Brisbane

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We decided to drive ourselves into Brisbane for the day and do the hop on hop off bus tour. Driving into Brisbane was easy enough but without a map we had a "fun" adventure of figuring out where to go to park our car and get to an information center. After finally parking the car we popped into the info center in the main shopping street. We bought our tickets to the bus tour and made our way to the first stop. We hopped on the bus and enjoyed the ride around the city and the commentary. The bus took us up to Mount Cootha which overlooks Brisbane and the river. We decided to hop off here and had a snack over looking the city. We hopped back on the next bus and rode it around the remainder of the loop.

We got of the bus and walked back over to Southbank on the other side of the river to check it out. You can see the areas where the flood waters reached. We grabbed a cold drink and hopped back on the bus over to the other side of the river again getting off in Chinatown. We had a walk around that area and then grabbed some Dim Sim's for the road. Dim Sim's are an Australian asian food like ginger beef is Canadian chinese food haha. They are like a dumpling with a wontonish wrapper around it and steamed or deep fried. We had steamed ones.

Back on the bus we headed back into the main part of town and got off at the wharf area for the river ferries. We decided to have a beer by the river. The bar we stopped at had a deal on a bucket of 4 beers so we got ourselves a bucket. We learnt that this bar was badly hit with the flood and everything had to be gutted and repainted. After much confusion as it was near the end of rush hour we got on a ferry. THere was a restaurant that was partly over the river called Drift and the part of the restaurant where the tables were had been swept away in the flood. We saw all the houses on the banks of the river that must have had significant damage inside.

By the time we got off the ferry the sun was setting so we stopped for a burger and then walked back through the busy shopping street to our car. It was a friday night so there were a ton of people out and about. Back to our beautiful apartment for the night to relax and have a swim in our indoor pool and sauna.

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