Brisbane

Tomorrow we wake up, hopefully watch The Canucks win the cup and head out of Brisbane and into Surfers Paradise. We’ve been in Brisbane for a total of 4 days and have enjoyed it. It’s the first big city we’ve hit in Australia which has its pros and its cons. It’s much more convenient but there is less stuff to do.

We spent the first couple days roaming around the city center and going out to a few nightclubs. The city is nice and clean and the main area is a pedestrian street with lots of buskers to keep things entertaining. It’s a lot of shopping and restaurants, but that’s about it. The biggest thing I was surprised about with the shopping in Brisbane is the jewellery stores. At home, in a display facing the street they may have a few pricey items in the window but nothing major, or they’d have bars on the windows as well. Here, there are $60,000 diamond rings in the window that you can just look at. All I can think is why wouldn’t someone just smash the window and take all they could get?

During the day we also went to a winter festival which was very similar to that German Christmas market we had this past winter at home. It was really weird. Hot chocolate, fake snow, an ice rink… it was like 15 degrees outside! Bass ackwards!

We also took the time to see The Hangover II which was funny… not as good as the first one though. Here, you get assigned seats in the theatre which is different.

Kirsten and Shannon love heading out to the nightclubs so we went out 2 nights. I personally hate nightclubs…they make me think about work while pushing away dirty tourists and spending my life savings on a drink. Not my idea of fun.

Bindi and Bob Irwin on top of the croc. Photo by moi!

However, speaking of fun…today we went to The Australia Zoo which is rated one of the best zoos in the world and is owned by the Irwin family (as in Steve Irwin, Croc Hunter guy). The zoo was dead which was awesome… no lines, no pushing etc. The best parts of the zoo is they had an open field of kangaroos and koalas and you could just hang out with them and pet them. The best part of the day though was the surprise that after a 2 year hiatus of not filming, the Irwin family chose today to start shooting a bit for a new series!

So, we saw Terri, Bindi and Bob Irwin from about a meter or less away wrestle a crocodile (with help from a few trainers of course) and tie the croc up to move him from one area to another. It was so cool! It was already interesting to see how they go about wrestling a croc and tying him up while avoiding an attack but it was really neat to see the Irwin family. I don’t think you can get more Australian then that.

Again, tomorrow we are crossing our fingers and watching the game (it’s times like these I wish I were home) and then taking the bus to Surfers Paradise which has been described to us as a Miami type of place where there is the city and the beach. Should be fun! Hope all is well at home.