East Coast Travels - Brisbane 1

8th - 12th May

I've split up my Brisbane posts into two since I've got so many photos! Click here to view the other post.

We left Surfers Paradise at 13.10 and had a very quick ride to Brisbane. It was just over an hour and arrived at Roma Street station at about 14.20. From there we had about a 10-15 minute walk to our hotel in Spring Hill. Note to self: don’t ever stay in a place with the word hill in it. It was such an incredibly steep walk to the hotel, and our huge rucksacks (front and back!) made it even harder.

We stayed at the Metropolitian Motor Inn. I was worried that it was going to be similar to Sydney’s hotel as we’re in a city again and we looked for a hotel that’s about $100 a night. Thankfully it was nothing like in Sydney. The room was an average size, had a balcony and a decent sized bathroom. It didn’t smell weird and there were no cockroaches. The location, other than being on the top of a hill, was great! It was about 15 minutes to the CBD going down Edward Street.

We’ve only been traveling for 9 days and we’re really starting to feel exhausted from moving from place to place so quickly, so we decided to be a bit more relaxed in Brisbane since we’re there for 4 nights. The day we arrived we just had a stroll through the CBD and the shops, had some quick dinner, walked back to the hotel and had an early night in.

Throughout our stay in Brisbane we kind of created our own walking tour, we searched around what the top attractions are and where real walking tours would go past, and based on that we created our own route. We started our tour walking around the CBD shopping areas. These include Adelaide Street, Queen Street Mall, Elizabeth Street, Albert Street and George Street. The streets are all in a big square and in the middle is Queen Street Mall, this is just for pedestrians so no cars. It’s a really spacial street with a few lovely dining places in the middle. There is a huge range of shops in this area. Most of them are affordable like Cotton On, Factorie and that price budget, but in the Queen’s Plaza Shopping Centre you can find Louis Vuitton and Chanel. The CBD is really nice and I feel it’s a little easier to navigate through compared to Sydney or Melbourne.

There is a really nice foodcourt in the Wintergarden centre where we had breakfast and dinner several times. It’s got some cheap yet healthy fast food places including sushi and some delicious Japanese meals. I would definitely recommend staying away from the bus station on the corner of Elizabeth Street and Albert Street. It’s another huge shopping centre but it was overwhelmingly busy when we were there!

We then moved away from the shopping streets and had a closer look at Brisbane architecture. We started off at Anzac Square, a nice little park area surrounded by skyscrapers. From there we crossed the street and walked through a beautiful lane called Market Street. I love how Brisbane’s architecture combines the old and the new, the traditional and the flashy.

We walked to St Stephan’s Cathedral, which was also surrounded by skyscrapers. I have always loved to take photos of abstract buildings, but what I loved about Brisbane is that there were so many mirrored buildings creating some really unique photos. 

We also walked in the other direction to King George Square. Along George Street there are “city roos”, which were really cool! George Square is where a museum is, City Hall, the library and another beautiful but very out of place church. From here you can cross the Victoria Bridge to Southbank. 

Southbank is my favourite place in Brisbane. It’s so relaxed and non-city like! They’ve created a rainforest and an artificial beach called Streets Beach, which I was honestly a bit unsure about, but everything was so beautiful! The rainforest feels like a completely different place, you’re surrounded by nature, trees and huge lizards. The beach was just like a real beach, the sand felt as soft as the sand in Byron Bay and the water was such a crispy clean cold feeling. We actually saw later on that the water is recycled rainwater.

From Southbank we slowly strolled to the Goodwill Bridge and crossed the river to arrive at the edge of the City Botanic Gardens. We first walked along the Mangrove Habitat Walkway. It was a really nice stroll along the river and we walked past some beautiful mangrove trees. The thing that stood out to me the most were the roots, they looked like tons of little sticks sticking out of the ground. 

As you walk to the edge of the botanic gardens, you’ll have quite a nice view of the Story Bridge. From there we walked into the Botanic Gardens. 

The gardens are much smaller than in Melbourne and Sydney, but they were still beautiful. There was a sign showing the flood levels in 1974 and 2011, it’s unbelievable how high the water level rose! They also had more of the huge lizards in the gardens as well as bush turkeys and the large birds we saw in Sydney.