Brisbane in a Day

I recently took a 6 day trip to Australia for work. I was able to arrive the weekend before our meetings which gave me a day to explore Brisbane on my own before the busy week started. It's currently winter in Australia, and believe it or not it's cold! The first part of my trip was spent in Brisbane, a ways up the east cost from Sydney. The weather there was actually perfect; around 20c during the day and cool at night. I spent my day with shorts and a hoody on and I was comfortable. Melbourne, however, was freezing. I spent my days avoiding the wind and rain, not feeling my hands and my nose running the whole time. Don't go to Australia in the winter, especially Southern Australia. It's really not pleasant.

I went to Brisbane with barely any plan or knowledge of the city, and was a little bit out of my element when I learned that, like the US, it's necessary to have a car in order to get around. With more planning and better transportation, the area provides a lot of things to do, including the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, and the famous Australian Zoo...where the Crocodile Hunter made himself famous. But those would have to wait until my next visit and instead I did the best I could using my feet and some public transportation.

I arrived late Saturday night and took a taxi to a hostel I had already booked. I woke up pretty late the next day and decided to go for a nice run along the river. My hostel was centrally located, so my run included excellent views of the downtown area along the river. I then felt like I had seen enough of downtown, and to be honest I wasn't overly impressed, so I took the city train out to Shorncliffe, one of the last stops an situated on the bay. A quick walk from the train station took me directly to the waterfront, with the prominent feature bein a long wharf full of people fishing and people watching people fish.



The views from the wharf were really nice. The bay here is called Moreton Bay, and the bit of land you can see in the far distance is called Moreton Island which is an Australian National Park popular for biking, hiking and diving. The views aren't necessarily what you'd imagine from the surf stereotype of Australia, but I thought they sky was pretty nice.



Although it was nice, it was also pretty boring. So after I grabbed some ice cream by the sea and then browsed a large grocery store, I got back on the train and went downtown. I spent the evening walking the entire downtown area. Brisbane has a pretty big downtown, but I thought it was pretty average. There is lots of graffiti, lots of tall buildings, and not a whole lot to do. There was a nice pedestrian mall area in the middle of the city and a few things here and there that were photogenic...

There were nice things:


There were weird things:


And there were not-so-nice things:


They also call Burger King Hungry Jacks:


It got dark after a while and I made my way back down to the river where I had ran earlier in the day:


Oh, and then I ate a burger:


So that was my day in Brisbane. The next day I had an all day training session with a new client and then had the evening to explore again before my colleagues arrived the next day. I had moved from the downtown area to a hotel in the suburbs near the client we were visiting. It was a pretty quaint area with lots of nice restaurants and coffee shops. There was still a few weird things to be found though:



And finally, I ate another burger. This time a classic Aussie burger complete with egg and some beet root:


The rest of the week went very well, but it was very busy. To my horror, I didn't take any other pictures during the rest of my trip. Well, I took a few of Melbourne with my iPhone but I posted them along with a few extras on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=192290&id=595296576&l=1bb6d9be74.