Today we are heading home. As with any holiday, our time away has been lovely, but it is always nice to get home.
We had gone to bed early last night and we woke up early at 5:30am. At least we are getting back to work routine 🙂
After showers and a couple of cups of tea and we went down to the buffet for our final breakfast. It has been nice to have breakfast cooked every day and not having to do the dishes 🙂
After breakfast, we had time to relax ( finish this blog post) and finish packing before checking out. Although we have a 12:00 checkout, we will leave earlier. We are going to visit our daughter on the way home and will have morning tea there before travelling back up the highway for the hour or so trip home.
Once we are home, we will need to do a quick shop for essentials for dinner tonight. We will do a “proper” shop in the next day or so.
We have had a great holiday and now it is time to plan for the next adventure……….
A quiet start before we ambled across to the Qld Museum. The Museum does not open until 9:30 so we had plenty of time.
I started organising our things ready to pack tomorrow morning. I had done a load of washing the night before, so all we will not have just chore to do when we get home.
The Museum was very interesting. It is not the largest museum but had a large collection of Australian animals and dinosaurs.
I am not quite as old as a dinosaur ?
On the first floor is a very good exhibition called ” The Anzac Legacy Gallery ” It tells the story of the First World War and how it changed the face of Qld and how those events have shaped our life now.
We spent a good while at the Museum before catching a bus to Bowen Hills to see a new dining precinct that has been built on part of the Brisbane Exhibition Grounds. We have seen TV segments on the “King Street” area and thought it would be a good place to get morning tea.
Well, it did not turn out quite as I planned 🙁 Firstly we had to wait 10 minutes or so for a bus, then when we did get to King St, most of the cafes were closed. It is obviously a “night venue” Then I looked for a bus to get us back to SouthBank and found that we had just missed one and the next was 30minutes away.
This was not ideal, as we had a restaurant booking for 1:00 at Riverside with the daughter.
I made the decision to walk up to the next main road where I was sure there would a lot more buses passing. It was a 500m walk and it was hot 🙁 We did manage to get a bus and were back at the Mantra in time to have a quick shower to freshen up before getting the City Cat to lunch.
Daughter had given us a voucher for Kingsleys at Riverside (our kids know we like eating out, as they both gave us “food” 🙂 ) The food here was simply sublime. We decided it was possibly the best restaurant we had been to. Sadly we forgot to get a photo of our mains – (Eye Fillet and Waygu Pappardelle.) Good food, Good wine, Good company – Great day!!
After lunch we were VERY full, so we spent the afternoon relaxing in the room and further sorting out packing for the next day.
We had been told to do a day trip out to the Moreton Bay Islands – Russell, Lamb, Macleay and Karragarra. All these islands sit in the Moreton Bay and are easily reached with a short ferry ride from Redland Bay Marina.
I had researched the routes and determined that to have lunch at the recommended spot of the Bowls Club on Macleay Island, we needed to catch a bus from the Cultural Centre at approx 9:30 this would take us to Carindale Shopping Centre where we would transfer to another bus which would arrive at Redland Bay Marina to meet the 11:30 ferry to the islands.
We left the Mantra with plenty of time to catch our bus, and when we go to the Cultural Centre a bus arrived earlier than the bus I had scheduled that said it was going to Carindale, so I said we should catch it as it was better to get to Carindale and not be in any risk of missing our connection to the ferry.
We had a pleasant ride on the two buses to Redland Bay, taking in suburbs that neither of us had been to in a long time.
The ferry was waiting for us when we arrived at the Marina and we were soon underway on the water. First stop was Russell Island, then Lamb Island and then our destination of Macleay Island.
There was a courtesy bus from “Club Macleay” waiting to take us to the club for lunch.
We had a nice chat with the driver on the trip to the club and then had a lovely bistro meal while admiring the view over the bay back toward Redland Bay.
Tempura Prawns & Garlic Bread
Chicken Breast with Camembert and Garlic Prawns
Crumbed Lamb Cutlets and Chips
I did notice why the Bowls Club is so keen to provide a Courtesy Bus to meet each ferry. Just a very short walk (approximately 50m) up the hill and just out of sight of the ferry stop, is the Macleay Island Pub. I am sure that many tourists like us do not know the pub is there and are whisked away to the Club. Smart business decision 🙂
On the way to the ferry, we noticed that the bus stopped at Cleveland Railway Station, so we decided that on the way home, we would get off the bus at the station and get the train back to the city. We thought it would be quicker and also we would see some different scenery than the trip out.
We got back to Southbank Train Station a little after 3:00pm and walked down the hill to the Mantra a little tired but happy that we had a good day.
A light pizza from the hotel restaurant, delivered to our room was all that was needed for dinner. We watched a little TV and were off to bed by 9:00
We planned a day in the city today to do some sightseeing and then later in day meet our daughter for an early dinner.
We decided on a Brisbane City Hall visit and perhaps a trip up the clock tower. Tours do not start until mid-morning, so we had a relaxed start to the day.
We arrived in town just before 10:00 hoping to do a clock tower tour, but sadly they were full until much later in the day. We may try another day if we have time. We did have a walk through the Museum of Brisbane on the third floor. When we had finished browsing the exhibits at the museum, we went downstairs again and saw a group who were just starting a tour, we asked if we could tag along.
The tour was very interesting and there were a couple of funny stories along the way. We all laughed about how politics has not changed much when we were told that the building took 40 years for council to make up its mind to actually build the thing. Then, because it took so long, they just wanted it done and of course, the budget blew out dramatically. What was supposed to be a 250,000-pound project ( when the average house cost 300 pounds to build) ended up costing just shy of 1 MILLION pounds !!
Another story was of the metal sculpture on the top of the clock tower. In the original plans of the City Hall, there were a few sculptures planned than were not included as they just did not have the money for them. To this day there are sculptures missing from above the side entrance doors.
A planned sculpture for the top of the clocktower was also out of the budget, but the council really wanted “something” there to finish the tower.
They decided, that instead of commissioning an outside artist, they would look within and find someone who was employed by council already. This meant they did not have to pay anymore than materials.
They settled on “Fred – the plumber” to create something (because plumbers are great artists 🙂 ) Fred was given 5 Pounds to complete the work. This was about the equivalent of one week’s salary for him at the time.
Fred thought he would keep the 5 pounds and set off to see what he had lying around. He found two large basket frames which we welded together to create a sphere. He found an old lamp post which he placed within the sphere. Visiting a scrap metal yard he found a slightly bent bedframe that he could use and finally the small sphere at the top of the piece is the ball from a toilet cistern!! And that is the story of the “Metal Lattice Work” that finishes the clock tower.
After the tour, we had a look into the Shingle Inn that has been rebuilt on the ground floor. We have both been to both the original cafe in Edward St and the re-creation in City Hall, but is always nice to have a look.
I decided that in keeping with the theme of “historic Brisbane” we would take a short walk to MacArthur Chambers to see the Douglas MacArthur Museum. We have not been there, so I thought it would be interesting. When we go there, there was a sign announcing that it was closed until the end of January 🙁
It was getting close to lunchtime, so I had a look at the Entertainment Book app on my phone to see what was nearby. We discovered that we were just a few doors away from Jamie Oliver’s restaurant “Jamie’s Italian”.
We had a delicious meal of fresh pasta before making our way back to the Mantra for a quiet afternoon.
We had a relaxing afternoon before heading to the river to catch the City Cat up to RiverSide where we were meeting our daughter for dinner at The Riverbar.
After a big lunch, we chose a lighter dinner and had a nice time chatting. Before long it was time to board the City Cat back to Southbank and fall into bed.
Waiting for the ferry, we took in the views of Brisbane’s Storey Bridge lit up in blue. Further up the river, we noticed that even the cranes on the new constructions sites were also lit up to make an almost pretty display.
We had another lighter breakfast today and then we hopped on a bus over to the city and found the bus to travel to “The Summit” at the Mount Coot-tha Lookout.
Neither of us had been up Mount Coot-tha for many years and the restaurant is quite iconic. As the restaurant is in the Entertainment Book we thought we would have lunch and admire the view over Brisbane.
As I was looking up to see the menu and work out buses I came across news stories that announced that the restaurant is closing at the end of January after 36 years 🙁
Reading that news made it a no brainer visit. We had a lovely lunch of Pork Belly and Steak before sharing desserts or Panacotta and Chocolate Brownies.
200g Grass fed eye fillet Served w’ pan roasted chats, Dutch carrots, onion jam, spring greens, jus
Sadly the view was not the best today. Even though we do not have fires within 50kms of Brisbane, there was still a lot of smoke in the air.
After the bus, we caught the bus back to the city and back “home”. Once back in the apartment, we put a load of washing on and put it in the dryer and made our way up to the hotel pool and spa for a relaxing afternoon.
Our dinner plans were something a little different… At the restaurant at the Mantra, there is a “What’s On” Blackboard…
As you can imagine.. The Wednesday night “Flaming Cheese Wheel Pasta” aroused our curiosity. We asked and were told it is a half wheel of Grando Parmeganio cheese that has been hollowed out and pasta added. Apparently, it is all done at the table and has to be experienced. We thought we would give it a try.
We arrived at the restaurant and were shown to our table. Before long a trolley was brought out with the large wheel of cheese that had ( as previously explained) been hollowed out.
To create the dish, they flambe the inside of the cheese with Rose Water alcohol to make it all nice and “melty” before adding pre-cooked pasta (we chose carbonara). Rose Water alcohol does not flavour the cheese at all. The pasta was stirred through the cheese “bowl” and the bottom scraped to make sure we got all the molten bits.
The pasta and gorgeous sauce was pulled out of the cheese wheel and placed into a bowl, topped with more parmesan, crispy pancetta and copious amounts of cracked pepper.
The resulting dish was AMAZING!!!
This video is of the process being created for the lady sitting next to us..the same process was repeated for in front of us. (sorry the sound is not great 🙁 )
If you have the chance to visit “Salt Meats Cheese” on a Wednesday night .. do try this. The theatre of the dish alone is worth it.
