‚Yeah lets keep in touch and work something out when you get here.’ (1st flight change)
‚Oh no, change of plans, looks like I won’t be there that weekend.’ (2nd flight change)
‚Ah wait, change of plans again, I will be there!’ (3rd flight change)
It was off to Brisbane next and I was going to stay with a friend I had met through another friend. Gotta love how life introduces you to people and how your path in life is constantly shaped by your openness to the unknown. After bouncing back and forth, my friend and I had managed to figure things out and after several flight changes, I was leaving Cairns for Brisbane. He was such a gentlemen picking me up from the airport in the middle of the night (It was the cheapest flight!). He lived with his sister in a beautiful apartment and they had a very pretty spare room prepared for me. Sleeping in a fancy bed not having to share the room can feel so good every once in a while. And now let me take you in and show you some Brisbane attreactions.
Discovering Brisbane
In the morning, we went to a farmer’s market in the neighborhood my friend actually had never been to. It became one of these insider jokes since we ended up doing a lot of things he had never done before. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one benefitting from my visit. We wanted to leave at 9 am, so I was waiting in the living room at 9 on the dot, ready to go, when my friend was only getting up. ‘Wow, you’re right on time!’ Oh, I can get so ‘German punctual’ at times…we had a good laugh about this one.
For a day in Brisbane, you should check out the different areas. We were located in West End. The ‘Davies Park Market’ (River Market) is right next to the water and a nice option to start the day with fresh coffee while sitting in the grass and listening to acoustic music. To get around take the City Cat which is Brisbane’s water taxi, more like a ferry, but very fast so you’ll feel like you’re in a Star Wars movie. ‘Riverside Bar’ in the center is a nice place to get a feeling for the city and the people living there. My first typical Brisbane day ended with a big night out with all his friends. It was a crazy long club hopping night that involved having to change before leaving (‘Lisa, wear as little as possible’ ‘Alright, Australia!’), being thrown out the club, changing clubs, enjoying an after-clubbing-pieface and a night tour cruising the city.
For your second day, for more brisbane attractions, I can recommend getting a local breakfast at ‘Pablo’ at 893 Brunswick Street. I had Ricotta Pancakes with blueberries and pina colada ice cream coated in chocolate. It was the fanciest breakfast I have had for a very affordable price. Afterward, the ‘Newfarm Cinemas’ were screening Finding Nemo in 3D. It’s odd to me to just purchase your tickets and sit wherever you want. Well, we were also late so we ended up having to split up, finding ourselves next to some kids. We were the only grown-up gang in that cinema.
The rest of the day I went to check out more of Brisbane with a friend I had met on the dive boat but who actually lived in Brisbane. By now she has moved to Spain and we maintained close friends which is a beautiful thing. Check out ‘Mt Coot’tha’ and drive up to the lookout point. There are cafés up there and the view over the city is priceless. The ‘Mt Coot’tha Botanical Gardens’ are also worth spending some time there. Watch out for the spiders though, they’re everywhere and you might run right into a spider net with a big fat spider waiting for you. Another local experience was my friend’s house as she lived in a beautiful one-story Victorian house up on a hill with a pretty porch and garden. We were chatting for hours and a final ‘It might be time to drop you off home eh?’ led to spending even more time together in another area.
Brisbane has great restaurants; make sure to try out different ones away from the touristic areas. ‘The Burrow’ is a great place for Pizza as they have wild creations like ‘Peach & Maple Pizza’ and ‘Pumpkin Pizza’. And the best: you can share a pizza and try various creations like that. Also, at this place, I first got introduced to ‘Dirty Chai’ which is basically Chai Latte Tea with an Espresso shot. I had never heard of it but have been ordering it ever since, getting a lot of weird looks from German waiters. We finished the day off chilling at my friend’s place watching ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ which already had me excited for Hawai’i and was a funny coincidence since another friend sent me a long as message with recommendations what to do in Hawai’i and mentioned I should jump off the cliff the actors in ‘forgetting Sarah Marshall’ jump off from.
My days in Brisbane were perfect. Thanks to my friends I felt like home and got the perfect package and local experience. Australians are great people and I am glad I can call some of them my friends. They bring a certain kind of positivity into your life that is really uplifting.
~ Ready for some last days in Sydney ~