After two comfortable but what seemed like extremely long flights we finally landed in Brisbane at about 6.30 this morning. Despite having heard a number of horror stories about getting through passport control and Boarder security we found the whole process very easy and organised so much so that by 7.30 we found ourselves sitting in the car in glorious sunshine. This meant we arrived at the hotel about 8.00am and checked into our room, grateful that we had booked the hotel for last night so we could get straight in. After a light breakfast we decided to go back to the room to try and catch up on some sleep because although we had both slept on the plane we were still very tired. Luckily we set the alarm as we both went into a deep sleep. After a shower to wake ourselves up we set off for the supermarket to get some coffee, sugar and a SIM card for the phone. Much to our surprise while we had been asleep the warm sunny day had turned into a grey overcast cast one! We were successful in our purchases but as we were walking back it started to rain and actually became quite hard so we decided to have a cup of coffee in the room and hope the rain passed.
About an hour so later it eased off so we set off to tourist information to see if we could get a more detailed map of Brisbane and also a more detailed heritage walk map. As it turned out they didn’t have anything more than the information I had found on their website at home but we did pick up a timetable for the ferry so rather than going on one of the tourist boats we jumped on the fast cat ferry and went all the way to one end then back to our stop. The river runs all the way through the city and seems to be well used as a commuter route, unfortunately we ended up sitting inside as it was quite chilly and damp outside but it was a good way to orient ourselves. Despite the sleep earlier we were both quite tired still so we decided to go and get something to eat before heading back to the hotel for an early night. We had a burger and a couple of drinks then went back to the room and had a coffee while challenging ourselves to stay awake for as long as possible to try and avoid jet lag!
