Day 6 - Brisbane

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Hi Bloggers,

That dreaded 3.00 moment occurred again today, we had slept solidly since 10.15 the night before so it was not too bad and considering we had a long sleep in the afternoon when we arrived in Brisbane, we probably did not need much more. Lying In bed a while longer we decided to have a cup of tea and Andy wanted to write the blog for yesterday, so I watched a little bit of television. We had set the alarm for 7.00 in an effort to start trying to get ourselves back into a reasonable routine like having breakfast at the right time in some vain bid also to try and knock the jet lag out of us, but again that failed miserably as instead of getting up for breakfast at 6.00 when we were both still wide awake, we fell asleep only to feel worse than ever when the alarm went off at 7.00. Still lets see what tomorrow brings.

Anyway, we still made breakfast in good time today and were soon out and about in the fresh air and on our way to the bank. Some of you will no doubt know the story about Andy having sleepless nights over the money we transferred to ANZ for our trip, with the state of the economic climate Andy was concerned that the bank would go bankrupt, so it was a pleasure to actually get to the bank with our ID and have access to our money and more to the point it is still there!

You will again be pleased to know that it was raining this morning, according to Lynette the restaurant supervisor she said it was due to rain all week. Just our luck eh! That's what we get for being complacent about leaving you all behind to cope with the British weather.

When we went out Andy asked for an umberella, however it started to look as if it was cheering up, so he gave it back.... and then it started to rain again when we were a fair distance from the hotel and it was too late to go back.

We were in the bank for a while and thanks to Jake (from Boston who married an Australian girl and now lives in Brisbane) we now have access to our funds. In fact poor Jake was with us for nearly two hours, owing to the fact that Andy would not stop talking!! Jake has been living in Australia for about 18 months and used to be a high school teacher in the U.S. however his qualifications did not allow him to do the same job over here unless he did some further study, so decided on a different career path for the moment.

We then visited Vodafone and Telstra to look into Mobile Broadband and telephone, we are undecided at the momet how to deal with this one and which provider to have, the price plans seem to be incredibly complex and vary a lot. We still need to look at Optus and Crazy Jack or Jim or something like that.

Then off to the Department of Transport about th paperwork for our driving licences, we have it on good authority (thans again Jake) that we just fill out the paperwork and then we get a Queensland driving licence. You have to do this within 3 months of your arrival - I cannot rememer what happens if you don't. They were asking for an Australian Address, however as we do not have one we asked how to get round this. So we told them where we were staying and they said, that's ok use the name of the hotel! Ok if you insist, so tomorrow morning we need to go in with 3 items of identification and we should be sorted.

This afternoon Andy had a couple of hours sleep and I had one hour, but till felt very tired trying not to sleep so much in the day to break this 3.00am habit.

This evening we went to the Southbank cinema to see a really intellectual film 'How to lose frieds and alienate people' - with Simon Pegg. It was very funny and well worth watching. I wanted to see 'Quantum of Solace' but it is not out here until next Thursday. They do seem to be a bit behind on film releases. Hope to see it next week though. Funny that Andy and I have not been to the cinema for ages, so Australia is a long way to come just to see a movie.

We came back to the hotel for a g&t in the hotel bar, we sat outside in short sleeves, it is a lovely warm evening.

Forgot to mention last night that Brisbane have their own wheel, no it is not called the 'eye' or the 'flyer' or anything else fancy..... it is called the 'Wheel of Brisbane'. It does not look as big as they flyer or the eye, it is also cheaper and the time it takes to go round is about 12/15minutes which is roughly half the time as they flyer and they eye. I thought that it must be much smaller, the gondolas definitely are, they do not hold so many people, however when we stopped to look at it noticed that the wheel spun round much quicker. It looks too quick to be able to take a decent photo, but we may give it a try anyway.

I have a few other bits to say but you will have to wait for the next blog entry - just to give you something to wait for.

I must sign off and go to bed now and get some sleep. It is 11.30pm so fingers crossed that I will not be awake at 3.00.

Take care
Caroline (& Andy)
x

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