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Published: August 8th 2007
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Well hello from Oz, it feels like such long time ago that we left rainy England for Dubai and then Oz.
I'm going to by-pass our adventures in Dubai as it was generally a bit of a non event due to the fact it was just so expensive and neither of us left the hotel for the duration of three days. I guess there was little point in doing so as every thing we needed to relax was in the one place. I would definitely love to go back when I have a bit more cash so I can see the real Dubai.
We arrived at Brisbane airport on Tuesday the 12th of December. We were picked up by my uncle and drove to his in the heat of the morning. There wasn't a great deal to report from the rest of the day except involuntary dozing and general weariness.
The next couple of days were spent orientating our selves in Brisbane, which included working out the buses that were by far the cheapest and easiest way to get about. As we had arrived in Australia during the Ashes we amused our selves for a while in
an out door coffee shop that was showing the cricket on a huge TV where guys would catch sight of the TV and stop in their tracks and then had people walk straight into the back of them.
Brisbane city seemed totally cool, just so cosmopolitan plus the fact we'd gone from winter in England (coats and boots) to summer here (shorts and vest tops) which meant every single guy we passed was looking pretty fit which made for great viewing.
Our first day of doing stuff in Brisbane got off to a crazy start when the taxi driver had no idea where he was going which meant we paid a load of money to get dropped off at the wrong place and then we got in another taxi who drooped us off at the place we wanted to go but after paying him and making our way down to the right spot we were faced with a notice saying the ferry didn't leave from there any more. Grrr
After missing the ferry we were not put off entirely - well only by the price of taxi's- so we made our to the Mount Coot The look
out point and on the way picked up a tonne of bus time tables. At the look out we had a fantastic panoramic view of Brisbane city. We then made our way to the Botanical gardens, situated near by. The gardens here differed from any other Botanical gardens I'd been to before. The amount of diverse flora and fauna was just amazing, the smells that came off some of the scented plants had to be smelled to be believed. They had a particularly cool bonsai display and a stunning Chinese garden. However I was still trying to get used to the huge amount of insects that also enjoyed the gardens so every now and then one of us would turn around only to find the other one running in the opposite direction flailing their arms around their head like a crazy person- beating off an insect 😊
After one morning of serious planning by the two of us we managed to book a few really cool excursions and make dates to do all the things on our wish list for Brisbane. Later we took a walk through bits of the city we hadn't yet visited and made our way
to the big botanical Gardens at the south of Brisbane city. Having already explored the other botanical gardens we just mused about with no real purpose until we came across an out door carol service setting up. It seemed totally unreal that people would be singing carols in this weather but they were! We went away to get a drink as we had time to kill before it started and managed to stumble across pubs and bars full of workers having their Christmas office drinks. This made me laugh as offices around the world are all exactly the same when it comes to Christmas drinks. However then it started to rain and no matter how much singing carols appealed to us, we were not going to sit in the rain!! So we headed towards the funky south bank that had all of the Friday night markets up and trading.
After a few drinks this was probably the worse thing we could have stumbled across as I bought the most ridiculous gifts for my family that i was staying with for Christmas including a some fluffy kangaroo balls that were a lighter holder and a real, petrified toad key-ring. Sarah
also managed to get a spray on henna tattoo and triumphantly we headed on to dinner and attempted to catch the correct bus back to where we were staying!!
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