Day 7: Thursday, March 20th

today's was one of my sister's entries and i don't remember all the details she left out, ahem, but we'll see how it goes...

this morning we woke up at 7 due to loud noises from the hallway. we showered, in gross showers, and my sister didn't have a lockable door in the shared bathroom. she had a curtain. she was afraid of being found. but she wasn't.

so we checked out, left our bags in storage, and went off to spend a few morning hours in the city of Brisbane before we had to catch the train to the airport.

we started off by walking to the river and walking across the bridge to the other side. the other side was pretty empty of inviting civilization. we were both hungry, and thought it'd be easy to find a cafe, we were afterall in the 'museum district'. after walking many blocks, we found a nice, fairly posh cafe. our waitress began acting like she was happy to serve us. then after giving us our menus, she didn't talk to us, or even look at us for at least 20 minutes. she would walk by us and keep on going. then we finally yelled out 'we are ready to eat' and she took our order, then went to the bathroom.
the people at the table next to us were having wine with their breakfast. it was about 9:30.

we got our pancakes and waffles, both of which came with ice cream and it was a bit weird, but delish. then we went back across the river to city hall, where my sister read about a free exhibit about the history of mental institutions in the area. it was fine. it filled our time.

we got our train and got to the airport, this time almost 2 hours before our flight was set to depart. once we landed in Proserpine (an airport with 2 gates) we didn't know what to do. we finally asked a man with a badge how to get to the main road in Airlie beach and he said we could hop on a limo for 15 bucks each. so we said yes. and we rode in a limo with 2 other boys... who did not want to be our friends.

we checked in with the travel agent there who had all our vouchers for our Whitsunday Island trip for the next 4 days then found our hostel across the street (which used to be a motel).

this town is very much a young surfer scene. hundreds of backpackers and dozens of hostels all attached to the "Most Happenin' Bar" in town. many of which had live bands, girls nite, and wet t-shirt contests.

we settled in to our nice and fairly large private room with private bath and headed out into the city... the "city" which is mainly a mile long on one road. we walked it and now we are sitting on some grass in between a lagoon and the ocean reading waiting for time to pass so we can go eat dinner! TEX-MEX!

yes, we found a tex-mex restaurant and thought we had to try it. now, of course we knew it was going to be bad, but this was a bit silly. my sister says it was horrible. i say it was edible... but the service ruined the evening for me.

we waited over 50 minutes for our dinner after we ordered while we saw 2 other tables being served before us... 2 tables that arrived after us. 2 tables of huge parties. my sister and i ordered nachos and quesadillas. that's pretty much melted cheese. how could they not melt cheese on 2 plates but they could make 5 orders of fajitas and 7 other orders for those other tables??

we asked our waiter where our food was. he asked what we ordered. he said it was coming right out. it was another 10ish minutes. they must have lost our order and made it right then and there. in the meantime the drink server girl was on the ball. we had a jug full of strawberry margaritas and they tasted like dirty water.

after we got our food, we wrote a very detailed review on their feedback slip. my sister drew a picture of what Good Nachos look like and what Bad Nachos (their nachos) look like.

Good Nachos: Cheese, beans, chips. (in that order)
Bad Airlie Beach Tex-Mex Nachos: Corn, cheese, chips, beans. (yes, in that order)

corn on corn chips? my sister's reply: can i get some popcorn with that? and some corn syrup? thanks.

at least when we returned to our hostel, Kitchen Nightmares was on again. so good.

while we have music and noise coming from both the front and back of our hostel (due to neighboring backpacker bars) we will eventually get to sleep.

by the way: some anecdotes i have forgotten:

from our outback tour group.. the belgium father (who was funny and nice) was telling a story about having to keep their luggage at a hostel in the "locket" room. awww.

one nite in the outback my sister was sitting around with the 2 swiss girls and that awesome american girl. the swiss girls were asking what "awful" means since "awe" means good. allison the american replied "awful means bad unless you mean like you have an awful lot of something". my sister, being the intellectual that she is, chimed in with "actually, an interesting fact is that when the word "awful" was first invented, it meant 'good', but overtime it took on the definition of the opposite meaning.'
this was met with silence and blank stares. my sister realized that she is so used to talking to brilliant people all day, she might not always know how to contribute to conversations with an average person. or with the swiss.