Mountain "climbing"

Today we climbed a mountain... well we climbed it while inside a bus. Mount Coot-tha lies a 30 minutes bus ride from the centre of Brisbane and provides great views over the city. We planned to catch the bus at 9:35am and we almost didn't make it. When we were having breakfast our room mates came to say goodbye so we talked to them for a while and suddenly after that the time was 9:10. It was a mad rush to try and get to the stop and even finding road names proved tricky. We ran down the road as the bus was coming up and only because it was 1 minute late did we make it. The ride takes you all the way up to the summit where there is a restuarant, shop and cafe overlooking the view. It was impressive to see just how far this city spans and running right through the centre is the river. After enjoying the view and reading all the information we began a trail walk down the mountain that takes you to a botanical garden and planetarium. The walk goes through dense forest for almost 3km and we thoroughly enjoyed walking down the hill when people were walking up, singing most of the way. The trail ended and we did have to use Google maps to find the exact location of the centre, they really should put in signs when they claim the trail leads straight to it but doesn't. Eventually we found it and after some lunch we began a stroll through the botanical gardens. It was very extensive and beautifully organised. We saw so many weird and wonderful plants as well as a huge variety of birds and even an eel and lizard in the water. Nick attracted birds while eating lunch, as always! They seem to follow him everywhere and we're flying super close hoping to get a nibble of his sandwich. They had a small tropical dome, a kitchen garden and a cool bonsai tree exhibit. We planned to get the 3:20pm bus but after waiting 30 minutes we came to the conclusion it was early but didn't wait seeing as we were at the bus stop at 3:15pm. This meant we had to wait another 30 minutes for the next bus. We didn't have a chance to visit the planetarium unfortunately but plan to see one soon. Finally the bus came and rather annoyingly we saw a woman who had spoken to us earlier get on and off without paying. We got back to town pretty quickly and got off where we ran to get on this morning. We then headed to the nearest ferry point and caught the free city hopper boat along the river to the last stop at Sydney Street. Our plan for this evening was to head to the Powerhouse which is a disused power station converted into a theatre to watch a free comedy show they put on every Friday night. It was a long walk from the ferry but we made it and thoroughly enjoyed the show. One guy used a machine to record his own voice making different sounds and words to be played over each other as a backing tracks for the comical songs he then sung. It was so impressive and we did have lots of laughs. We rushed back to the ferry after it finished because it leaves every half an hour and when we arrived at the dock we were greeted by a beautiful night scene of the city. As we got off the ferry on the way we had the same view with sunset and now we were seeing it at night time. We had planned to visit a night market but at this point we were so hungry that we decided to give it and miss and go back and make beans on toast instead. It's nice being in a country where you feel safer to be out after dark so you get to see and experience so much more, especially when the event and boats were free which is even better!Read more