G'Day!

"A dream come true."  That's what I had to keep telling myself throughout our Australia vacation.  The reason I had to continually repeat that to myself was because it was a nightmare.  Seriously.  Traveling with three kids was almost enough to make me want to order a whiskey shot from the flight attendant and down it with the entire bottle of Vicodin that the dentist gave me after the TWO root canals I had the day before we flew out.  Did I say seriously?  Cause, seriously.  Anaya cannot travel.  She is a terrible flyer and just gets all out of whack when she's out of her element.  At one point, Adam actually said to me: "I think Anaya broke this vacation."  But, despite her attempts, we did have a pretty good time.  I honestly cannot believe we finally went to Australia.  When we found out we were moving here I told Alan that I didn't want to leave without going to Australia, since we would be so much closer (the thought of making that trip all the way from the US with Anaya...no friggin' way).  Well, here we are with time running out and we actually did it!  I'm so glad we did.  It would have been great to stay longer or have the kids be a little older, but such is life.  This is where we are now and that's all the time we could spare, so I'm glad we made it happen.

Our first stop was Brisbane.  It was fun being in a big city again.  Having all the conveniences and options...loved it.  This is the only place where we stayed in a hotel.  So, being forced to eat out all the time really magnified the EXPENSIVENESS of that place.  I mean, we got 2 foot-longs and a 6-inch sub at Subway and paid $47.  And their dollar is roughly equal to ours!  $47!  $5 for a bottle of water.  $9 for body wash.  $8 for basically a travel-size bottle of sunscreen.  $150 for dinner at a casual al fresco cafe.  So city life was fun, but it was basically like living in a theme park - overpriced everything.  Here are some Brisbane highlights:

Our hotel, The Royal on the Park, was right across the street from the Botanical Gardens, which were beautiful.  There was a pond there with ducks, fish and even some eels, which the kids insisted on visiting daily to make sure the ducks and fish were well-fed.  There were also these iguana-looking lizards called water dragons that were everywhere.  Spotting them hiding among the trees and ponds was a fun game for the kids.

 

 

 

This is a terrible picture, but is dinner the first night.  See how casual it is?  Yeah...$155.

 

 

We walked across this bridge over the Brisbane River to visit a FREE water park!  We took our kids, in their normal water park gear (swimsuit), but they tended to be overdressed.  8 year old girls in just their underwear and 3 year old boys in their birthday suits were the norm.  I even saw one little boy pee in the sand, then kick sand over the spot!  At least it wasn't in the water, I guess...

 

This caused an elevated heart rate:

 

We visited a Science Center for their amazing dinosaur exhibit.  The boys were in heaven!  Adam tested his strength against the jaws of a T-Rex and Alan held a strange, obnoxiously large stick bug.

 

 

 

 

We splurged on a nice steak and seafood dinner the last night.  We even almost convinced Adam to eat baby octopus.  Anaya was brave and gave it a lick.

 

 

 

 

We could have spent a whole week in Brisbane, there was just so much to do.  But, alas, our time there came to an end and we headed up to the Glasshouse Mountains.  Since that leg of the trip included a visit to the Australia Zoo (the zoo Steve Irwin built), it will require a post of it's own.  That place was ah-mazing.  So check back next week for that one!