Brisbane May 2018

Amy and I headed up to Brisbane for the weekend in May and had a lovely time. We escaped a cold Canberra weekend and enjoyed a lovely 23 to 25 degrees up in Brisbane. We landed around 10am and picked up or hire car and drove into Brisbane to meet Amy's friend who lived in Newstead. We met her and her baby and went out to lunch before heading into the city and checking into the Marriot Hotel where we were staying. We relaxed for a bit then walked into Queen Street and did some shopping before walking over the bridge to Southbank and met up with her friend and her partner and enjoyed a lovely meal together. It was weird sitting outside with just a light cardigan on! We wandered around the Southbank Markets before heading back to our hotel- was a great day!

Sunday morning after a yummy breakfast in the hotel, we got our car from the Valet Parking and went and picked us Steph, Andrew and baby Evelyn and headed down to the Currumbin Bird and Animal Park where we spent the day. We had a great time! First off we had a "Behind the Scenes Encounter " of the Bird Flight Show which was great. We wandered around for a bit and then went to the "Free Flight Training Encounter" where we got to learn how they train the birds for the Bird Show and we also worked with Jack the magpie and got to help try and train him. That was really interesting.

Then we took a late lunch break, went to the bird show, wandered around the park and headed down to the entrance where we got to feed the lorikeets - there were hundreds of birds and hundreds of people but it was well organised and we had lorikeets all over us, it was great fun, the girls enjoyed themselves and then we headed back to the car and battled the traffic back to Brisbane.

We had dinner with Steph and her partner before heading back to the hotel after a great day out. The next morning we packed up, had our breakfast and then checked out. We picked up Steph and Evelyn and then headed north to the Sunshine Coast and up We had views of the Glasshouse Mountains it was a lovely spot and Amy was in bird heaven! There were lots of birds out the front you could hold and talk to, and then we payed for a tour to go into the aviary- they had this massive big aviary with three different sections that you walked through with all sorts of birds that would come and land on you. They had macaws, red tailed black cockatoos, eclectus parrots, lorikeets, all sorts of birds.

The girls went up and had devonshire tea and I went for a walk through the gardens, then I looked after the baby while the girls went through and did another tour of the aviary- so they had a great time. We then headed back into Brisbane, dropped Steph off and headed to the airport. Our plane was delayed about and hour, we finally landed about 9:30pm so it was a fairly late night and was 3 degrees in Canberra when we landed so a bit of a shock to the system having been in 23 degrees, but a great weekend away.