Wheels, Boats and Ladradoodles

After Friday’s feast; Saturday was unsurprisingly a fat day!! But also a very gorgeous 29.2 degrees outside and not wanting to waste the day Mike and I headed into Queen Street for a bit of a browse, unfortunately neither of us are great shoppers and got bored!

Knowing how much of a typical tourist I am Mike asked if I’d like to go on the Wheel of Brisbane, rather than walking past it again to yet another restaurant!

Its $15 each for 12 minutes on the wheel, there seems to be some myth that it’s up to $50 each and completely inaccessible – not so, one of the pods had seats that flip up to fit a manual chair.

We had a pod to ourselves and I had one of my three cameras to hand. My Olympus got a great work out. The wheel boasts some gorgeous 360 views of the city, suburbs and mountains, plus some forced (by me) cheesey couple photo’s of us at the top.

Views from the Wheel of Brisbane

No more photos Lynsey!

After the wheel we saw the River City Cruises boat was about to leave for a tour down the Brisbane River, we hopped on with help from the crew (the boat isn’t accessible) not before trapping my pretty new maxi dress in one of my front wheels, ripping a whole in the bottom of it! Although annoyed I was just glad the pulling of the wheel didn’t expose my modesty as the dress was strapless!

River City Cruises

The River City Cruise takes you from the South Bank to Breakfast creek in Newstead, a 1 ½ hour cruise when it’s that hot is luxuriously wonderful with the breeze and an on board bar! There are brilliant views of the city as well as a recorded history lesson along the way, and on the way back our captain told us more personable stories about the city, it’s people and the 2011 floods - also taking the mickey of his Newcastle (UK) born shipmate – worryingly unlike the rest of the passengers I could completely understand him and his Geordie accent, but thought he was Irish – doh!

Views from the Boat

After the cruise we had time to come home, change, raid the local off-licence for wine (Called – NED!!!) and XXXX beers before catching one of Brisbane’s amazingly accessible (are you reading London Transport!?!) trains to see Jenna and Brian.

Jenna was cooking us dinner and this was the first time I had visited their stunning new house and met Ciara their crazy Labradoodle. We were joined by Brian’s brother Dave who has also emigrated from the UK.

Jen had been following our Brisbane food trail and had decided to cook us a healthy and delicious  roast lamb with a Greek salad, sweet potatos and soda bread, ah my weight watchers counter would be proud!

Jenna had also made us a lemon and lime tart, She's known for her dessert disasters so we tentatively tried it before all wolfing it down – she’s cracked it an edible pud!

After being attacked by gorgeous Ciara a million times (I wanted to steal her and bring her home!) Dave offered us a lift since he lives in the West End and we chatted to him about the Aussies fear and loathing of rain, what he missed about home (in his case Ireland) and the Aussies bad habit of calling football  - soccer and flip flogs thongs – Oh Aussies you amuse us Poms!

L x