CAIT AROUND THE WORLD

March 19, 2023 — I woke up feeling a lot better in the morning, though my throat was still dry and therefore a bit cough-y and my nose was plugged on one side. However, I was very much looking forward to exploring some of the city.

I walked down toward the meeting point, stopping at Chemist Warehouse on the way to purchase cough drops to suck on while on the tour. There aren’t any Halls cough drops in Australia (that I’ve found) so I picked up a different brand in an orange flavour, hoping that they would taste alright. (They did.)

I had thought about getting a coffee before the tour but didn’t have quite enough time to squeeze it in so I headed to City Hall instead. We saw quite a bit of the city: we walked from City Hall, a stunning old building that underwent restoration several years ago and which is absolutely beautiful inside to the Brisbane Arcade. If you remember from my tour in Melbourne, the Arcades were built for people to parade about in without getting themselves dirty. They shopped for goods — and sometimes husbands. The Brisbane Arcade has functioned since 1923.

There are tons of old building facades still in Brisbane, even though the interiors — and sometimes, the whole building around them — have changed greatly since the 1880s when they were new. We stopped at the Treasury Hotel where the original front desk now serves as the bar table at The Lab inside the building. We walked around to the Queensland University of Technology where the Government House stands. The City Botanic Gardens sit just across from the university property and used to have giant tortoises from the Galapagos living there.

We walked across Story Bridge, which gave beautiful views of the city. Story Bridge was built during the Depression as a way of breathing some life into the economy. It then became a toll bridge and because of this, no one wanted to use it! It was only after the Americans came to Brisbane during World War II that the bridge was finally paid off because they didn’t mind the toll! The bridge is now free to cross. After crossing the bridge, we walked down to meet the CityHopper to ride back down toward Riverside and where we’d started the tour. Along the way, we walked past the Maritime Museum which houses a collection of important and famous vessels, one of which belonged to the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe.

Back at Riverside, we parted ways and I walked back to the hostel for a couple hours of relaxation and some lunch. Once fortified, I headed back out to the Queen Street Mall (which is a full city block of stores; it’s amazing) and bought some cold meds to go along with my cough drops. I found it really odd and interesting that here in Australia, you have to ask at the pharmacy counter for anything medicinal — I couldn’t find cold medicine with medicinal ingredients on the regular shelves; everything was homeopathic and natural ingredients. Not that that isn’t great, but I was looking for something familiar that I knew worked for me. I had to ask at the pharmacy for cold and flu meds and the pharmacist asked me if I had any allergies and if I had had these kinds of meds before. I don’t have any allergies and I told her that I’d had those kinds of meds but not the exact ones since I’m from Canada and we didn’t have the same brand or the same medicinal ingredient when I got looking at the package. That wasn’t an issue, thank goodness, and I was able to find some cold and flu capsules that I figured should work to help my cough and nose, since those were the main issues I was having at that point.

I was feeling pretty good overall, though, so I wandered along the mall for a little bit and stumbled across Dymocks, which I’m equating to Chapters/Indigo bookstores at home. I was so happy to be in a bookstore and I wandered down the aisles for a few minutes until I came across a book written by an Australian author and set in Brisbane. I purchased it and then headed out into the mall once more.

I decided on Dominos for dinner so I picked up a mini pepperoni pizza (only $3!) and headed to the riverfront to eat and watch the world go by. It was a beautiful night and a really nice way to end the day.

I didn’t really want to head back to the hostel on foot, so I decided to download the Beam app. The city has Beam and Neuron electric scooters scattered about the city and for a fee, you can use them. It’s a really cool way to tour around or to get somewhere just a little faster. There are electric bikes, too, if that’s more your speed. They even have various passes, ranging from single-day passes to month passes.

I made it back to the hostel after a really cool and fun ride, showered, and headed to bed for the night.

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