Between the three of us we had 4 large pieces of luggage and 4 carry-on pieces and only two of us were really participating in the carrying of said luggage. We looked like a couple of clowns trying to get our rental car. While trying to get all the luggage to fit in the car and getting Lilly's car seat installed we made a few people wait to park cars but hopefully no one missed their flights.
We got our car and headed off towards the city. Emily didn't do too bad with sitting on the 'wrong' side of the car and I only turned on the windshield wipers once. Our hotel was only about 15 minutes away so we were there in no time. I hopped out to check us in only to find out that it was a public holiday in Queensland and no one was working in the office (according to the sign taped to the door). To the right of the door was a bulletin board with a bunch of envelopes. My name was on one and inside was the keys to our room. While I found this very strange, I was excited as this meant we could get in the room and Emily could take a shower.
After she showered and I got Lilly out of her pajamas, we went to hop on the train. The process for buying a ticket was a little different and the machine wouldn't let us get the ticket we wanted. I finally asked a guy if he could help and he was also American and not really any help.
We traveled down to a part of town call South Bank, which was (if you can't guess) on the southern bank of the river, with the Brisbane CBD being on the northern bank. There was a very nice walk along the river so we headed back towards the information booth to see if we could get a map.
We walked around the Maritime Museum to get some pictures of the city.
We came upon a great area with loads of water. There was a tiled pool and water shooting out from all areas. Across a bridge was another water area with a beach - we avoided that area as we didn't want the sand everywhere! Anyway, Lilly asked to take off her shoes, so I said sure. In the water where it was shallow was a cement dugong so I encouraged Lilly to go stand by it for a picture. She was really good about trying to holding her shorts up. Of course, she walked to the other side of the statue and the water came up to the bottom of her shorts so she started to get wet. She walked around to different water squirters and was mostly good about avoiding the spray. But she was watching a couple of children and saw them walk under a waterfall of water. Without thinking she just walked right under it. The look on her face told me she didn't think it through and of course she was wet from head to toe. After that, it didn't matter how wet she got, she pretty much just went swimming.
Next stop was lunch. Now keep in mind Lilly is soaking wet at this point and while it is sunny and warm poor Lilly just wanted to stay in the water (I think she was warmer in there). We tried to find a store so I could buy a t-shirt so she could put it on and take off her wet shirt and shorts. But, since it was a public holiday, there wasn't anything open! I let Lilly eat in the sun which I don't usually do since the sun is so harsh here.
After lunch we continued along Southbank and went to the Queensland Museum. They had a huge animal exhibit that mostly showed the differences in sizes between whales, kangaroos and dinosaurs but also a lot of different tidbits about animals.
Dugongs getting hit by a small fishing boat. We headed back to our hotel and sort of figured out the train ticket system. Of course nothing was really open to we couldn't buy food. We ended up finding a little grocery store and paid way too much money for groceries (little did we know if we had turned down a different street we would have been in fast food heaven). It didn't matter, Emily was falling asleep by 5:00 and Lilly had a light dinner and feel asleep pretty soon after she ate some pasta.
