Brisvegas!

Tuesday 2nd November - Sunday 7th November 2010

Hello everyone!

How is everyone? We've only heard from a few people so please stay in touch we miss the crack!

Leaving S&H was really sad, we could have stayed for a lot longer! We left to get the Greyhound on Tuesday morning. We booked it from a random bus stop in Kawana where we were staying but as it isn't a Greyhound station like we were used to we struggled to find the bus stop! Joe rang the contact centre 3 times and got different directions each time! So we just waited at a random bus stop and hoped for the best. Obviously, it was never going to be that simple and as we watched the bus fly past in the opposite direction, all Joe could do was piont and stare and shour "Oh f**k!" Ha! But he ran across 8 lanes of traffic to get to where it stopped (general Knight in shining armour. J) and me and H followed with all the bags!!! And we got on it ok and got to Brisbane 2 hours later.

It's quite exciting being in a city, the huge bridge and high rise office blocks and flats surrounding the river are quite impressive after seeing nothing but farmland and beaches, but it's not quite Manhattan!

We had another trek from the Greyhound station to our hostel. We had to walk for miles in the heat with our HUGE bags and couldn't get a bus as it was 'pre-paid only' (we discovered later that this wasn't actually the case!), we got abandoned by a taxi driver and eventually got a bus to our hostel. Eventually things go our way and we have been upgraded at the hostel! Our 'twin' room is now a $95 per night queen with en suite, fridge, dvd player, telly (obviously!) and it's very nice! The hostel is also fab so the effort of getting here is worth it!

Our luck continued as we went for a beer to watch the Melbourne cup. This is a horse racing day similar to the grand national but everyone in the whole country gets dressed up as if they are going to the races! Even though most people (unless you are in Melbourne) are just watching it in pubs! Genius! We had put a tri-cast (It was a boxed trifecta, basically the computer in the bookies picks 2 of the 5 favourites and one random from the rest of the field. They can come in, in any order in the top 3. J) bet on entered a sweep stake in the pub ran by our very friendly hostel owners who ahd invited everyone in the hostel down to watch it together. I won the sweep stake with "Americain"! We won $13 which was around! Sweet! But we (I) had also won $157 on the tri-cast! What a day!!! (I wanted to spend the winnings on fine food and wines, but Elle told me this wasnt very sensible, so we did a big shop. J)

That evening we went to rent a dvd. Sounds very simple. It wasn't. They have a company here called 'the red room' which is 24 hour and not staffed by humans. So you get to watch previews using head phones and touch screens and order dvds using a credit card which drop down out of huge machines! It was a very funny experience! We were so excited about this experience! We were so obviously tourists!

On Wednesday we went sight seeing in Brisbane. We walked along the floating walkway under the bridge and along the river front to get to central Brisbane which was a nice walk. We had lunch in a park in the centre with all of the city workers and visited 'South Bank'.This is a man-made beach and lagoon in the city which is very cool! A place where you can sunbathe and swim in the city centre! It also has some nice bars and restaurants. We went to the food market and got some 'Queensland yoghurt' MMM! We walked over the bridge and through the botanic gardens and shopped down 'Queens street'. It is a really nice city with evrything in one area so it's really easy to navigate and you don't have to trapse around for hours to see evrything. Joe invented a game where we had half an hours to buy each other a prezzie! (only because he wanted to Queensland 'state of origin' top and he knew I knew he wanted it!) (great shopping tactics. J) But it was quite a fun game! We had a 'sun downer' (a beer) on the river and observed all of the commuters. The ones that arent using the 'City Cat' bus to commute are power walking, running or cycling home with their suits in their rucksacks. It's so easy to do here in the nice weather! Everyone is exercising out here, even in the city!

Thursday was very rainy! So we had an admin day. Joe hates these days! It's so hard to find a hostel in Brisbane, they are all so expensive and the only cheap one is called "Banana Benders!" - No thank you! (I was keen. J) We have to stay here until the 18th November and don't really know what to do as it looks like it going to be very expensive! We walked around the corner to find an internet cafe but there wasn't one so we got on the 'City Cat' to Brisbane. Then we realised that we had had to get on a boat to use the internet! So we considered buying a Notebook (mini computer) but thought better of it! We got told off on the ferry for only having a $50 note! (big rollers. J) We wandered around like absolue mongies. We weren't even hung over, we just couldn't function and found our retardedness very amusing! So we went back to the hostel and gorged ourselves on crisps and yoghurt. We stopped half way through and realised how funny it was that we were lying on the bed scoffing yoghurt and crisps! We are still undecided and haven't got anywhere to stay on Saturday but we are quite relaxed! Ha!

We had a bbq on Thursday night with everyone at our hostel. Everyone made a dish (I made a salsa!) and brought their own meat and it was a right feat! The most food I've seen at once since I've been out here! I also tried Kangaroo which tasted like ribs and was surprisingly nice! A girl came back from work at a local bar and she had been doing wine tatsing for training and she brought back all of the half full bottles of wine! Good lass! It was a good night!

We woke up feeling VILE on Friday. Joe couln't even drink water. WE still have so much admin to do as we have no plans and no accomodation for tomorrow yet! We rang around and made some decisions, even in our state!

We have decided to hire a 'Jucy Camper' for 12 days as it's cheaper than paying for accomodation! They are camper vans but better than the 'Wicked' ones as they have air con and generally better facilities and reliability. We are going over to North Stradbroke Island on Sunday for a week then plan to do Surfers Paradise and visit Bruce in Burleigh Heads before flying to Fiji on 18th. We don't really know much about Straddy apart from it's good for surfing and we love our Islands so we should love this one too! Especially in a camper - should be fun!

We stayed in the driveway of the hostel in brisbane in our brand spanking jucy the night before our straddy trip, it was good, apart from I had to back it into a very small spot..I was getting very stressed especially as Elle was waving furiously behing the van but not really making any sense, this on top of the lady who owned the hostel asking if I needed a hand parking it (which angered me) nearly sent me over the edge. But not quite over the edge. Until a man came out from next door and told me I couldnt park there, this did send me over the edge. Mainly because he was bloody rude, and told me to get off his land. We had a quiet exchange of words. Straddie tomorrow, cant wait! J.

Will let you know how we got on before we head to Fiji! Hope all is well at home! We send all our love!

Elle and Joe x xx