Saturday 30th January

I woke up usually early and was excited to begin our girly day having still recently felt down. We went to Brisbane School of Hairdressing for our appointments where a lady who was originally from Manchester and has been in Australia for the last 8 years did our hair highlights for us. We both let it naturally dry and it was $70 each which we felt pleased about compared to the other hairdressers. Afterwards we went off to get our nails done at 'Professional nails' which was downstairs in The Myer centre. It was run by an Asian family and was excellently efficient. We both had manicures and pedicures, for the pedicure we were sat in a massage chair as well which was a nice surprise. Nick treated Lisa to her manicure and I was grateful he'd looked after my beauty treatments for the day to cheer me up. I finally felt like a lady again!

We went on for a look around the shops, I got a jumper and pair of jeans as the rainy cold weather we'd regularly been getting was making it impossible to live out of shorts and vests. We returned to the hostel and got ready for the evening, phoned my auntie for a catch up and then opened a bottle of wine. Jacob from the night before joined us with his room friends and then Lisa went ahead with them whilst I met a girl called maddy with her boyfriend and her friend joy with a guy she was hooking up with and walked down with them to the bar 'Irish murphys'. There was a live band on so we watched that and danced and met others along the way as well as two deaf guys who had a good sense of humour. We walked back to the hostel and got to bed early hours in the morning.

Sunday 31st January

Lisa and I woke up feeling hungover and made a plan to get some food and hit the beauty of nature at the botanic gardens. It's typical that the first sunny day we've seen in a long time comes along when we are both not feeling able to sit in the heat. We arrived at the botanic gardens and lay on the grass while Lisa was being pestered by a bird (sensing her weakness and wanting her crisps I think) and I drank two slurpees in a row - the Aussie version of a slushy from a place everyone knows called 7/11. Sadly we were unable to move any further, the temperature had reached 39 degrees and the hangover got the better of us. I was that exhausted I didn't even have the energy to check out the Sunday market stalls which I was sad about because I love a market! We tried to be money conscious and get the bus back but I ended up tipping my bottle of water over my head it was that hot (Lisa found this amusing) and we ended up getting a cab back as she thought she was going to throw up...

We made it back to the hostel which had a lovely rooftop pool and great view of the city, so instead decided to relax there until the sun went back behind the clouds. That evening we found a cheap curry place down the road (worst curry ever - Malaysia arts don't go there) and watched some TV on an American psychic before getting and early night.

Xxx