I went into the city yesterday (Brisbane) and it turned out to be a really good day AND I made it back home. I actually had more trouble getting to the train station in Cleveland than finding my way to anything else during the day, fail. If you don’t already know, I am HORRIBLE with direction especially if it is going somewhere I should know how to get to. For example, the train station in town is a 15-20 minute walk from the house but I left with half an hour to spare, just in case. Apparently that wasn’t enough. Somehow I managed to completely miss the train station (which by the way I have walked past about 10 times since being here) and ended up at work (30-35 min walk from home). Good thing the train leaves every half hour that’s all I have to say. Side note, the train station was in view when, for some reason, I decided to walk the other direction…yeahhh.
Anyways, when I finally got to the train station I found out it was only 10 bucks for the ticket, including the return and I could apparently ride the train all day in whatever direction, coolio. I thought it was going to be $10 each way. It was roughly a 45 minute ride to South Bank, which was my destination. A few people at work told me to check out the Gallery of Modern Art both in general but also said there was a cool exhibit going on. Boy were they right. Ron Mueck, a famous Australian artist, had an exhibit going on and it was SO cool! He is described as a ‘hyperrealist sculptor’ and makes oddly sized sculptures of people. I say oddly sized because they are rarely to scale of a ‘normal’ human. They are unbelievably realistic though, it’s crazy. Everything, down to the veins of a clenched fist or goose bumps on bare skin, looks incredibly real. The expressions on the faces of the people spark interest and a ton of discussion. It was one of the things I heard people talking about the most, and a video following the exhibit exemplified his attention to the thought-provoking expressions. It was really awesome. The process for making his pieces is ridiculously intricate too. For example, he inserts every single hair one by one with a tiny little instrument so that it looks like it is actually growing out of the skin. Crazy! I have a few pictures that I will eventually put up here. Amazingly they actually allowed photos which was good due to my history of getting in trouble for snapping a few despite warnings and signs, oops.
After that exhibit I wandered around the rest of the gallery and they happened to have a New Zealand section which was pretty cool. It included 4 flat screen TVs with headsets playing episodes of the Flight of the Conchords, epic! I definitely sat down and watched part of one, love that show. They actually had a lot set up in the gallery but I won’t bore you with everything I saw, haha. I left to head to the Greek festival but got sidetracked by the adjoining art museum. They had a hat exhibit. Yes, hats. Some crazy hats for that matter. It was cool to see though, I don’t really understand who would actually wear half of them except maybe Lady Gaga, but I guess that’s not the point. There was a bunch more art in there too but by that point I was starving and just wanted some Greek food, so I left.
I successfully found the festival and it ended up being a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. It was basically a Greek eating/dancing fiesta with a carnival attached. The food was really good, as expected, and I tried honey puffs for the first time. They are literally what they sound like, fried dough puffs with honey and powdered sugar, yummm. I hung around there for a couple hours, they had some dancers which were cool. The best part was when I came back (left to go to the mall/shopping), a belly dancer picked random guys from the crowd and made them try to belly dance, hysterical! It reminded me of when my dad went up with the hula dancers in Hawaii (I still appreciate that dad, haha), so great.
Either I was in the ritzy end of Brisbane shopping, or everything here really is ridiculously more expensive. Every store I went into had tank tops for like $85. What?! I was on Queens St which was really neat actually. It was a long line of shops that were outside with random places where the bigger mall part went inside a huge building and had like 4 stories but it was still open to the outdoors. Kind of hard to describe but it was really cool. The middle of the ‘street’ had open spaces for street performers and such. There was one guy doing magic tricks when I was there. But yeah, needless to say I didn’t buy any clothes, apart from the one Australia shirt I bought at the souvenir shop. I don’t know what it is but I am a magnet to souvenir shops, it’s not good. Everyone better appreciate their gifts, :P Haha Actually I didn't buy too much there, most of the damage was done in NZ.
I headed back to the Greek festival for another hour or so. Somehow I planned it perfectly that when I headed back over the bridge the sun was setting. Awesome. But yeah, that was pretty much they day. Highlights = Ron Mueck exhibit and wandering around the city on a gorgeous day. Lowlight = seeing a mid-aged woman with a ‘Team Jacob’ shirt on.
Brisbane!
This is what they call a pedestrian detour due to road work in Brisbane. In the US? Most likely a dirt pathway...haha
Greek festival!
I still have yet to go on a ferris wheel...one of these days, haha
The city at sunset :)
Fun Fact:
The money down under is really pretty, yes pretty. It is awesomely colourful with cool pictures and designs on them. The US needs to redesign. Also, I usually hate change, but here a handful of change can literally mean 20 bucks.
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