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Published: October 21st 2005
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We've just spent a fantastic week in Brisbane and the surrounding area. Thank you so much Sheryl and Gord for letting us stay at your place for so many nights - it was great to be able to come back to such a nice place after a day of sightseeing, and we enjoyed the home cooked meals too!
Gord and Sheryl have a great apartment with a panoramic view of the river right in the heart of Brisbane (Kangaroo Point). Luckily, we all get up in the morning at the same time (around 5:30am) so we actually had a great visit both before and after they came home from work! They took both Chris and I (on separate days) on an hour or so bike tour of the city before they went to work - it was so nice to see the city that early in the morning and to get some exercise in. Brisbane has a lot of hills, so it definitely wasn't an easy ride! They also took us rock climbing on the cliffs at Kangaroo Point. We have only ever done indoor rock climbing, so this was a challenge! We all got to try climbing twice. Chris
The family
Sheryl and Gord look good pushing Nathan around! made it to the top on his second try and I made it almost half way (I would like to blame it on the fact that I had a baby, but that excuse is wearing thin since Nathan's now eight months old)! We'll be heading back to Brisbane next week for one more night, so we may try a night climb if Nathan will sleep in his stroller while we climb like he did last time. Chris got some exercise another night too - he went with Gord to his Krav Maga class (Krav Maga was originally developed for the Israeli Defence and Security forces and teaches instinctive self defence). Unfortunately, Chris isn't here to write about his experiences, but it sounded like it was a good workout!
Some other things we enjoyed in Brisbane were the man-made lagoon in South Bank (Nathan had a great time eating sand there) and the Mount Coo-tha botanical gardens. We also spent one day wandering around Queensland University - it was a nice ferry ride there and the campus was beautiful.
We had a really great tour of the area north of Brisbane thanks to Ethan and Kristine! They took us
Third Cousins Finally Meet!
We had a great day with Ethan, Kristine, Aiden and Josh! to an amazing fish and chips place on the ocean for lunch and then we all went to beautiful a man-made lagoon for a swim. It was so nice for Nathan to meet his second cousins Aiden and Josh! We had a great home made meal at their new house and a nice tour of the area they live in. We're hoping to see them again when we go back through Brisbane on our way south.
Outside of Brisbane, Gord and Sheryl took us to Montville, a very quaint little town near the Glass House Mountains. It was very lush and reminded us a lot of an Australian version of Westport near Ottawa, except it also had amazing views of the mountains and valleys below.
We did have one change of plans at the last minute. We were going to go to Fraser Island (the largest sand island in the world) for the weekend, but at the last minute, we realized that we were being a little too ambitious thinking we could go there with a baby and camp(okay, we were insane)! We didn't realize that the trip from Brisbane to the campsite would have been over 5
Beautiful Lagoon
This is a beautiful man-made lagoon in the middle of Brisbane (Southbank). hours and that some of the sand roads on the island are a single lane with trees on either side so we wouldn't be able to pull over if we needed to. Luckily we were able to cancel the ferry with no penalties and decided to go to Couran Cove Island Resort instead which is on an island much closer to Brisbane (Sally was able to come too). The resort is pretty fancy and covers the whole island. It has tons of watersports and other activities to do and on the ferry over, we were all excited about what we were going to do in the little time that we had. But alas, it ended up raining. Luckily, Chris and Sheryl were able to play a bit of tennis, but that was about the only activity we were able to do. We did have a fun night playing Wizzard, though, (it's a great card game that we all played while traveling around the Middle East), drinking Bundaberg rum and coke and catching up. The next morning we took the 9am ferry out and went to the Gold Coast (Main Beach) for a great breakfast at Sally's favourite restaurant. Then we
Let them eat sand!
This is the advice we were given - you can't stop babies from eating sand at the beach, so just let them eat it and hope that they decide they don't like it! did a bit of shopping in Surfer's Paradise and then had an excellent roast lamb dinner at Sally's mom's place. The lamb here tastes so good compared to at home - we're trying to eat as much as we can while we're here! All in all, it was an excellent weekend! All that mattered was that we were able to spend some time with Sheryl, Gord and Sally before we left.
We ended our Brisbane experience at Sally's place. She has a great house just outside of the city centre. We had seen photos of it, but it was really nice to be there in person, finally! Thanks for having us!
We just flew in to Port Douglas this morning (just north of Cairns). We're looking forward to Nancy arriving and then going scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef! We'll send an update after that!
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Rose
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Amazing
Hi Sarah, I am soooo enjoying reading your vacation experience. I love the pic of Nathan climbing rocks...ha ha he's like his mom and dad. I can't wait until your next excerpt.... Rose