Bonjour Brisbane

We set our alarm for 05:00 as we had a 06:15 airport transfer pickup, but also so we could dry our clothes that we had washed the night before. We had attempted to use the dryer but in true student fashion, there were piles of wet clothes littered around the building in what we presumed to be a queue for the dryers (the dryers were also in use). We went into the laundry room at 05:15 expecting it to be empty, however, both dryers were in use. At just gone 05:00 people were up and about milling around the hostel, apparently too cool to sleep. We waited another 15 minutes to see if a dryer would become free but unfortunately no luck…we just had to pack our wet clothes into a plastic bag and put them into our rucksacks.

We were picked up at 06:15 and the airport bus (which cost $18 each) only took around 35 minutes to get to the airport. Our flight was at 08:00 and we decided to have a Maccy D breakfast (I had been carrying around a buy one get one free bacon and egg McMuffin voucher since Sydney which was nice to get rid of). We collected our boarding passes from the automatic machines and headed into the queue to check in our luggage.

When we got to the front of the queue, two bag check ins became free. I looked at the one to the left and it said “International Flights” and Nicola headed to that one (Nicola said the lady waved her over) and I headed to the one that appeared to be for normal domestic flights (which had four women huddled around – Nicola said that obviously meant training, it was too early for me to understand). Nicola checked her bag in in less than two minutes. It took the lady who checked me in two minutes to find out where to enter my name. After 15 minutes I was still at the station trying to check in my bag and the lady was not getting any nearer. It confused her that Nicola and I were not standing together and Nicola had already checked her bags in, I explained that Nicola was already checked in and the lady printed off a boarding pass for me. As Nicola and I were eating our breakfast we (Nicola) noticed that the lady had printed off a boarding pass for Nicola and not me. We hurried back to the bag check in and fortunately the lady who checked me in had gone to lunch so it was relatively quick and easy to explain the problem and I was given the correct boarding pass.

The flight to Brisbane from Melbourne only took 1 hour 40, but as Brisbane is one hour behind Melbourne we left the plane at just gone 09:00. After collecting our bags we caught the skytrain from the airport to Fortitude Valley where our new hotel (Brisbane Manor Hotel) was. The train journey was pretty quick, it took around 20 minutes and we left the station and walked into the lovely Brisbane heat. Apparently it stays between 16 and 28 degrees all year, and was around 23 degrees today and not a cloud in the sky…quite an improvement on Melbourne!

Finally drying the washing!! (mostly Joel's
pants!)

Brisbane was slightly hillier than we imagined and after trudging up a particularly steep hill we came onto our road (Gregory Terrace) but unfortunately, did not know which way to turn as we did not know which way our hotel was. We were without water and were starting to struggle in the heat and after spotting a café decided to head in, catch our breath, get some food and have a drink of water. We each ordered a small chips/wedges but the portion sizes were huge (I think it was the café in the Best Western Hotel) so we were pretty stuffed and were pleased that it was only $12 for both our food and drinks. We were pointed in the right direction to our hotel and we slowly made our way (thankfully) downhill to our lodgings.

After a quick relax in our room we went for a walk around the area in order to find somewhere to buy some food. We found a nearby Coles (like a Tesco) on the internet and headed over there. We thought it may be a good idea, rather than eat out every day, if we buy food for breakfast, dinner and tea and make it ourselves as the kitchen facilities were pretty extensive in the hotel. We bought our food and headed for a cheeky subway for tea before making our way back. Our first impressions of Brisbane were good, nice weather, the city seemed nice, and judging by the map we were only 15 – 20 minutes from the CBD but it seemed like we were in a large suburb than the centre of Australia’s third biggest city. Nicola and I were not going to get our hopes up too quickly about Brisbane, but we did feel that already we preferred it to Melbourne…the glorious weather definitely helped!

After getting back to the hotel (which had free Wifi in the room) we managed to speak to my mum on Skype, for the first time since we arrived in Australia which was nice and we also had a chance to email people we had been meaning to contact for a while but had been unable to because of the lack of decent Wifi in our last hotels.