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Brisbane from Mt Cootha
This time last week, I was in Gold Coast playing tour guide to my great uncle and his family. They came up from Melbourne over the Easter semester break. My uncle is doing his masters at Melbourne University. But I think he'll be heading back to Bangladesh late this year. But before they left, they wanted to see the parts of Australia where we were living. So they first went up to see my brother in Townsville and then came down to see mom and me in Brisbane. So from Tuesday to Friday, I got to play Brisbane tour guide!
On the first day, I took them to Mt Cootha Lookout to get a bird's eye view of Brisbane. It's a pretty standard tourist stop but my uncle really enjoyed it. On the second day, we check out the City and South Bank. On the day, we took a ride on the Wheel of Brisbane, had lunch at Ahmets, took the City Hall clock tower tour, had a look around the city on the free city loop bus before getting down to take the closer look at the City Botanical garden. We also went on a City Cat ride, which I think my uncle enjoyed very much.
Squash at the Commonwealth Games 2018
On the third day, we took the train down to the Gold Coast. I am not too familiar with the Gold Coast, so I was not a great guide. We had no plans to attend the Commonwealth Games per say, but I had a look for tickets on the train and found that we could catch the mixed doubles Squash quarterfinals. My uncle used to play Squash, and I thought it would be a real shame to not see any events, given that we were on the Gold Coast during the Commonwealth Games. So I went ahead and got the tickets for the evening. But before that, we visited Pacific Fair, which is a much more beautiful then I expected it. I knew it was a big, fancy shopping centre but I didn't think much about it. However, it has a pretty impressive courtyard, and I regret not getting more shots of the beautiful garden and water features. Pacific Fair, we visited Surfer's Paradise, which was much less crowded then I was expecting. Finally, we caught a bird's eye view of Gold Coast from Skypoint before heading off to the Squash venue at Oxenford Studios. It was a great day, but we were so worn out, that we didn't end up doing much on the last day.
I got a bit worn out, but I am glad to have put in the effort. Because I had a lot of fun and I am unfamiliar enough with the Gold Coast for the day trip there to be a new for me as well!