Blog : Brisbane

Loads of people had told us negative things about Brisbane and that we could just not even bother going, but after a bit if google action we had decided it was worth visiting! We were a bit disorganised and only booked our hostel on the bus when we were an hour away! Thank god for the hostel world app and iPhones!! The rooms are so expensive as its a city and were now xmas prices... But we had a discount voucher from when we booked some of our tours which got us $10 off a night... Bonus!!

When we arrived into the city at first we felt a little but vulnerable walking down the street with our lives on our backs! But we very quickly settled and i felt a lot more at hone in the city than i have done in the smaller surfer type towns weve been to! Theres more going on, better selections of everything and millions of people to watch!! So we had to walk the half a mile or so from the bus stop to the hostel, in 80% odd humidity which was really lovely, naaaat! We all rocked up to the hostel -Base central, looking like sweaty messes!! The hostel was in one of the many beautiful old saloon style buildings that are all across Brissy... Sort of a bit Dallas cowboy-ey and a bit San Fran-esque! We were on the fifth floor though, which with no air con or working lift really helped with the whole sweaty situ! First thing i did the second we got to the room x d dumped our bags though was proper traveller chic... I got out a Tupperware box, scraped the sand out if it and poured some cornflakes, warm soy milk and polished them off using a fork!! I was pretty hungry!

We went for a little walk next around the city to see what was going on and we were overwhelmed about the amount of cheap sushi rolls everywhere...we were in our element! We did get caught in the rain whilst we explored the main shopping streets, Ann and Queen st. just around the corner of our hostel...hello New Year's Eve dress shopping! Brisbane is built on a grid just like Milton Keynes and skin of the road names are kings and queens, apparently this was copied from Melbourne!

We went to the bar underneath our hostel that night and it ended up being a pretty late night! We had managed to turn up on the right day though - ladies night with cheap drinks... Vodka redbull disgusting cocktail jar things were $7 each so we were set for the evening... Red bill and me are not friends though so i tried to be careful not drinking too much! There was also a make stripper there who performed, grabbing a birthday girl from the crowd and gyrating all over her! It was really bleak but the best but was how many boys were fascinated by the stripper and all commenting that even they had better bodies and could do a better job as this guy had two left feet, a face like a slapped arse and a greasy pot belly! Sexy! And he didnt even get his meat and two veg out... Shurely the whole point of a stripper? Clues in the name! The DJ then hosted a boys dance off where a couple of them were put on stage and told to dance and take their kit off... It was the most hilarious thing in the world... Watching all the other boys shuffling and trying not to look and the desperate and dutty traveller/local student/generally stingy type girls screaming for more! I was a complete granny and just cringed the whole way through wondering if any of them had actually heard that for all the humiliation, only one of them would win $50! Fail!

The following day we were up and rearing to go for a full day of shopping!! Whoop! We were all so excited, if a little hungover! We went for a little wander and came across a big Wednesday farmers market which had loads of pop up foody stalks... We had a good old browse round before deciding what to have. I liked the look of the" purely vegetarian" stand and so combined breakfast and lunch (it was about 12pm) and brought a $10 quinoa salad with hummus, potato cakes, chilli jam and a cheeky Lebanese veggie party on the side... It was delish :) KV had a pizza bread slice and al some other Lebanese goodies and we all sat round a little cafe table on silence gobbling and watching the world go round! It was really weird to see people in work clothes and going into big canary wharf style office blocks...wed not yet come across that down the coast!

Throughout all of the shops and streets xmas decs hung everywhere which was so surreal in the heat! But made us get a little excited and realise that chrimbo is really close now! We also saw a really cute choir aged 8-80 singing beautiful christmas carols... Lots of people were stood around watching it having a little tap of their feet! We found everytime we walked past the Main Street a difference group were performing there - at one point there was a santa in a sledge being pulled by real reindeer!!

We went into loads of shops, the first couple were redonkulously expensive and then we started getting better at sniffing out the cheap ones... Ozzy is like America in that they have big christmas sales before the big day as well as even bigger ones afterwards so in every shop we beelined to the sale rail... Weve been invited to a swanky pent house New Year's Eve party in sydney which is themed: red and black so we all wanted something nice to wear and obviously needed shoes etc as our backpacks have no posh clothes or heels in them! We thought wed be spending NYE in a park with all the other backpackers but no! So a legitimate shopping excuse! I managed to find a very plain, simple (and cheap -$20) dress from a primark equivalent called supre... Its just a black calf length t shirt dress that i thought i could jazz up with a bit of jewellery and some big shoes! I managed to find an alright pair of cream wedges in the sale in another pikey shop for $15 so i had those as well! The girls both also found beautiful dresses and in keeping with the theme, well all be in black! And all of the dresses we can wear afterwards whilst were travelling so multi purpose buys!

I then managed to find a cute canvas pencil case with a skull print on it in a stationary shop and thought that would be perfect as a cheap makeshift clutch bag! My outfit was sorted!! And i treated myself to a cheap "flu fighter" fresh juice from one of the stands to try and sort out my constsnt sneezing and dribbly nose! We carried on dipping in and out of shops looking for shoes and bags for the girls but had no luck so decided to call it quits and head back to the one of millions of cheap sushi shops for dinner - 3 rolls for $5 (mmm chicken and avocado, teriyaki chicken and tempura veg for me, with loads of soy) - and then heading back to the room to shower, try all our new bits on and get ready to go out again!

The second night we went to the same bar under our hostel again as it was cheap and they played cheesy music! Some girls had cone round earlier with a charity bucket asking for donations in exchange for a VIP wristband, so we all popped a couple of pennies in and were so glad we had as when we got down there, after a serious amount of faffing about with straighteners and sweating profusely(!) there was a huge Q. Sweet talking the bouncer and showing him our cancer research bands got us to the front of the line and straight into the bar!! We realised why it was so busy (and a complete sausage fest) pretty quickly... It was the wet t shirt competition night... What a classy establishment we were staying above! The girls that took part were absolutely crazy and although two of them had said they would donate the full $300 prize to the cancer research girls if they won, they took it so seriously! The both stripped down to their knickers almost instantly and before i even knew it they were jumping up and down with thier boobs out! I was granny cringing again at them dancing, pretending to be all sexy and beyonce like and i really am wanted to tell then that theres nothing sexy about jiggling your t*** up and down when your jelly belly follows suit and flops up and down at the same time! There was an akward moment after the water cannons had been turned off that a big mumma of a girl got on the stage and got her gino knockers and started trying to be all sexy... Hilariously she got booed off stage after saying she hadnt taken part in the competition because she didnt want to get wet!

We wernt too late finishing up this night, i think we headed to the pie shop for kate and al at about 3am and then trotted off back to our beds. We had to check out of our room the following morning though before 10am as we had to move rooms, our one wasnt available for three nights! It was pretty hard getting up for that time in the morning and being packed, washed and ready for the day!! We were able to use the baggage storage room for the day, which someone had just yagged up in, so it was particularly fragrant. We dumped our bags and headed to the Japanese bakery wed seen round the corner from the hostel, for some cheap breakfast! Al had a really weird chicken and mushroom donut and i a cheesey flat bread thing which was gino and only $2! We then headed to the square to join the free guided walking your of Brisbane, which started at 11am, but the square was quite busy s d we had no idea how to recognise the volunteer tour guide. There was no obvious meeting or gathering of other people either, so we gave up waiting at 11:30 and decided to do our own tour with the help of google maps!

We walked towards Fortitude Valley which is the other main area in Brisbane apart from the CBD. The valley was meant to be where all the big nightclubs and bars were and we wanted to go there that evening so thought wed check it out... On the walk we went past an incredible shoe shop with a massive sale on and so we had a quick nosey round and Vidal found done beautiful, reduced shoes for her New Years outfit! We walked for about a mile or so, up and over rolling San Fran style hills until we got the China town which was a bit naff and the valleys which didnt look glam at all! All the guide books had suggested that the valley was THE place to go out, eat and shop but all we saw were hobos! We did find a cute little vintage shop though in a backstreet that looked very much like brick lane, where i fell in love with a tasselly purple suade handbag - wholly unsuitable for travelling but was gorgeous! And KV managed to get a little yellow leather purse to use as get NYE handbag - she was on a roll! We wandered back towards the CBD, along the river, which was really pretty and through a little pier and restaurant area that reminded us of Canary wharf. We also walked through the botanic gardens which were really beautiful and huge with big statues dotted about the grassy areas... wed never seen so many photo shoots and modelling going on as we did here though, it was swarming with big cameras and mainly girls looking like clothed porn starts! i did have a bit of toilet trauma in the park though and very nearly eneded up pooping in a completely open bush, but KV managed to find me a public lavvy, thank god!

We were all completely knackered and having to sit down at every opportunity, so back in the shoppingy area we just mooched about the shops and shared a take away thai curry between the three of us which was nice, before we all went for sushi and sat in Anzac square just opposite our hostel and munched! I had a bit of a win in one of the big department stores, i was just rummaging through the reduced shoe bin for Al and came across the most gorgeous black boots youve ever seen, chunky heal, Chelsea style, ankle blah blah and tried it on... The sizing is weird here but with a bit of a swollen and sweaty foot they for perfectly! So i asked for the other... Still not knowing at this point their price... They were in the upto75% off bin but were so nice i assumed theyd probably have been tossed in there by accident! I was already thinking though that i could treat myself to them and take my other shoes back (i had a dream about them the night before and it had out me off them anyway!) the shop assistant came back and told me that the shoe did not have a matching one as it had been sold as part of an odd sized pair so the only other opposite shoe she could find was 1/2 a size bigger... I tried them both on together and really couldnt even notice the size difference and they felt so comfy... The lady then showed me the price $200 phewyyy! But that they did indeed have 75% off and so were $30 and she would reduce them further to $20 if i waived my return rights! Hello bargain! $200 shoes for just over £12!!! It would be rude not to!! So then i had to go through the palaver of returning the other shoes which were sale items and the shop initially said no but then said i could if i spent the credit voucher they could give me there and then so i spent half an hour wandering around the teeny tiny super cheap shop looking for what i could spend $15 on! In the end i managed to get my secret santa present, a nice necklace for NYE and a phone case as mine had been sacrificed a few days ago... Although i was mightily pissed off when i found that the phone case did not fit and id wasted $5!!! I decided to just have cornflakes for dinner to make up for it and make me feel better!!

We found a huge haberdashery store as well and managed to buy some embroidery thread as the girls keep to have hairbraids and i also got an unpicked as the clasp in one of my bikinis has had it so im going to pick it off and just sew the join together! Cheaper than buying a new one! We spent the evening napping and hairbraiding... I did a really cool one on al which literally took forever as her hair is soo long but it looked great, a bit Egyptian!

We went out tht night with a couple of people that were in Brisbane as well from our Frazer and Whitsundays tours which was fun to see them again... We wanted to try a different place in the evening but when we got to the Vic, which had been recommended to us, the Q was out the door and round the corner, so back we went to our fave down under bar, the one under our hostel!! It was $3 drinks so we all had a few, although i only had $15 to my name!! It was a funny evening of dancing and drunken phone calls but we finally made it home and to bed just before 5am...we had to check out at 10am!! We dragged our sorry asses out of bed and through the shower quickly to wake our selves up as checked out... We then all went next door to order a massive hangover fry up which we got at a discount price because wed been staying in the hostel, $7 including a drink and it wasnt bad! We scoffed in silence and then embarrassingly KV and i fell asleep on the comfy sofas we were sat on and yep i mean full on asleep, i was lying completely flat using one of the cushions as a pillow and KV was curled up at the end of the sofa bench. I probably had my mouth wide open and everything... The bar maid kept coming over and getting really cross, telling us girls that the bar was a licensed venue and that we couldn't sleep there... There was normal people in there eating their lunch and having a quiet pint, so we must have looked like complete hobos! We were just trying to drag out the time before collecting our big backpacks and walking over to the bus station and getting on our way to surfers paradise. The walk was about half a mile and extremely hot and sweaty with our heavy backpacks on but the second i sat down on the full greyhound i went straight to sleep, perfect!!