Day 2 – Brisbane and their great South Bank area

Brisbane River

Today we slept in quite a bit longer than I thought we would. I woke up and worked on the blog and let everyone sleep until 10 am. China does not observe daylight savings time because it caused too much confusion, (imagine that in a country of 1.5 billion!), so Brisbane is only 2 hours ahead of us. After Jonny and the kids woke up we headed over to the South Bank and had breakfast and then went for a nice run along the Brisbane River. It was so nice to run outside, especially along the clean, well kept river. Unfortunately the only two times I ran in Chengdu I was hit by moped and almost coughed up a lung from the pollution.

Here we are walking around the South Bank area.

We took the kids over the South Bank parklands for swim in the man-made beaches. The city has done a great job of drawing people to the area. There are several swimming pool/beaches that are interconnected with a view of the Brisbane River. There are also tons of restaurant, cafes, and bars in area.



Angus loved the water!



Gemma in her new bikini.



They loved splashing around together.



I think Angus is a natural water baby!



Family after a day of swimming. Angus was exhausted!!!



Jonny with some Australian Synchronized Swimming babes on our way back from swimming.

So far we are enjoying the food choices we have here. We are lucky enough to have a hotel room with a kitchen. I did a little grocery shopping for us, so we didn’t have to eat out for every meal. It is so difficult with too kids to go out for dinner and I refuse to go out for fast food for the sake of convenience. This morning for breakfast I had Eggs Florentine with delicious hollandaise sauce. I have not found spinach in China and so this was a perfect breakfast for me to have. For lunch we went to this Turkish Kebab shop which is similar to the Gyros shops in the U.S. I had a Donar (lamb) kebab and Jonny had a falafel kebab. Talk about tasty! We are so lucky we are walking every where here because we would definitely gain major amounts of weight. I also had some incredible Pineapple Passion fruit sorbet from a shop called New Zealand Natural. If you have never had the pleasure to have passion fruit, it is one of the most amazing flavors I have ever tasted. I have never been able to find passion fruit in the U.S., so if anyone knows where I can find it please let me know! Can you tell I love food just a little???



Enjoying the food in Brisbane. We both had fish and it was so yummy!

We are headed to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary to take in the native animals. We have been there before and you can pet the wallabies, kangaroos, and koalas. It should be a great day!



Gemma with a beautiful flower in her hair. They have these huge trees covered with these white flowers. Not sure what they are, but I will find out.



Brisbane River at night.