Queensland Day 7

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Day 7 - Brisbane city tour

After a relaxing buffet breakfast at the hotel, we began our day tour in Brisbane. It's a beautiful day - warm and sunny, with clear blue sky.

Our hotel is located in the heart of Brisbane city. After a few minutes walk, we found ourselves in the main shopping area, the Queen Street Mall, with LOTS of people. It was only around 11am on a weekday. Brisbane seems like a lively city. We miss the crowds and city views! The streets were nice decorated for Christmas, full of street entertainers as well as the sound of Christmas carols. Needless to say, there were also lots of street cafes. After touring the downtown, we crossed the river to the famous South Bank. The South bank was originally the location for the 1988 World Expo. This area was later redeveloped as a park and rest area for the locals, with outdoor stage, lots of cafes, as well as a man-made beach.

The view from the bridge was spectacular. Our first stop was the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. This is quite an unusual destination for us as we are not really a big fan of arts. Anyway, knowing that this is the largest Modern Art Gallery in Australia, we decided to give it a try. The sun was too strong for us to stay outside anyway :P It was quite an experience and it certainly opened up a new definition of arts to myself. Our feet were SO sore after many hours of walk. We then went to the South Bank Parklands for a short walk and tea. Even though it doesn't have a Bondi beach, Brisbane seems to have a bit of everything from nature to shopping to good food. I love it! Better yet, it is only 1 hour drive from Surfers' Paradise!!

We picked up our rental car at around 6 and began to head to Surfers' Paradise, where we will be spending last few days of our Queensland trip. We met Ka, an agent based in Gold Coast, at our "hotel" - the Islander Resort - and collected our vouchers for the rest of our trip. For the same price as the hotel in Cairns, this one is a much worse conditions, with old elevators, dark hallways and worst of all, HAIRY fleece blanket!! I was totally grossed out (hence, no pictures). Hotels (and I guess everything else too) are expensive this time of the year because it's the beginning of the school holidays. Oh well! After I calmed down, we went to go search for food, more specifically - CHINESE food!! I was craving for rice. We found this Chinese restaurant full of pictures of popular Hong Kong stars who've previously visited this place. Not having any idea of what to expect, we decided to give this restaurant a try. It was definitely one of the best meals we've had during the trip, even though we only had some very simple dishes. We are so Asian :P

I was very much in need of a sleep - couldn't care less about the hairy blanket!!

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