Australia Zoo and Saying Goodbye

Friday June 19- Saturday June 20

Friday morning we were bright eyed and bushy tailed at 7am to go to the zoo, home of Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter! Cori and her friend Stephen were going as well, and picked us up to make the trip together. We got to listen to some quality Aussie music and one of Stephen's own rap tracks. The zoo was awesome! We listened to a talk on giant tortoises, got to feed some Asian elephants, and went to a show with birds flying all around and crocodiles! The crocs were not totally cooperative and didn't jump and lunge as much as the trainer would have liked, and the crazy guy kept getting closer and leaning in further. We reckoned the croc would have preferred one of his legs to the bit of chicken he was dangling, but couldn't really be bothered. What a loony job!

We saw more koalas and kangaroos, took pictures with the golden statues of the Irwin family (kind of weird) and watched tons more animals. Caitlin, Hannah, and I got the train back to the city later in the afternoon, did a quick turn around, and my sister and I went out to meet up with my friend Cassi who was also doing a study abroad in England with me and now lives in Brisbane. We met her and a few of her friends at the Exchange Hotel which has a rooftop bar that was very cool, surrounded by the city center. We checked out one other place and got the VIP treatment and a bottle of wine, which is always excellent! Everyone was pretty tired from a day at the zoo/week at work, and it was a nice low key night, and fun to see a friend from ages ago!

Saturday we finally got to sleep in a bit (and the trains weren't running as often!) and took a long walk to Fortitude Valley for the weekend markets. As Hannah and I already realized, markets are a dangerous place and we all spent plenty of money but got some cool, artsy things. The Valley is full of lots of cool shops and we wandered around all afternoon.

We walked across the Story Bridge which is the big one in Brisbane that you can pay lots of money to climb over kind of like the Harbour Bridge in Sydney. There is a hotel and bar under it on one side, and we met Cori for a few pints and watched a bit of rugby which is hugely popular here. We went back to Stephen's place that is just around the corner and met his roommates and a few friends. It was strange not being the only American!

Hannah and I had planned on having a nice meal together on our last night, and luckily found a nice place that was open late (it was after 10 by the time we actually made it out!) and had a lovely meal with wine and dessert and really classed it up for a night. It was around midnight when we finished, and luckily we were too full to go to any of the bars that were around there- going out before an early morning is never a good idea!

Caitlin and I were up at 4:30 am to catch our flight to Cairns and I had to say goodbye to my English traveling mate. It was sad that almost half my trip had finished- and really unbelievable. We've had some good times together, me and Hannah :(