Monday, October 13, 2003

 
Brisbane Day #2 - Monday

Woke up around 9, made breakfast for Ritsu and around 10 AM we left to explore the city. First stop was the local and nearby Apple Centre, but I behaved and did not buy anything.

Again we walked through the Queen Street Mall and went further, passing the Casino, over a bridge and we were at the part of the city called South Bank, where the huge Performing Art Centre, home of the Queensland Opera resides (among other things) and we bought tickets for a performance of "Sweeny Todd" for tomorrow. We then walked down the beautiful riverside, passing a beautiful Nepalese Temple, a very beautiful artificial beach/pool thing, which on a monday morning was pretty empty, mainly moms with their toddlers, a deserted IMAX theater (closed a year ago, lack of audience) and lots of nice shops. Initially we wanted to take a ferry, but we felt good and took another bridge back and ended up in the Botanical Garden.




Above:Nepalese Tempel, Articicial beach with Brisbane skyline, beautiful purple growth, panoramic shot(click for larger version), waterside of the botanical garden, nice bauhaus-like highrise, chinatown

There is also a Quicktime VR clip of the panoramic shot.

After walking through the beautiful gardens we crossed the city again (me checking out some computer shops on the way, while Ritsu checked shoes) and went to the central station, hopped on a train, got off next stop, and we were in Chinatown (which is around Brunswick Street/ Wickham Street). Idea was to have lunch at "The Vietnamese Restaurant". (After having been to the "Fish Restaurant" last night, one wonders how creative the people here are when they name their eateries).

The food was great: Mini Spring rolls in a size that you wonder how monstrous then the Maxi's must be, a special duck dish, which was with 16AUD a bit more expensive than other dishes .. but it was also quit big in size. The pork spare ribs we ordered were actually a bit too much then, we were full.

A stroll through chinatown then, checking out a nice asian supermarket. Then walking all the way back to the hotel.

And right now I am sitting again in a cafe on Queen Street (after shopping for some discount books) and enjoy the free, albeit slow wireless internet connection. I actually got a reply from the people behind the project and they confirmed that the service is indeed restricted to ports 80 and 442 which means that I can only check websites, too bad, would be great to run the webcam from here. They also seem to have some funky cache setup, I cannot really reload my own blog.
posted by Peter 6:46 PM