Ballads in Brisbane

Hi there! After Sydney, we sped things up and drove all the way up to Brisbane for a very important reason.

After watching the sunrise, we took the scenic route, leaving Dorrigo National Park, driving up the coast while Katie read to James to ensure that he finished our book club's reading in time. We drove down the mountain roads and through little towns, stopping in Ballina for coffee and to see the great tourist attraction of the giant prawn. After seeing the giant lobster, this gigantic crustacean, shrimply didn't claw our attention, so we didn't stop but just admired it through the car window and scuttled away.

The next stop was a dive warehouse in Gold Coast to take a look at some fins. We left empty-handed (and footed), deciding that the second-hand market would better suit our needs!

Then it was back on the road to the big city! We got to our campsite, rather our holiday village, got cleaned up, then hopped on the bus to go see Ed Sheeran's Loop Tour at Suncorp Stadium!

The concert was SO FUN! There were 3 opening acts, so a very long concert, but in addition to Ed, we got to see Vance Joy, Mia Wray, and Aaron Rowe. Vance Joy was a great performer; however, we suspect that he was either sick or his vocal cords needed a break after 3 back-to-back nights in Brisbane!

James sang along devoutly to every word and ended up losing his voice, and Ed set off fireworks and plumes of flame multiple times. It was a really good show! On top of the actual entertainment, we were seated at the checkpoint for all of the general admission folks to come in, so we got the additional entertainment of watching people try to sneak contraband like plastic water bottles in. Due to the very tight security, very few were successful, and I'm sure that Ed felt much safer.

And at the end, he waved to us! Just us! (not the hundreds of other fans, just us, see, one wave for James, one wave for Katie).

After 6 hours of music, we hopped back onto the very efficient public transit system and headed home just in time to watch the Canadian men's gold medal game. Just in time was actually the correct term here because we forgot that being in Queensland is a different timezone than New South Wales, so we did accidentally miss the start. But the game was exciting to the very end, despite the sad ending.

After going to bed just after 2 AM, we really should've slept in, but we had booked a morning tennis session. So we headed off to the court, tired and without sunscreen... In most situations, that would have been fine, but the 9 AM sun here is different... So we got burned:( not terribly, but we are slightly more pink than desired.

We spent the rest of the morning cooling down, and then we headed into the city to actually see Brisbane. Brisbane turns out to be a really cool city! It feels (and is) much smaller than Sydney, and its waterfront kindof gives off the same feel as Melbourne. We really enjoyed walking along the water and through the botanical gardens, then we got some tasty Thai food for dinner. Oh, we also picked up some much-needed aloe, hehe.

We've realized that for us, the best part of travelling is seeing the small towns and the cool stuff outside of the cities! So after spending one afternoon in the big city, that was enough, and we were ready to move on! Given that we basically drove right here from Sydney, we skipped a lot of the good stuff in between, like Byron Bay, Gold Coast, etc., so we're headed back down that way!