Brisbane

Our trip to Brisbane started terribly. We woke up ridiculously early, around 1am (we did go to bed at 7am) from our free rest stop around Australia Zoo and drove for around an hour and a half. 

See the plan was to get to Brisbane for just before 3am to find a parking space as we had to get to this pub Nath had found online by 3am because of licensing laws to watch England Vs Uruguay at 5am. Due to several wrong turns, we arrived and parked in Brisbane and got to the pub for 2.55am, with a mere 5 minutes to spare. We ordered a pint, the atmosphere made us!! And settled down to watch the game before, we did have 2 hours to spare.

Not the clearest picture but a picture at least. So basically the pub was your classic British football hooligan pub with extreme chanting and swearing, so I get football passion but it doesn't mean you need to swear 20 times in a row. Anyway as you can probably tell I was getting slightly annoyed, but I enjoyed the game and especially loved when Rooney scored however it would have been better if he could have scored again so we could have maybe gone through. So around 7am when the game finished we sleepily trudged to the car to find another car park so we could go and explore Brisbane. 

After consulting my Lonely Planet Guide it looked like SouthBank was the place to be and the most likely place to find a shower which we most desperately needed. Did I mention we were on day 3 of no shower, those poor people that had to sit near us. 

We found the local showers and they looked brand new and super clean so you'd expect a hot shower right? Well no, not quite what we got, absolutely freezing more like and I had to wash my hair so I ended up with brain freeze too. So as you can imagine I was not a happy bunny after this, but luck was on our side as I spotted a Max Brenner across the way. 

Several people I know who live in or have been to Australia have instagramed pictures of their Max Brenner feasts. Now for those that don't know Max Brenner, he is the chocolate god! Anyway the initial plan was to have one in Sydney just before we left, but we were cold and miserable and what better way to cheer one up than to have a chocolate feast at 8.30am in the morning.

Nath had a chocolate babka which was basically a chocolate bun with cinamon and chocolate and a pot of melted chocolate and I had a waffle with melted chocolate and we shared a thick hot chocolate. Woah that's a lot of chocolates in one sentence. Anyway it certainly cheered me up if not made me very full.

We walked along the South Bank, which had lots of little cafés, restaurants and shops and even a swimming pool, before crossing the bridge into the main city, fully equipped with our Lonely Planet.

The weather wasn't the best we've seen, note the jeans but like true tourists we saw it out, even when it drizzled quite a bit. We had planned on doing a suggested city walk, but that soon went out the window when I discovered Topshop and a sale, poor Nathan! No seriously though we didn't actually spend much time in there because we don't have enough money to buy cheese let alone a Topshop sale item. 

After a miserable first half of the day weather wise, we headed up to Mount Cooth-tha which an amazing lookout point overlooking Brisbane and luckily the sun was shining.

Next stop Surfer's Paradise...

Xoxo