Time Travel
Brisbane, 1st to 2nd February 2002
After a bad night's sleep we all woke up at about 9am, hot and
sticky. The room didn't have air-conditioning, just a big fan that
didn't turn properly. It blew cool air into the room with the same
force as a poorly kitten exhaling.
At about 10:29, just as we were about to leave our room, there was a
strange announcement on the PA system. It said that "breakfast would
be served until 10:30, so place your order whenever you're ready".
One minutes notice? That didn't leave much time!
When we were all ready to go, we said good bye and good luck to
Stinge because he was about an hour away from doing his SKY-DIVE!
The remaining three of us then jumped on the free shuttle to the
city centre.
Brisbane is quite a nice city. It's situated on a winding river,
which sparkles in the sun. Along the river bank, a set of main roads
on stilts, spiral in and out of each other, winding along with the
river. There is a fairly small, but sufficient selection of shops,
concentrated in one area, making it easy to get around.
In order to stop us from being tempted to go shopping, we went to
the cinema to watch the Lord Of The Rings film again.
We bought tickets for the 1:30 showing at about 1:25 and hurried in.
But when we gave the girl our tickets, she looked at them and said
we were an hour early! We looked at our watches & didn't understand.
Then the guy next to her asked if we'd just come up from Sydney,
which we had. He explained that Brisbane is an hour behind Sydney,
it was only 12:30 and we hadn't set our watches!
That explained the strange announcement this morning, the breakfast
call was made at 9:30, not 10:30. It also explained why Pat was a
bit puzzled when we arrived and she had to run off to the shops! We
thought we were 20 minutes late, when we were actually 40 minutes
early! Sorry Pat!
After getting a quick, cold drink from Starbucks, we went back to
the cinema and watched the film. It was even more fantastic than the
first time!
The rest of the day went fairly quietly, we just strolled, chilled &
relaxed for a bit. Basically, we avoided spending money!
In the evening I phoned our friend Josh. Josh went to Bay House
School with us and by coincidence, he was out in Australia at the
same time we were. We agree to meet for lunch at 2pm the next day.
(Lunch at 2pm? Josh must be planning a big night out tonight!)
(NOTE FROM STINGE: "The sky-dive was immense!")
The next day we meet, as planned, in the Myer Centre. He looked
remarkably...well...the same, so we had no difficulty spotting him.
The only differences were that he was a lot thinner and he had
blonde bits in his hair.
We spend a long time chatting & catching up on life in England (he
only left about a week ago). We also discovered why he suggested
having lunch at 2pm. By that time, all the business people have gone
back to work so the food vendors drop their prices drastically!
Fantastic food at fantastic prices!
Josh showed us around Brisbane City Centre for a bit. He'd only been
there a week and he already thouhgt he owned the place! Seriously,
he said he loves it here and he'll probably move out here after
university. Brisbane's ok, I guess, but as they say, beauty is in
the eye of the beholder!
We take a quick visit to the Art Gallery, it was good, but quite
small compared to some of the others we've seen. We only took a
whiz-bang tour around it before heading back to the hostel.
Josh managed to convince Stinge and I to come out pubbing tonight
with him and the people he's staying with.
At 10:30pm we meet Josh and two of his friends, Lucy and Alicia. We
rushed off to a highly-recommended club with a live band.
Unfortunately, Stinge and I couldn't gett in because we weren't
wearing proper shoes. We try the "We're backpackers so we can't
carry loads of shoes" excuse. We even try the "We're English
Students, so have pity on us" excuse, but the bouncer was having
none of it.
In the end, Josh, Stinge and I headed down to a different pub for
the evening. After the bouncers carefully scrutinised our passports
and had a good laugh at Josh's "psychopathic" passport photo we got
in.
After a few hours of drinking, chatting, drinking, laughing and
drinking, Stinge and I decided that we'd ruined our budgets enough
and called it a night.
We left Josh to meet up with his other friends (he's brought proper
shoes with him) and we headed back to the hostel.
It was very late, so we snuck in as quietly as we could and tip-toed
up the stairs to our room. Em & Nat were already asleep and in no
time we collapsed and fell fast asleep too.
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