Day 27- Brisbane success

May 22, 2011- Day 27

Where: Mount Tamborine to Brisbane

Dinner: Chinese Food after a serious Yum Cha let down :(

Finally made it to the city

      After one failed attempt, we successfully arrived in Brisbane today! It rained on and off all night which is rather difficult to sleep through completely because the rain hitting the roof is loud. When we woke up with was raining, but I was able to make coffee while standing under the hatchback door. You do what you have to do to get the coffee!! I have realized that unless I eat as soon as I wake up, and quickly follow it with some coffee, then I become a very irritable and unhappy person. I'm so glad we have our aeropress coffee maker. Life saver.

        We waited for the rain to die down before we drove down the mountain. It was a quick drive into the city where we found some free street parking because it was Sunday. It only rained a little bit during the day so wandering around the city was fine. We went on a walk around the city and down along the river that winds through the city. There were a couple weekend markets going on, so we were able to get some street food and buy some curry paste from a little Indian woman. Brisbane isn't particularly large, or at least it is all centered in a downtown area. By the afternoon we has already seen most of downtown and stopped to have a cider at an outdoor bar.

        We saw an ad for cheap yum cha at a Chinese restaurant and we decided to get that for dinner. Yum cha is like dim sum, which just means that they bring around carts with lots of little dishes on it and you pick ones that you want. They didn't open until 5:30, and we were both really hungry by 4:30 so it was a stretch to wait that long. We made it, however, and at 5:30 we went to the restaurant only to find that the special was only available at lunch time. Noooo! Yum cha is usually pretty expensive so we had been so excited. Hopes crushed. Tummies empty. Sadness. We didn't want to pay for the dinner prices so we wandered the streets trying to forget about all the yummy foods we had been anticipating. It was a bit like last night at the pizza place, only worse. I know, if this is this is the biggest problem we have in our lives then we are doing very well. We ended up finding a cheap Chinese restaurant. I think every time we eat out it's Asian food.

        We are staying the night in a caravan park. Not like a campground, but like a place where lots of people live in trailers permanently. They also have a camping area though. The place is a little bit depressing, but the amenities are great. And one trailer had a nice boat parked next to it. So maybe some of these people live cheaply and then buy nice things like boats? We arrived after dark and played cards for a while. We roll up our bedding and keep it along one side of the van during the day, and last night for the first time I realized how comfortable it is to lay down on top of the pile of blankets and pillows. I laid down at was so snuggly that I fell asleep at like 10pm. Pat was awake a while longer, but he never woke me up. I woke up at 1am and realized that I hadn't gotten ready for bed. I hate doing to bed without brushing my teeth, so I got up to make a run to the bathrooms. Pat was angry that I woke him up, but he came too. Pat is hilarious when he's just woken up, so he was making angry jokes at me the whole time. It's actually a pretty awesome quality of his. Then we went back to bed. The end.