After a bit of a hooha with our luggage being overweight at the airport (!) we arrived in Brisbane. We stayed for three nights at the Brisbane Riverview Hotel, which was lovely (the wallpaper sold it!) It was located outside of the Central Business District but as it was on the river it meant we could jump on the ferry at Bretts Wharf (like a local Brisbanite).

Nearby was a new development of riverside apartments, restaurants and shops. We had dinner here a couple of times and even managed to squeeze in a couple of pudding stops at a chocolate cafe and a Movenpick ice cream bar (when in Rome and all that!)

We spent a day exploring the centre of Brisbane and as expected it was an energetic river town – very cosmopolitan with lots of high rise buildings. We strolled through the Botanic Gardens and across the river along the Southbank. The gardens on both side were beautiful combined with a man made beach, views of the river / city on one side, a beer / ice cream stop and of course the sunshine made it the perfect day! Our last stop was more of a pit stop in the Gallery of Modern Art (it was nearby, free and air conditioned). Much like the Tate Modern at home, the classification of ‘art’ is definitely in the eye of the beholder (the architecture of the building itself was probably the most impressive thing). One artist we did think was cool was Lawrence English. He wants to capture wishes from all over the world, so we went into a little booth and uploaded our wishes to the ‘wish cloud’ where they can then ‘rain’ down on other visitors when we are not there!

We also spent a day at Australia Zoo, home of the late crocodile hunter Steve Irwin. Dean used to love watching Steve wrestle with crocs on TV and was muttering a lot of his sayings throughout the day (crikey this and crikey that!) so it was well worth a visit. The zoo was huge and we were lucky to catch a lot of the feeding times. Best thing of all was that I got to hold a Koala bear (adorable but I did smell for the rest of the day because of it!) Dean would argue that the croc show was better!

On the coach we go to Noosa!