6.28.06

Brisbane

Our day started with a city tour by bus. We went to the botanic gardens of Brisbane, where our guide told us a hilarious story about Steve Irwin that I’ll share if you ask. Something I noticed in Cairns that I also see here is the electrical boxes for street/traffic lights are all painted with mini murals. Some of these little art pieces are pretty lame, like giant psychedelic mushrooms and stuff like that, but some are awesome (like this one), and I like the idea of public art over industrial drab.

We were also told today that XXXX is the Queensland “local” beer, meaning it is brewed in the state. Apparently, the number of X’s signifies the quality of the hops used to brew the beer, and 4 X’s is pretty top notch. I guess that means that Dos Equis is hardly a bragging right.

Mount Coot-tha provides a very nice view of Brisbane and its suburbs, and has a cute coffee shop on top where we drained the last of our Aussie cash. We were enjoying the view so much that we lost track of time and almost got left by the bus. At least they speak English here.

My brother and father went and took a train to Surfer’s Paradise this afternoon, so mom and I galavanted about the shopping arcade and went to Target. The Aussie Target has a period at the end, like so:

Target.

I thought this was cute. Also, all of the Target store brands are different here, and they don’t have any of the Luella Bartley or Isaac Misrahi stuff we have. They do have some decent clothes, though, so mom bought me a couple of pretty dresses and some rad gloves for New Zealand (brrrrr).

Mom and I enjoyed some boyfriend champagne then tried to go bowling, but it was league night ☹ . We also tried to catch a movie, but the movies weren’t very good and it costs 14$ for a matinee! What the heck is that about? So we went to a casino for a minute, lost a dollar, and my mom got hollered at by some drunk Aussie man.