9 feet long.  It scared the beegeezus out of me.  

As we continued to hike and at many points thought that we were lost, we came across this beautiful golden bamboo.  I had never seen this variety and thought it was magnificent.  We hiked and hiked and ended up walking alongside a busy highway down the mountain for a bit, but finally (and luckily) we ended up at a place that we knew, the Botanical Gardens.  After a quick look around, we had just enough time to catch the very last bus back into the city for our Christmas dinner.  

I saw this parked in an alley and ran to photograph it.  Each emergency vehicle here has it's own type of checkers.  They are all different colors and it makes them easy to spot.

After walking around a bit, we stopped on Queen's Street for some dinner.  As I said before, it didn't seem that there were many places open, so we were lucky that there were some along this road.  I decided on fish and chips, especially since that seemed to be super popular here.  It was funny to notice the English influence in Australia.  They definitely retained it much more than the United States.  

We took a walk around after dinner, looking for a bar to have some holiday drinks, but didn't end up finding anything.  As we crossed one bridge, I noticed this one was lit up with a floral design.  This bridge is just a plain white color during the day, but this was exquisite at night.  

In the spirit of the season, we strolled downtown to look at the lights and the decorations.  It was definitely odd to see all the Christmas stuff while in a sun dress.  As you know, Australia is in the southern hemisphere, so they celebrate Christmas in the summertime.  Either way, this tree was beautiful.

These statues were down by the tree and I couldn't resist hopping on for a picture.  Brisbane was a beautiful city, but I wasn't impressed with sights or opportunities for entertainment.  In all fairness, it could have been the holidays or the fact that it was the weekend, but I probably won't be heading back to find out.  

PS, I didn't include pictures of the hostel here, probably because it was such a dump.  Seriously, it looked nothing like the website and Mark and I were both horrified.  We have many stories from the broken shower, to the burly roommate who lived there, to the air conditioning, and finally the surprise roommate that it will always be memorable to us...even if we'd rather forget it.  

Kim