Brisvegas - Hardly!

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We arrived in Brisbane early evening and caught the shuttle bus to our hostel. The YHA lived up to its usual high standards, with only the bathroom not clean! Aly put in a complaint and it was dealt with whilst we went out to explore and find some dinner. Without a map we managed to find our way to Queen Street the main shopping area, it must be Aly’s nose for shops! We ate in a tourist style café in the middle of the pedestrian street, which had a nice atmosphere.

We spent the next couple of days seeing the sights of Brisbane. Day one we headed to South Bank and the Queensland Cultural Centre. We took the opportunity to visit the Andy Warhol exhibition at Queensland Modern Art Gallery. The exhibition was excellent containing much of Warhol’s work on loan from Pittsburgh and there was even the opportunity to sit in a photo booth and have a picture taken Warhol style, although unfortunately you couldn’t purchase these. South Bank was a nice area to walk around, mainly parkland, cafes and restaurants and a large swimming area ‘Streets Beach’ which was too hectic for us with it being the weekend. We also made a whistle stop tour to the Casino. That evening we visited the open air cinema and caught the Simpson’s Movie. The cinema was great but the huge bats flying overhead were a bit distracting!

The following day we caught the City Cat water taxi from South Bank to Riverside and walked to the Botanical Gardens, Eagle Street Pier and then up to Fortitude Valley a shopping and entertainment area including China Town. We were a bit disappointed with the valley so jumped on a train back to the West End where we had a lovely lunch. This area turned out to be one of our favourite areas of Brisbane.

Our final Brisbane activity involved a trip to the Castlemaine XXXX brewery. The tour through the brewery was excellent, lasting about an hour and a half. We saw the beer being produced and bottled before sampling 4 glasses in the bar at the end with a couple of fellow tourists. This is a tour that we can highly recommend. After all that beer we needed some sustenance so headed to a Chinese around the corner from the hostel.

A couple of days in Brisbane was plenty of time to see the sites, unless there was something we missed?

Next stop the upmarket resort of Noosa…..

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Photos

Christmas Tree
It can feel christmassy out here sometimes!

James at the Open Air Cinema
Are you sitting comfortably?

Storey Bridge
We passed on the bridge climb, hardly the sydney harbour bridge!

At the Brewery
Before the Beer!