Becky & Becca in Australia: Brisbane: aka Koala Land

We got to Sydney at 9 pm and caught a taxi to Albert's apartment. After going up a HUGE hill and 3 stories, we took over his apartment throwing on cute outfits and make up so we could go as quickly as possible to grab Albert's birthday dinner. He decided on kebabs, so we met up with Jack (another IES friend) and the four of us went to go get kebabs. (Fact: Kebabs here are more like burritos). We enjoyed some kebabs and went back to Albert's to focus on making sure the birthday boy had a birthday drink. Rob joined us and the 5 of us enjoyed playing some card games before going out to the Coogee Bay Hotel for a round. We got into bed late but enjoyed sleeping in the next day and grabbing some lunch with Albert before packing back up and heading to the airport. The past week had made us realize how much stuff we had really brought, and we now had a week of dirty clothes! Luckily, Albert let us store some of our stuff at his place so that our bags would be dramatically lighter! We caught a cab with a hilarious Asian taxi driver who loved Tina Turner. The flight was quick and we took a train to our hostel. While it was only around 6 pm in Brisbane, we were completely exhausted. We got into our room, which we discovered was more like a dark tunnel. With all the grocery stores closed (they close as 5 pm!), we found a small italian restaurant to split a pizza at. The pizza led to a Tim Tam slam craving so we found a Night Owl Convenience Store to get some Tim Tams and milk at. We ate them and watched some tv in the tv lounge before getting into bed really early.

The next day we decided to head to a market and lagoon! But before we could go, we needed to head to a Woolworth's to get some groceries for our stay in Brisbane. Look at us being economical!!!! We got some food and then enjoyed some fruit loops in a park since we were starving. The market was so fun and we both found cute things to purchase. The market even had both of our favorite snacks! Becky got to have some corn on the cob and Becca got a chocolate covered banana! After exploring the market, we headed to the lagoon where we spent the rest of the day. After lots of hours of enjoying the sun, we headed back to the hostel to cook what we though would be a delicious dinner.

We had planned to make some chicken and cheese quesadillas. Easy right? Wrong. We will go ahead and blame the celsius cook tops for our problems. We started off by trying to cook our chicken. It was going okay until it kept sticking to the skillet despite us trying to use butter as a barrier between chicken and skillet. To make the chicken cook faster, we decided to try and cut the raw chicken with a knife while it was cooking. It helped the cooking time, but not the sticking situation. We then tried to warm the tortillas but then ended up burning before we could add the chicken and cheese on them! Becca tried to fix the situation by cutting the tortillas in half before trying to make the quesadillas but when that failed she got flustered and when to do dishes as therapy. Becky tried turning the burner temperature down so the quesadillas wouldn't cook so fast but it ended up not cooking the quesadillas at all, but instead soaking them in butter. Eventually, we ended up with 1 1/2 burnt quesadillas and 1/2 of a buttered quesadilla mess. Luckily, we also had some mexican style rice and chips and salsa. We were able to laugh about the whole situation once we had sat down and we weren't being stared at anymore. Needless to say, we still finished our meals despite the butter not really sitting well.

Since we were living in a tunnel with no light and bunk beds, we decided to go out and enjoy a drink and see some of Brisbane. We had seen an incredibly cool looking building that we ended up finding out was a bar in our travel book. It's hard to explain the amazingness of this bar. The pictures can't even do it justice. It was voted as the best bar in Queensland but we want to nominate is as the best bar in the world. We walked in and were in awe. Luckily, it was a Sunday night so we were able to explore the whole bar (which is HUGE) and see all the different themed areas (and take pictures) without feeling like complete freaks. Some of the highlights would include:

-a bar made out of crystal balls that could spin and light up to make different patterns

-the amazing bathrooms

-grass on the steps of the stairs

The next day was dedicated to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary!! We had already decided to do EVERYTHING Lone Pine had to offer since we had a whole day to kill. We started off by going to a chick and guinea pig holding session. Then Becca made Becky sit through a Bird of Prey show. Next on the list was a sheep dog show and a sheep shearing show which was amusing!! It was basically a scene out of the movie Babe! After that, we went to a paltypus session and walked through all the different sections of Koalas. Lone Pine has the most Koalas in the world (over 130 of them!) and they are in different living areas according to their age. There is a kindergarten area, mom and baby area, bachelor pad, retirement home and much more! After that it was finally time to HOLD A KOALA!!!!! It was like meeting Santa!! We were about to pee our pants from excitement! We got paired with a koala named Orion who was absolutely precious. Neither of us wanted to let him go and once we had to, all we could focus on was getting the pictures we had ordered. To get our minds off the wait, we went to go hang out with the kangaroos. When we were done our pictures were ready and our faces were glowing with happiness! We ended the day with a lorikeet feeding which was absolutely hilarious. When the lady walked out with their food, the wild birds started flying from all directions to get to the food. When we fed them they were all over our food container and our heads. We couldn't stop laughing but we couldn't even hear each other over all the noise the birds were making!

We caught a bus back to our hostel, and by the time we got back we were STARVING from just eating snacks all day. We had reservations at a restaurant called Garuva. We had read about Garuva in our travel book which called it "the most unique dining experience in Queensland". It talked about how you would sit on cushions on the floor and have curtains around your table for an intimate dining experience. We laughed at the thought of the two of us at this romantic restaurant and decided it would be our nice meal our for the next week. We got all dolled up and started walking to the restaurant. We knew what street it was on, and what two intersecting streets it was in between but somehow we didn't see it. We kept calling the restaurant but it would only transfer to voicemail. Becca saw the restaurants address but it only took us to an architecture firm. After walking the street some more, we finally saw a pathway filled with big plants and waterfalls and realized it was where we needed to be. We got there and enjoyed a drink at the bar before going to our private table. Being the goofy girls we are, we loved having the privacy so we could be our complete selves without being judged. We enjoyed some coconut prawns, chicken and of course got the chocolate cake with ice cream! Everything was delicious and we loved our date. Being really full, we headed back to the hostel and fell asleep with happy bellies.

Our next day was going to be filled mostly with a 7 hour bus ride. We spent the morning relaxing and making mac n cheese (much easier than quesadillas) before heading to the bus station. Our hostel dropped us off and we checked in only to find out that our bus was running an hour late. FANTASTIC! We used the time as an opportunity to write some post cards. We finally got on the bus and relaxed until the dinner stop. We always look forward to the truck stop dinners we get when on our bus rides :). When we got back on the bus, we were not really looking forward to the 3 hours left we had of our bus ride. Our attitudes immediately changed when the bus driver all of a sudden put the movie You've Got Mail on!! We flipped out (of course!) since we are both HUGE fans of the movie. We sat back, relaxed, and laughed as Becky quoted the whole movie.

Since we weren't supposed to get into Hervey Bay until 9 pm, we had talked to our hostel about how we could get there. They had told us we could catch another hostel's bus because the hostel is located across the street. However, with the bus delay, we missed the shuttle but luckily were able to split a cab with two people who were staying in the hostel across the street. We found our key in a box they had told us we would be in, and we thought we would be smooth sailing from this point. However, we ended up having to battle the locked gate. Becca tried using the 2 keys to unlock it and we were really starting to get frustrated when Becky found a pole to pull up and TA DA! The gate opened. We were welcomed by a huge room (especially compared to the tunnel) with two beds, a tv, dvd player and our own bathroom!! We were so excited to even have room to leave our suit cases out instead of always having to store them under our bed.

Time to grab a delicious dinner from our dorm! Next blog post will be our shenanigans in Hervey Bay!!!!