Blog 5, Margarita Madness

Blimey, not sure what you will get in the blog tonight mainly based on the title, I am a little bit squiffy – but more of that later. Firstly, lets address the elephant in the room….

I know back home there is a big debate about should salt and vinegar crisps be in blue or green packets – well take a look at this

Pink!

Madness!!!

We had a chilled morning, Em got up and went for a swim in the hotel pool, and I just chillaxed and worked out a route for our day. We really needed the later start, our batteries were running low.

We started the day in the Queensland Art Gallery (what3words: verbs.calls.clots) – there are two of them, within 100m of each other, and we opted for the main gallery rather than the Modern Art one. I must say, I was a bit confused by the installations – I generally find at least one thing that I fall in love with, but I did not find one single thing that I would hang – I don’t have any pics that I would want to share with you, apart from this one

Now I have looked though my pictures, I have found one that I quite liked

The reason I liked it was due to school groups going around the gallery. They had worksheets to fill in, with specific tasks and activities. The instruction for this image was ‘stand quietly in front of this painting and make a note of what it makes you think about’. I was listening in to what the kids were saying to their teacher (they were about 7 yrs old) one said they could see maths (and I get the angles, circles, and geometry). Another said it seemed oily (I get that too, I can see puddles of oily substance) one girl said it made her feel she was in an old house looking through a broken window. I guess that is the point of art, to make you think and feel, but if it weren’t for the kids, I may have just glanced at this and moved on. In case you are interested, it made me think of a pool in a cave which was hung with spider webs…

After the gallery we had lunch outside Emily’s happy place, the Library (last night’s leftovers) and popped in to the library café for a brew. Then we went for a walk along the riverbank towards the Brisbane Wheel. The river is so clean! There is none of the detritus that washes up against our major riverbanks. Actually, it is not just the river that is clean – the whole city is.

We took flight on the Brisbane Wheel – not what we expected!

It spins really fast! There is an audio guide that points out various landmarks (I could not find any of them, lol) but it did not matter as we went round 5 times!

From the Wheel we took a walk along the South Bank, these are some of the highlights:

A Nepalese Peace Temple – it truly was a peaceful place, so nice just to sit and be, even if this is a rubbish picture of it.

Banana Ice cream – I feel the themes of the blogs this year will be ice creams and margaritas! The ice cream was delicious, but the chocolate sauce was a mistake – they do something to chocolate over here to stop it melting… it is not good.

There are public BBQs everywhere in the open spaces and parks. People just rock up and cook their food, clean up and go! Everyone is very considerate; they don’t leave a mess and leave everything as they found it.

We have a problem with seagulls at home, over here it is Ibis that are the problem. My friend Jodie calls them bin dippers as they steal stuff from the rubbish bins and there are ‘Don’t feed the IBIS’ signs everywhere.

There are a couple of public pools to swim in by the river so you are not tempted to go into the river itself, and they have life guards and beach – what more would you want?

(that is sand on the bottom)

We decided to take a trip on the City Cat, a boat which is part of the local transport here. You cannot buy a ticket at the boat though, we had to go and find a little store that sold them. We tried the Local Information booth (where you would expect to be able to buy one right? Nope) but we had to go to the souvenir store for one – they were very helpful though and we got into a big debate as to why Australian chocolate is not great – if you don’t know any better you are bound to like it – but they did sell us a ‘go card’ which is like an Oyster Card in the UK and we tootled onto the City Cat. I honestly thought it was going to be like the Vancouver Ferry and we would be there and back in double quick time, but two hours later we were still on board and worried we were going to miss our dinner date!

We did get to see yet another side of Brisbane though – I took too many pics to post here, and they don’t really translate onto paper, but this one had me thinking… it looked like half the cladding had come loose, but it was actually designed that way, and the tiny building next to it – one of very few ‘older’ structures that we have seen here, and it is absolutely dwarfed by the skyscrapers.

We saw lots of very expensive houses, with yachts parked outside, there was definitely a mediterranean vibe, I am glad we took the trip or we would never have seen that side of the city. After our waterbus it was time to catch up with my friend Joanne and her daughter Beth for dinner. So we took a walk along the South Bank to meet them.

Tonight we went to El Camino which was a mexican (what3words: hurry.admiral.assist) and we have the hats to prove it!

This is where Em had her win with Margaritas – she found one I liked, so I actually had one all to myself! It was a frozen passionfruit margarita, and yep, I would have another 😊

Honestly it only seems five minutes since Emily would always order a Lasagne in a restaurant, so she could compare and score them – now it is Margatitas!

It was quite emotional to say bye to Joanne and Beth tonight - considering I have not seen her for so many years, it was just as if it were yesterday that we were working and laughing together. It has done my soul good to catch up with her. Once we left the girls, we wandered back towards our hotel, stopping off at The Plough Inn (What3words: crowds.motel.free) because they had live music and we are suckers for a man with a guitar.

I had a Butterfly Effect and Em had a pint, which she said was tasty! I do enjoy a fruity cocktail and this one was gin based.

There is a great vibe on the South Bank – it really came alive once the sun went down, and we cut quite a sight with 4 Sombreros between the two of us 😊

We are heading off to meet the famalam for the start of wedding celebrations tomorrow, not sure if I will have internet as it is quite remote, good job I have numbered the blogs so you can see if you missed one 😊