Day 9 - Brisbane

After a one of my top 10 all time best sleeps of my life, I awoke to get up and cook a normal breakfast for the first time in weeks. I scrambled some eggs and accompanied them with yogurt and an awesome granola bar. Short after, I visited the coffee shop at the bottom of our building to get my day started right. We all met at 9:30am to walk down to the waterfront to board a boat for a river tour of Brisbane. It was so relaxing because the weather is abnormally cool here, but still comfortable enough for shorts. During our river tour, we saw some of the coolest houses and hotels. Brisbane is so much cleaner/nicer looking than Sydney. After our tour, we walked across the bridge into the downtown area. Brisbane has the coolest downtown shopping area. It is pedestrian-only which allows for great flow of human traffic. The entire area is kept in pristine condition with landscaping, benches, awnings, and an event stage. While we were walking around the downtown area, I noticed 5 or so city workers that were going around and sweeping up trash and debris. Sydney could use about 2000 of these people.

We had this afternoon off to work on our blogs and temporary structures homework assignment. I never thought an internet connection would be so hard to come by. Our apartment style hotel charges $27.00 a day with a 50MB data limit. If I uploaded 20 pictures to Facebook, I would almost reach this limit. The lack of internet has really strained our ability to complete our assignments in a timely manner. Thank goodness our professors are in the same boat as the rest of us. We have found a McDonald's down the street that has Free wifi. This McDonald's has a McCafe inside, which is almost like a starbucks. I never knew how nice McDonald's could be. All the chain fast-food restaurants in Australia seem to have better service than their USA counterparts.

Tonight we are going to eat dinner at a brewery who specializes in a couple of local Australian beers. It should be a good time but today has worn me out. I can say with 100% confidence that I will be in bed by 10pm. Also, forgot to mention we rode a large riverfront ferris wheel yesterday. Pictures are below.

 These arbors may be one of the coolest things. 

They were all around the riverfront park walkways

 One of the two public pools in the park. It is built to 

mimic a beach with sand.

 View from the waterfront park.

 View from the ferris wheel

 Another from the ferris wheel

The ferris wheel. Keep in mid each cabin is air conditioned

with seating for 6, so the ride is fairly large. 

 The upper level of our river tour boat. 

 The view off the back of the boat. 

 These are riverside cliffs where rock for many of 

Brisbane's early buildings was quarried.

 One of the main bridges in Brisbane that was built

in the 1930s. I like the pedestal support columns. 

Everything here looks so nice.

 One of the houses on the riverfront. 

 Another house on a large hill overlooking the river.

Apparently it is one of the oldest in Brisbane and is 

built from the rock mined from the riverside cliffs. 

This is what the coke cans say here.