My Telstar drove along the motorway as Brisbane’s skyline was whipping by on our right. I knew I needed to exit, but which one would take us to the area of downtown where we might find a hostel? I chose one at random since that is the best one can hope to do in such a situation, and we (Alli, Chris, Kate, and I) found ourselves on Elizabeth Street. Fortuitously, we were soon in familiar terrain and so we found a spot to park the car for a couple hours and set off on foot to find a hostel down Edward St. In a continuing run of good fortune, we came across a hostel called The Palace pretty easily and so, after lunch and some souvenir shopping for my homebound friends, we unloaded our stuff. I didn’t have such good fortune finding the place where we could park overnight for $14, stopping at two parkades before someone would let me leave the car long enough to run back to the hostel and get better directions. Apparently “it’ll be your first one on the right” referred to turns rather than the parkade. Chris came with and we parked the car and went back to pick up the girls before setting off to get some stuff done in Brisbane.
I needed a bit of space and had already had enough of souvenir shopping, so I went off on my own. I guess I’m a bit homesick after all, as I found myself in a bookstore reading everything I could find in travel guides about Saskatoon. They were unanimous in naming us the prettiest city on the prairies and I was delighted by Lonely Planet’s recommendation that people traveling through get off the Trans Canada and come through Saskatoon instead of Regina. Not to say that Regina doesn’t have some cool stuff to see, but hey, rivalries live on. I saw a brew pub, which I’d not seen many of in my time here (pubs, oh yes, but not breweries) so I went in and chatted with the Zimbabwe bartender (a very interesting guy) while sampling their stuff. They have a 100% wheat beer with no hops even that I really didn’t care for, a pretty nice amber, and a good pilsener, but otherwise nothing unique. I don’t know if I’m a dark fan so much anymore, I didn’t like any of the ones I tried. But I digress.
Six samples later it was time to meet up with the others and grab some groceries. They had also grabbed a beer after some shopping, so we were especially cordial to each other. Chris and Alli had to stop at the ATM, so Kate and I went ahead to try to get dinner ideas. When Chris and Alli arrived, they found our basket stocked with only M&Ms and Coke in honour of Rachel. Then we decided to get a real dinner and got some stuff to make pizzas. Back to the hostel, where right behind our backs – literally as we cooked in front of the fridge - some of the girls’ beer was stolen. Gutsy. There was nowhere to sit in the kitchen, so we took our stuff up to the room and sat on the floor eating our pizza and joking around. Again, I found sleep quite early (by midnight) and just as well. We got the earliest start we have in our foursome’s time together and by lunch we were in Mooloolaba up the coast, actually a pretty decent place now that we were there of our own volition. We grabbed some picnic supplies and had lunch on the rocks of the coast – a pretty nice spot if I may say. Then we continued our trek upwards to Noosa where we had a bit of trouble finding somewhere with rooms until we found a place on Sunshine Beach very nearby that was a great deal. An apartment for $24/night.
We dumped our stuff and headed to Noosa Heads to make the most of the remaining day on the beach. It was 4:00 when we got there and we stayed until sunset because it was an amazing beach. The surf was great (and there were lots of people to watch doing just that), the view was beautiful, and the beach was huge, stretching off to the horizon. We did some bodysurfing until the sun was falling behind the trees, lighting the spray of each wave in orange flame and I ran in to get a photo, but by then it was too late. Chris had bought a boomerang and we threw it around but unfortunately, not quite around. It never did come back, exactly, but it was a lot of fun and we tried until it was almost too dark to see.
We ordered some expensive Chinese food for dinner while Chris and Alli went to rent a movie to watch in our apartment. We went over with the food to see how they were doing and they had narrowed it down to Mean Girls or Just Friends. I had seen both and didn’t like them, but Alli wasn’t up for any of my suggestions, so I just let them pick. We went home and watched Just Friends, which was just as bad as I remember it (I felt a little vindicated that Kate had fallen asleep and that Chris was laughing as infrequently as I was). Alli, at least, seemed to be laughing quite a bit and enjoying herself, so it wasn’t a total write off I suppose, and it was nice to just sit and watch TV for a while. Afterwards, a girl from Sweden joined us and I wound up chatting with her for an hour or so before she went to sleep and I discovered there was free (but sloooow) wireless until almost 2 AM. Had I known the trouble that would befall us tomorrow, I certainly would’ve gone to bed much earlier. But that’s a story for next time…
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