Showing posts with label Brisbane. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brisbane. Show all posts

Monday, February 28, 2011

The room of purple balloons

We are currently in Cairns, Austrailia where tourists flock to see the great barriar reef.  More on that later, this post will have us traveling back in time to Saturday, which was such a good day in Brisbane. 

It started with going to the market with Alison and Jen.  The market is basically a HUGE outdoor farmers market full of fresh produce, baked goods, cheese, olives, meat, flowers, etc.  It was awesome.  The fruit was so cheap and delicious.  We bought grocieries for dinner....and i could not resist buying (du-du-DAH)


A HUGE BOX OF LIMES!  I know i know.  Your are probably thinking what the heck do you need a box of 50 limes for (a valid question it turns out).  I couldn't resist.  It was only 5 dollars!  As Alison declared "the woman likes limes, ok!!"

After dropping our groceries off at Jen's house we headed to the Art Museum, which was so cool.  It was all interactive art!  Probably the best ever.  Here are the highlights:

 
A giant table of white lego

 The Wish Wall: it was this wall with probably thousands of wishes printed on ribbon. Not all the wishes were different but many were. 

 You picked your wish ribbon and then put a piece of paper with a new wish in the hole where you got your ribbon.  The gallery staff collect these and then the artist chooses which new wishes will be printed on ribbon.

One of this ribbons is Alison's, one is Jen's and one is mine. Can you guess whose wish is whose?

 Sticker sheets with Bindi dots on them.  "Nothing is ordinary" and "use these to see things in a new way" directed the sticker sheets.  There were people of all ages walking around the gallery with dots of all colors on their faces.

 The purple balloon room.  One of my favories.  It was literally a room full of purple balloons.  Only 5 people were let in at a time, for 2 mins each.  It was so fun.  So so fun.  We'll upload a video when we have access to a better computer!

A pool deck/room.  All of a sudden you were on this pool deck- and could see people "underwater".  If you went downstairs you could go into this pool room.  There was a layer of glass with a thin layer of water on it, which gave the effect of a pool.

Alison in the underwater part of the art display.  Note how she is swimming.

Ali really liked this one and so did i.  It was beautiful.  It was this mosaic, made entirly of mirrors. 

 My other favorite exibit you weren't allowed to take pictures in.  It was basically was a very zen room with four "pods" of linked coat hangers hanging from wires in the ceiling.  There were 50 or so zebra finches flying around- and when they landed on the coat hangers it pulled the wire and created a sound.  They were making the quiet background music like noises that were in the background. THIS is a video on youtube that shows the exhibit.  It was breathtaking.
After the museum we headed home and made dinner. Which was so good and we had lots of fun making it.  Cooking with Jen is always great and it is one thing that i really miss!  Of course dinner was delicious.  And what happened to our limes??

Well after one double recipie of limeaide, lime salad dressing, peanut thai sauce that had lime in it, lime popsicles, lime mini cheesecakes, and lime water.....

we had only used up 25 limes!!! But i guess that isn't bad, considering it was all in one night :)













Thursday, February 24, 2011

Brisbane

Here we are in Brisbane at Jen's house. Jen is Caryn's friend from grade 4 and a wonderful host! Here are the highlights:

Being in a house: although the Art's Factory pentagon-yurt thing was lovely, there are considerably fewer stumbling pentagon-mates here. A house is handy: Caryn has already baked and we are all up on this internet thing, planning away.

Koala Sanctuary: as cute as it sounds. Even cuter than Byron Bay's Institute of Cute. Man, I am getting schooled on cute with Caryn George around. The zoo had 130 happy koalas, many mostly-happy-seeming other animals and great little 15 min talks. We went to the talks on koalas (TOUCHED ONE!), birds of prey (SWOOPING AT OUR HEADS!), sheep hearding (DOGS RUNNING ON SHEEPS BACKS!), and platapuses (SHOOT VENOM FROM THEIR FEET!).

Eating out: Jen sure knows how to find a good place to eat! An Indian place, Sushi Train with a little round treadmill of goodness circling the tables, the Bunker (a converted old bomb shelter mini coffee house), Comfort (more cuteness), local fish and chips, and Thai Terrace.

Botanical Gardens: A tree walk for Ali! It was lead by a lovely middle aged woman who kept losing trees since her route had been disrupted by flood clean-up crews.

Future plans include heading up to Cairns Sunday to dive. Then we fly down to Sydney. After that yes, we are going to New Zealand. Yes, our flight goes into Christchurch first. Not to worry, we'll be sure to change our flights or hop a local flight to another town.

Love you!

Byron Bay, walk up to the lighthouse

Feeding the lorikeets




Alison, looking tres cute, with kangaroo, looking tres cute


possum



It would have cost $32 to get pictures with the real live koalas (say whAt!?!), so we decided to do our own photo shoot in the gift shop. This one really liked me.

BIRD OF PREY. WATCH OUT YO

Jen at Sushi Train. Note train, imagine movement.


Jen in space.
aka flower market