Back in the city

For this weekend trip, we are back at the Hyatt Regency

After a mildly disappointing stay at the Intercontinental. I was really looking forward to going back to the Hyatt and it did not disappoint.


I had previously written that I rated both hotels on a par, but after being back at the Hyatt I would have to revise that. 
I feel the Hyatt is quite a lot nicer.

We left work around midday and by the time we had lunch and got changed, we headed off around 1 o’clock.

The trip into the city was one of the slowest we have had in a very long time for absolutely no particular reason’ the highway had been set down to only 60Kph which made for very slow going.

We finally made it to the city and turned into Burnette Lane, only to be confronted by delivery trucks almost the whole way along the lane. It made it difficult because I didn’t know what was in front of each particular truck and whether or not I would be able to stop at the Hyatt itself.

We ended up that M got out and walked up to the Hyatt entrance to let them know we were here and we were guided into the entrance of the car park.

Removing our bags from the car and making our way up to the main reception area, it was just before 3 o’clock.

We were welcomed back as returning Hyatt member travelers and directed to our room on the 20th floor.

We had a king room with a city and Riverview and that lovely huge Hyatt Regency bathroom (that I know will stay dry when we have showers 🙂)…. and the fridge was cold. 🥳😀

After unpacking and making ourselves a nice hot cup of tea, we spent just a little time relaxing after a long drive down

Before dinner, we made our way to the fourth floor to have a look at what they were doing to the swimming pool area. We had seen notification that the swimming pool was closed for maintenance and we wondered if it was just the pool or if the Hibiscus Bar was closed as well.

When we got to level four, we could see it was just a swimming pool. It looks like they are totally refinishing the inside of the pool as it has been completely stripped back to bare concrete, including the coping tiles around the top.

We decided we would have a drink here overlooking the city before we made our way down to the Lennon‘s bar and restaurant for dinner

Dinner again was superb. We certainly do not have any complaints about the meals. Here we both decided on the reef and beef, which was a sirloin steak cooked to perfection with half a Morton Bay bug and grilled prawn smothered in creamy garlic sauce. For dessert I had a chocolate lava cake and M had a sticky date pudding.

We made our way back to the room, pulled the block out blinds, watched little TV and “died”

Saturday

We woke up after a really comfortable sleep, had showers and made it our way down for buffet breakfast.

The breakfast at the Hyatt Regency is by far the best of all the Brisbane Staycations we have done. Firstly the food is actually hot, and the range of food is vast nobody could ever say there wasn’t something that they would eat.

After breakfast, we decided to do some shopping at David Jones. M was looking for a container to put cakes in as the one that he has a little shallow and invariably the icing comes off on the top of the container.

We could not find anything and asked a lady at one of the checkouts and she walked us over to the area where she thought there may be something but obviously the demographic that wants to buy tupperware type containers does not shop at David Jones😀

We had a look around and did manage to pick up a few items to put away as gifts

We made our way back to the Hyatt with our purchases, drop them off at the room and made our way to the casino complex for lunch at Dark Shepherd.

On the way down George Street we passed by the Adina Hotel. Quite a while ago we stayed at the Adina at Anzac Square and it was very nice. When I had looked at the George St., Hotel it would be a little more problematic as it only has very limited parking and I really do not feel comfortable leaving any car at the Myer Center car park overnight. Even if we were to get the train down from the coast to Central Station, it is a reasonable walk dragging suitcases all the way to George Street so we decided that sadly the Adina is a little bit problematic for us.

Lunch….

You may remember on a previous staycation we dined at Pompette. Dark Shepherd is owned by the same group and also has banquets.

Dark Shepherd is a Greek restaurant that of course specializes in lamb dishes.

We decided against the banquets and ordered our own “banquet” from the main menu.

Starting with lamb ribs, lamb, sausage, and some lovely, sweet savory rice.

For our main meals, we ordered lamb meatballs, and beef short ribs. These also came with woodfired pillow bread.

The entire meal was absolutely amazing and we certainly could not fit in dessert. 
Of course I totally forgot to take any photos of the food 🙁

After lunch we walked out to look at another restaraunt I had seen –  Black Hide.  We may consider eating here on another trip.

From Black Hide I noticed the Terrace on the 4th Level of the Star complex.  The Terrace has great views up and down the river and across to SouthBank.

Looking stright up the building to the Sky Deck it sure does look a long way 🙂

The only odd thing about both dark Shepherd and Pompette is the way they serve their wine.

After ordering off a very extensive wine menu, the wine is brought out in a small carafe and poured into the glass at the table. At no time did we actually see the bottle. We wondered about this as technically really we could’ve been poured anything.

When we got back to the Hyatt out of curiosity, I asked Brooke the manager about the service of alcohol ruling and how we thought it was odd. She agreed with us that it was odd and that their licensing rules were to show the bottle.

After such a big lunch, we really did not need dinner. Even the idea of a cheese platter felt too much, but we made our way down to the lounge bar and had a couple of quiet drinks, just relaxing and chatting together.

Sunday

We wanted to get away fairly early this morning so we packed our bags had another lovely buffet breakfast and we were on the road by around 8:30

Luckily, the traffic was really good and we had a great run home.

Sadly, there was not much time for relaxing as work is picking up and is getting really busy so we unpacked our bags and headed into the factory and did three hours work on Sunday.

The joys of being self-employed🤣🤣

With summer being our busy time, this is possibly the last Brisbane Staycation we will manage to have until we close at Christmas.

As we are not going away for the Christmas break, we will more than likely be spending a few more days at the Hyatt Regency after all, there are still restaurants to try 😀😀