Trip 2: April 17-19

Day One: Friday

After our last Brisbane trip just a month ago, M declared that we should come back again very soon.

Looking at the diary, we found the weekend of 17 April was clear and so we booked the Hyatt Regency again.

One reason for this trip was to visit a french restaurant we had seen at the Star Casino called Pompette.

We left work just after lunch on Friday and had a good run down the highway and checked into the Hyatt around 2:30.

We had booked the same type of room as our last trip ended indeed, it was exactly the same.

After we unpacked our bags, we walked down George Street to see the W Hotel. We had seen that it had a nice restaurant and bar on the sixth floor overlooking the river. It was very nice, but as it faces southwest it was very glary.

We had looked at the prices of the W hotel, and we certainly won’t be staying there. It is a little out of our price range.😀

From the W, we made our way up to the Star City Casino complex. The restaurant “Pompette” is located on the fourth floor at the beginning of the Neville Bonner Bridge that leads over to Southbank .

From the menu we had chosen the “La Petite Bouchee” (The Little Bite) banquet.  We made a reservation for lunch at 12:30 the next day. As it was quite hot and, again, the restaurant faces west, we chose to have an inside table rather than out on the deck . Dining on the deck would be absolutely stunning for dinner as it looks over Southbank and up the river towards Mount Cootha

On our way up to the fourth floor, I had noticed the entrance to the Star Grand Hotel. (which is also way out of our price range ) but I thought it would be nice to have a look around the lobby.

It is a lovely lobby bar and has a Japanese restaurant both the bar and the restaurant again have gorgeous views overlooking the river and Southbank.

We thought we would look again at the 23rd floor Sky Deck. It certainly is an amazing view. By this time, it was an acceptable time to have a drink overlooking the wonderful view we chose the restaurant/bar at Aloria.

Back to our room at the Hyatt, we had showers and decided we would have dinner at the Lennon‘s restaurant in the hotel.

Dinner at the Lennon‘s restaurant was lovely. I chose Burata for my entrée and M had a prawn cocktail for mains I had the lamb rump and M had a scotch fillet steak, we both chose chocolate fondant for desert, a couple of wines each, and we went to bed, quite satisfied.

Day Two: Saturday

After a good night sleep, we woke up and went to make cups of tea and found that the fridge in the mini bar was not working and the milk that we brought was not very cold 🙁. We always bring milk with us when we travel as I really do not like UHT milk that is in most hotel rooms..

We went down to reception and told them of the problem. They said they would have someone from maintenance come up and swap out the fridges for us Perfect once again great service. M got himself a coffee from the café at no charge while he was down at reception. I used to the milk that we had and it did not taste off, but it probably would not have lasted another two days.

We had breakfast at the buffet, which is always a good thing😀 before heading out to do some shopping.

M had not been to David Jones in the city, and as he needed to buy a couple of gifts for upcoming birthdays, that’s where we went. I was also on the lookout for some champagne glasses. I had seen them on the internet at David Jones at what I thought was a quite reasonable price of $49.95 for four glasses.

You can imagine my surprise when at the checkout the price was 40% off and I only paid $29.97.

Very happy.😀. I had seen the banner that said there was 40% off, but I assumed the $49.95 was already the reduced price.

M found some lovely gifts as well. Loaded up, we took our shopping back to the room.

While on the Mall, I took M to see the Intercontinental Hotel through the Wintergarden on Elizabeth St.  I worked in the Wintergarden in the 1980’s and The Hilton, as was called then. was avourite for Friday night after work drinks.

The WOW Factor of the bar area is the toweing atruium.  Suitably impressed, we made he decision try this hotel on our next Brisbane City “Staycation”

There was a note on the fridge to say that maintenance had switched out the fridge, so before we got ready for lunch we popped down to Coles to get some more milk ready for the morning .

Then we got tidied up and made our way to Pompette for our lunch reservation.

We arrived at Pompette a little earlier than our reservation time, but we’re seated with no problems at all. The waiter offered us the drinks menu, but as it was quite hot, we chose water just to start. Plenty of time for champagne later. 😀

The waiter was aware we were there for the banquet and explained how it worked. We interrupted him before he started to let him know that we did not like oysters and would like to skip that course. He said that was not a problem, and it would be no trouble to substitute the oysters for ratatouille tartlets. It is a common request to substitute out the oysters.

Wow, what can I say? Each little morsel of food just got better and better. The service was perfect with each course coming out in reasonable intervals so we were neither rushed nor waiting around for each course.

At the end of the meal, we were given a complementary Lychee Liqueur. It was very nice, but maybe a little sweet for me.

The images here come from various sources around the internet as the restaraunt was quite busy and I did not want to be “That” person who photographs every course 🙂

Wandering slowly back to the Hyatt feeling quite full, we decided that there was not going to be dinner tonight, but rather just a small cheese and fruit platter with a couple of drinks much later on down at the Hyatt lounge bar.

We fell into bed around 9:30 very content after having a lovely day.

Day Three : Sunday

Waking up on Sunday morning, we put the kettle on ready for tea and coffee only to find again the fridge was barely cold 🙁. We were checking out this morning and the milk was cold enough to get us through this morning, but we were not happy.

We had showers got dressed, had another lovely buffet breakfast before packing our bags and checking out ready for the drive home.

I took a bottle of water from the supposedly fixed fridge and when I was checking out, I handed the bottle of water to the manager lady and simply said “this is not cold”. As you can imagine, she looked at me quite strangely and said “no it is not.” I then explained why I had given her a random bottle of not so cold water and she was very apologetic.

She went as far as removing some of the drinks we had charged to our room bill.

We had a good run home up the highway and we’re home around lunchtime.

For our next Brisbane city trip, we are going to try the Intercontinental previously known as the Brisbane Hilton.

Stay tuned for more.