Another adventure is under our belts here for Team Phillips. A few weeks ago, Rob and I decided to buy tickets to fly to Brisbane on a Saturday morning, and fly back to Sydney on Sunday night on September 27-28. The excuse? A fireworks festival in Brisbane called the Sunsuper Riverfire. It seems like kind of a weak reason to fly to a new city (especially since we can see fireworks from our roof top every Saturday night), but it gave us a reason to buy some tickets and have a whirl-wind adventure in Brisbane.
Rob getting his caffeine on before the flight
We were up super early to make it to the airport for our 6:30am flight. I hadn't been to the airport since we first landed in Sydney, and I was excited to feel the wind beneath my wings again. After some strong long blacks with milk (that's how we have to order coffee here... Australians drink mainly espresso; you're hard pressed to find drip-brewed coffee here. So, getting a nice big dose of coffee similar to the Canadian Double Double requires some specific requests in a cafe), we await boarding and catch up on Facebook using the airport WiFi. After a 1 1/2 hr flight, we landed in sunny Brisbane.
I wasn't really sure what to expect of the city when we arrived. We had done a bit of research to plan what we wanted to do and see while on our 36 hr visit, but you never really know what to expect of a new city until you get there. Honestly, I have to say that I can't imagine ever traveling again without an iPhone and Google Maps; we never got lost and we were able to make our way around the CBD with ease.
Sunrise as we board our plane to Brisbane
Brisbane is the Capital of Queensland state, and the 3rd largest city in Australia (after Sydney and Melbourne). It started as a penal colony in the early 1800's, but look where it is now!! We booked only one night at the Rendezvous Hotel, with check in at 3:00pm. We were downtown by 8:30am and had some major time to kill before checking in. Obviously, our first order of business was breakfast! If you know anything at all about Rob and I, you know that food and drink are big factors when we explore a new city. Breakfast was at the Pancake Manor, which sounded and looked more amazing than it actually was... A re-purposed church building, to be exact. But don't worry, we had a lot more of Brisbane to discover, and food and drink around every corner!!
Rob modeling our food over 2 days in Brisbane, including our Saturday breakfast, afternoon beer, Sunday breakfast, and lunchtime Pho (the first time we've ever eaten Tripe!)
After breakfast, we made our way, luggage in toe, over to the bridge to Southbank. Something interesting about Brisbane is that the CBD is built straddling the (less-than-blue) Brisbane River. There are a total of 15 vehicle and pedestrian bridges in Brisbane that let you move from Northbank to Southbank. Over the course of our time there, we probably crossed the bridges at least 6 times. Anyway, Southbank is where the art galleries and museums in Brisbane can be found. They are conveniently clustered together within 2 city blocks. Here you'll find the State Library of Queensland, the Queensland Art Gallery, The Queensland Museum, Queensland Performing Arts Center, and the Gallery of Modern Art. We opted for the Gallery of Modern Art, since it was free, and also we saw this confused fellow outside the building:
So. Intrigued.
The gallery was lovely, with an interesting mix of Australian and Asian modern art. Some of it I was attracted to, some of it, not so much. Here's some of the good stuff!
The stuff on the left are sculptures I really liked in the gallery. You may notice a wardrobe change (one plus of carrying your luggage around with you) for my picture with Barnacle Beard (I named him thus) outside the Queensland Museum.
After trying to decipher some particularly challenging pieces of modern art, Rob and I were parched! We decided to take a moment to enjoy a newly opened James Squire brew pub. We shared a couple of tasting paddles (a couple sips of 8 different beers, they were largely underwhelming in flavour, but there were a couple that stood out!). I liked that they gave us a card so we knew what we were drinking and could keep track of what we'd tried and hadn't tried. Thanks, Squire!
Note: those are tasting glasses, not full pints or anything; the camera angle makes them look huge! We would've been *out* if we'd had 8 full beers in the 30 minutes we spent there!
As we sat discussing tasting notes at the brew pub, we looked across the street to where the entrance to the Brisbane Wheel was. We definitely wanted to go on the Wheel since Rob and I had never been on a ferris wheel together before. It would also give us an opportunity to get a bit of a birds' eye view of the city and an overly expensive photo op. We figured, what the hey, we're tourists for 36 hours, might as well do some touristy things!
We made our way over to the Wheel (which Rob continued to call the Sydney Wheel... even though Sydney doesn't even have a wheel), bought tickets, and climbed aboard. It was pretty cool to get a good view of Northbank, the really interesting wavy highways along the River, and the skyline. You can watch a video of our Wheel experience down at the bottom of this post as well.
Please don't judge the brown water...
After the Wheel, we crossed back over the bridge to Northbank and found our tummies rumbling. Lunch time! We ventured into the very busy Queen Street Mall, an open air mall of over 700 retailers that incorporates heritage Victorian building with modern refurbishments. This juggling trick makes it feel like it's got one foot in the past and one foot in the present. Here, we were able to find a Chemist (think Shoppers Drugmart) to grab some toothbrushes and toothpaste, and an amazeballs rotary sushi place. This is the first time I've ever had sushi from a conveyer belt, and the nice thing about being in a busy pedestrian mall is that the restaurant was really busy (that's what you're looking for at a rotary sushi bar to make sure the food is fresh and has not been spinning along a conveyor belts for 6 hours). It was great fun watching all the dishes travel past me, and the sushi was excellent.
Enjoying a classy beverage at the Bier Cafe
After sushi, we decided to head to the Hotel to check in. The room was small, but definitely perfect for a one night stay. We took a few minutes to freshen up (and I may or may not have had a 20 minute sushi-fueled power nap) and then headed back out to leisurely explore the city, finally free of our overnight bags. We wandered into the swanky Eagle Street Pier, a destination on the water that features a multitude of cafes and classier restaurants and bars overlooking the river. We spent some time at the Bavarian Bier Cafe drinking tasty beer and people watching. At one point, a Super Hornet did a fly-by and I almost pooped my pants. See, this Riverfire Festival we were here for is a pretty big deal, and I guess they got some Super Hornets to do scheduled fly-bys, as well as some dude on a water jet foot thing, which was crazy, and a military helicopter. Now, we knew nothing about this schedule until we heard this insanely loud fighter jet boom overhead. There has been talks recently in the Australian news about terrorist attacks and how the terrorist attack meter has gone to 'imminent' or something like that because of all the craziness with ISIS, and I'm not gonna lie, there was a moment where I was like "holy crap, are we under attack?!" I definitely got an adrenaline spike!
The military helicopter hovering outside out window at the Cafe, and the man on his Rocketeer-esque water jet thing.
After all this unexpected entertainment, we made our way back over to Southbank for dinner, but not before stopping on the pedestrian bridge to watch another scheduled fly-by of hornets. Again, you can see this featured in the video at the end of the post. We made it to our dinner reservation at an Ethiopian place, then headed back to the bridge for the fireworks. We didn't take any pictures or videos of the fireworks (as we wanted to actually enjoy them real time), but the internet has been generous enough to provide an image for us:
Nothing to sneeze at
20 minutes later, the fireworks were spent and so were we, so we walked back to our hotel to rest after our full day of adventuring. Thanks to YouTube for the awesome 25 minute video of the fireworks - we were too busy watching them to record!
The next morning, we got up and returned to Eagle Street Pier for breakfast. The place we found made fantastic breakfast, possibly the best we've had in Australia (you may remember our breakfast from the modelling shots Rob did earlier). There was a little vendors market set up in the Pier and we browsed for a little while after breakfast. Rob fell madly in love with an expensive pair of cufflinks that we didn't end up buying, and we talked to a lovely man who makes and sells Doc Martin-looking cow fur shoes... highly entertaining, he's got his pitch down pat!
From here, we took a hop on hop off sight seeing bus which took us on a bit of a tour through and out of the downtown core of Brisbane. This is the route:
We took the bus up to the Mt Coot-tha Lookout which was totally worth the long and twisty mountain ride. Brisbane played a huge part in the Allied Campaign in WWII; the South West Pacific Headquarters were based there as well as many American artillery outposts. The tour gave us a much broader perspective of the city and it's history. They definitely make a big deal about their Botanical Gardens, and the difference between the 'old one' and the 'new one'. It was nice to be able to get on and off where we wanted. Getting off at the Lookout, we took some pictures and gazed out at the wide vista of Brisbane and the surrounding area.
The view from Mt Coot-tha Lookout. The CBD can be seen on the left.
On our way back to the CBD, we elected to stop in Chinatown, which ended up being a fantastic decision. We spent the rest of the afternoon here, as you'll see more details of our experience in the pictures below. We had stopped to have the big bowl of noodles we were craving (enter Pho place where we ordered giant bowls of soup with noodles, tasty broth, pork, chicken, tripe and squid... could not finish) and ended up finding a bunch of other cool things to see, including the Mammoth Brewpub that we spent most of the afternoon at.
The CBD from the west side of the bank
The colourful third-story brewpub with giant jenga blocks, bocce ball, astroturf, and lovely new one-time friends!
I just loved how this place was decorated!!
Rob took an artistic photo of me enjoying the decor and the breeze through the open windows
Yes, the stairs up into this place is Star Wars opening
Enjoying the multitude of public art in Brisbane
It was a lovely time. I kind of wish we'd had a little more time to explore, but I definitely had enough time to decide that I liked the city very much and would recommend anyone go and visit!
To end off, another picture of the CBD from the lookout, and City Hall
Rob excited for breakfast!
And....... the video!
Coming up next; Rob, Sheila and I head out to Tathra for a seaside relaxation weekend.
For my birthday this year, Rob bought me tickets to see a childhood favourite, "The King and I"! On September 14, we got a little bit swanked up and headed out to Circular Quay and down the boardwalk to the Sydney Opera House.
It was really busy, since it was one of the first really lovely spring days we had had in Sydney. Tourists snapped photos and locals met up for drinks at the lounges lining the boardwalk, and once we got to the Opera House itself, it was a flurry of activity. We found our theatre (as there is more than one performance space at the Opera House) and milled around with the other ticket holders in a foyer decorated with rich, oriental-esque pillows and wall hangings and props.
Rob and I took a moment for a photo op, and to pre-purchase an intermission cocktail so it would be there waiting for us when we were ready to take a break halfway through the play. Then we made our way up to our seats. They weren't the best seats in the house, but they were much more affordable than other seats. The tickets claim to have an 'obstructed view', which is true since we were so far over to the left that the left side of the stage we pretty much impossible to see. For the most part, it didn't totally destroy our ability to enjoy the show, only missing out on a certain symmetry that I know Rob can be a stickler about *wink*.
The King and Queen of Siam!
...And a little more saucy, for good measure!
The left gives an idea of where we sat, and the right is a photo we took of our vantage point before the production started.
The acting was pretty good, the woman who played Mrs. Anna was lovely, had a fantastic voice, and very believable performance. I also really liked the King, but he was no Yule Brenner... I imagine it'd be like seeing Les Miserables with Colm Wilkinson and then watching the role of Valjean as some other person...
During intermission, we enjoyed our lovely festive drinks and a great view of the harbour.
But the Costumes! And the Set! I wish we had been allowed to take photos, because the costumes were exquisite (the silvery-gold gown for the "Shall we dance" number was absolutely breath-taking) and the intricate details on all the props, especially during the Kabuki scene, were an absolute delight.
I wish I could afford to go to the Opera house for all their plays, but even so, I definitely enjoyed experiencing a production at this very famous venue.
Next up, we have a blog post from our whirl-wind 36 hour trip to Brisbane (Anthony Bourdain
style!)
