Brisbane, Australia 11-11-10

        Brisbane, or Brissy as the Aussies call it as seen from the rear of the ship. The beautiful city reminded us so much of San Diego.  We have until 10:00 pm here so we plan to say out the whole day! There are lots of high rises and water everywhere as it is the city (and the capital) in the state of Queensland.  Here we are on the Brisbane river about 55 miles up river from the sea. Our choices were to hire a cab, take shuttle or ride the river cat!  At first we took the computer to the very well designed port area to skype the kids and take care of some emails.  After that we hopped on the river cat of course, and rode the 20 minutes to a drop off close to the city center.

                      

We did a little bit of shopping, ate a great lunch and wandered around the inner city.  We were getting tired so decided to visit the Botanical gardens which were a few blocks away and on the way we saw the Parliament House and several buildings that had been built by convicts in the 1800’s.  We found and wound our way through the gardens seeing families playing together and young adults from a nearby college tossing a frisbee.  The river was close so we found a bench and relaxed.  The map showed us that we could walk all the way back to our River cat connection easily with the gardens on one side and the river on the other.  Time for wine and a snack! The cafe, Groove,  right on the river at our stop was very appealing!  So we ordered some local beer and wine and talked with the waitresses about this fabulous city!  She indicated that we should take a trip up the river too which seemed like a great idea.  So we felt we really saw most of the area and by engaging in conversations with locals on the boat we learned a lot. Back to dinner at Groove because we were actually hungry!  We shared pasta and pizza that was fabulous and spicy so with full tummies, hopped back on the cat to our port.  It was kind of sad to leave as we would have really loved to explore the Koala Sanctuary and the Brisbane Forest Park, but we’ll see them next time. Apparently this is the only state that will let you hold a koala, but we found this out too late.

Big Koala bear hugs to all,

Maryann

                            

Robin and Mark hooked up with Linda and Burt and with Linda driving (on the wrong side of the road again) experienced a Mr. Toad’s Wild ride to the famous gold coast.  Noted for it’s beautiful beaches and multi million dollar condo’s it reminded them of Florida.  We don’t have pictures to put up now but will at a later date.

Love to all,

Robin