Brisbane, Part I

Our first impressions of Brisbane were pretty positive and after spending two nights here we still like the city a lot. Supposedly it never rains here, but that is a lie because on our first full day it totally poured on us. We had planned on having a look around the city botanical gardens but ended up ducking for cover under some trees and exploring the free art museum of Queensland University of Technology.

We went to the Farmers Market in the rain, but that didn't stop us from having lots of samples of all sorts of fruits and cheeses.

The next day we took the bus out to the bigger botanical gardens at the base of Mt Coot-tha, and after looking around the gardens we hiked up to the lookout. There were great views of the city (not seen in this picture). This is me, Jaimee, Michelle and friend Yael who is also from Massachusetts and studying at the University of Queensland with Michelle.

We took the bus back into town and climbed up the tower of City Hall. Our guide book said it would cost $2 to climb the 300 foot tower but as a bonus, it is now free! You have to take the elevator (lift) which was a little disappointing as I would have preferred stairs, but hey, we saved $4!

We have more pictures (with captions!) on our picasa page but we will be adding to them for sure as tomorrow we're heading out to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary where we have been promised that we can hold Koalas and feed kangaroos! It is a bit ridiculous that we've been in Australia three days now and haven't seen a kangaroo (or koala) yet.

We are writing this blog post at our second couchsurfing hosts in Brisbane. The first couple had a two night limit so we found this other house within walking distance of Michelle's dorm. It is a huge house of five students, three of which we've met so far - two from France and one from Germany. They said they were going to cook a group meal after they finished some school work, but it's almost 8PM now and with our jet lag we're hitting the wall early, but we'll see what happens...although I will say I'm enjoying the music selection the French student is playing; we've heard french-language rap, Neil Young, and a song from Grease, among others. Couchsurfing is interesting to say the least.