HandelBlog | Chronicling the adventures of Sara and Jon

We decided to take advantage of the “Grand Final Eve” public holiday (plus an additional day off) and take a 4 day trip to Brisbane to check out the 3rd largest city in Australia and the capital of Queensland. Here’s a map so you can familiarize yourself. It is about a 2 1/2 hour flight from Melbourne.

Upon arrival, we took the train from the airport into the city and checked into our hotel. We then began exploring this beautiful riverfront city on foot.

We even spotted this friend on our walk back to the hotel. We hope it wasn’t poisonous, because he was awfully close!

That night we found a pub with a good beer list and and had a nice dinner. We even chatted to a couple of real live Queenslanders for a bit about the US election and living in Australia. They again confirmed a funny truth about Australians – they are all terrified of the bears in the US. This is amazing to us given the volume of insects and animals in Australia that are here to kill us.

The next day was reserved for more walking around. We explored some of the neighborhoods and walked along the river.

We took the free city ferry to get the views from the water as well.

As you can tell, from the photos, the weather was stupendous. We stopped by the Southbank area for a drink and checked out the riverfront public pool that even has a sandy beach. Seems like a nice place to hang out on a hot afternoon! We watched the AFL Grand Final that afternoon and then headed out for some Thai food that evening.

We hatched a plan to take the train and a bus down to the Gold Coast the next day to get some beach time in. The trip is about 1 hour and 40 minutes each way. The beach was spectacular, but the water was still quite freezing (~ 65F). We spent a few hours laying on the beach reading before walking around and exploring the various towns on the coast.

We got a late lunch at a cafe across the street from the beach and then hopped on the bus to the train station.

We watched the NRL (Rugby League) grand final that night, but that sport is still pretty nonsensical to me. It’s like a football game with no passing and hardly any scoring – like a 6-3 Steelers / Ravens game in the early 2000s.

The next day it was time to head home. I don’t think that’ll be the last time we’re in Brissy.

As a regular Handelblog reader, you know Handel life is quite fascinating so I thought I’d give you an up close look at our neighborhood. Okay, I may have oversold that, but hopefully you’ll keep reading anyway.

Jon and I live in South Yarra, an inner south suburb of Melbourne. realestate.com.au describes South Yarra as “Polished, glamorous and prestigious, South Yarra is one good looking suburb, highly sought after for its proximity to the city and its luxurious lifestyle.” In other words, just like me. Heehee.

We live in a single family house on a quiet street just a block off this busy thoroughfare, Toorak Road. We can walk to restaurants, shops, and more in just a few minutes.

The South Yarra train station is also just a short walk away which has vastly improved my commuting options. I tried driving to a client in the outer burbs and found that taking a train to a bus was a much better option both for consistency in the amount of time it took and for the promotion of my mental health and stability.

Jon checked out the numerous barber shops along Toorak Road and settled on this flash one. Only two more haircuts until he and the barber can stop speculating on if America will really elect Donald Trump or not.

You may have heard that we like beer and two places we regularly visit to get the best of Australia’s beer selection are this bottle shop and Brother Burger.

Brother Burger has the bonus factor of delicious burgers which Mike and Katy can verify.

To enable our lifestyle of drinking beer and eating burgers, we still run a few times a week. Luckily, there is a wonderful park nearby. Fawkner Park has lots of trails to choose from and only requires a couple of laps to get in our usual 4 miles (6.44 kms). I still can’t get myself to switch to running round number kilometer distances.

That’s a quick tour of our neighborhood spots. It’ll be summer down under soon, what better time to visit and see South Yarra for yourselves.