The Luck of the Irish...

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! I just returned from my first trip to Brisbane. The city is located about an hour north of Ashmore, and is accessible by train and bus. This trip was more of a chance to explore the transportation and see how to get there and what the area was like. Now that we know how to get there and around, future trips will be better planned! I am looking forward to returning to Brisbane, as we only got to spend the afternoon this time.
 

I enjoyed the city's architecture -a mix of old and modern contemporary buildings. There was a beautiful memorial in the center of the city as well as statues all throughout the city. They also have beautiful Cathedrals and clock towers.


During our trip we were dropped off at Central Station and walked to the Queen Street Mall, which is very large and partially outdoors. There are several shops and cafes along the streets and everyone was very festive sporting traditional Irish colors, despite the rain. We grabbed lunch from a cafe called The Coffee Club on the corner of Adelaide Terrace.


Our transportation was a disaster -so for anyone else planning to venture to Brisbane, make sure to pay close attention! First, we missed our local bus which would have taken us to the Nerang Train station. We were on the wrong side of the road, and the bus came on the opposite side and left before we could cross. Because it was Saturday, and a holiday, the bus only ran once every two hours. So we decided to take a cab to the train station instead, and hop on the train to Brisbane from there. We arrived at the train station just in time to catch the ten a.m. train, only we had to grab a ticket to get on. We ended up missing the train waiting in line for the ticket, only to find out that with our go cards (the prepaid card that we use to get on the bus for school) we didn't need a ticket! So we went on the next train a half hour later and arrived at a town close to Brisbane where jumped on a bus to Central Station. On the way home from Brisbane, we took the train again and got stuck in the pouring rain! I guess the tracks were too wet and we had to find an alternate route. When we started moving again (an hour later) we headed back to Nerang Train Station where we had to call a cab because we had missed the last local bus to take us back home. This would have been okay on a normal day but because there was a huge Rugby Game and it was St. Patty's Day we were having a hard time calling a cab. It took over an hour to catch one, but finally -after three hours we were home sweet home!




Overall, even with the unexpected setbacks, I had an amazing day and I would do it again in a heartbeat! There are so many things to do in Brisbane, in the future I would like to go to the Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin's Zoo) the Cultural Center, Queensland Museum, the Botanical Gardens, Chinatown, the West End, and do a hop on / hop off river tour to see more of the city. Here are some photos of our day downtown hopefully I will be able to add more soon!