May 30th, Brisbane South Bank

Downtown Brisbane from South Bank

The Brisbane wheel in South Bank

The sign says "Please don't set glasses on ledge"

The is the train we daily take into Brisbane and the surrounding areas

Today after doing a little gocery shopping at the mall in Indoorpoolilly (pronounced inderpilly) we took the train into Brisbane to visit the part of the city called South Bank. I had been here a few days before so I felt like I knew where I was going. Tom, Anthony and Trevor joined me. It was a nice sunny day, probably the warmest since we have been here -still not warm enough for me to wear shorts though! We arrived around lunch time so our first stop was finding a place to feed 2 teenage boys. The South Bank area in Brisbane is known for their restaurants sidewalk cafes, cultural center and museum. The large Brisbane Wheel (ferris wheel) is located there too.  Lunch was at a crepe cafe...yummy. It reminded me of home though since I have eaten crepes at the Cedarburg Creme and Crepe Cafe quite a few times. I guess I am getting ready for our trip to wind down (in a week I go home) because I keep thinking of all the things I am ready to see again and do again. After lunch we walked around the shops and restaurants. They have a beautiful trellis walkway with pink flowers overhead.  The Queensland museum is located nearby so we visited it. The admission is free and it was a pretty nice museum for no entrance fee. The museum was bigger than I expected. It's much smaller than the Milwaukee Public Museum but they had quite a lot of interesting Australian exibits on animals and the settlement of Australia. Tom and Anthonly went on the famous Brisbane ferris wheel. The admission was pretty steep. About a month ago I had the opportunity to ride the Navy Pier ferris wheel in Chicago so I didn't feel the need to do this one. Tom said it was much nicer than the wheel at Navy Pier (which he was on last October); smoother ride and a much longer ride too. While they were riding, Trevor and I sat and watched. I got to read my book on my Kindle (sure comes in handy!). After the ferris wheel ride we all went and had a really good fruit smoothy at a cafe nearby, then we caught the City Cat ferry across the water to downtown Brisbane. We mainly just walked around the Queen Street pedestarian mall and then took the train back to the house. It was beginning to be rush hour so we were glad to get out of the transit system before it was standing room only. I did take Tom and Anthony out to dinner at an Italian restaurant down the street from the house. I feel like Amy has enough work with 8 people visiting their house at once.  We had gourmet pizza....excellent. Half of the pizza had curry and lamb and other exotic spices and the other half had chicken, mango and some other mild spices. It was delicious! Tomorrow we have a very early start going to the Australian Zoo so Tom, Anthony and I are going to bed early. It will be nice to do something outside of Brisbane and have a look at some Australian animals.