My gal pals Jen and Rita had arranged a special weekend for my visit to Bris-vegas. We started with drinks at the Salon Cocktail Lounge in Teneriffe which was a kind of mini-reunion of sorts with some former work colleagues including James and Mel (although technically I didn’t meet her until she came to London!) and also some new people to meet in terms of Mel’s partner and Rita’s friend Will.
The Salon Cocktail Lounge had some pretty awesome drinks on their menu – its just a shame they’d run out of liquid nitrogen which was a feature in a few of their drinks. The gals made me go for this crazy drink called The Monkey Gland Hand. It kind of was exactly what it said on the tin – served in surgical glove, on a surgical metal tray, with surgical scissors and glass. It was pretty lethal too consisting of Beefeater gin, Kubler Swiss absinthe, Blood Orange juice, homemade grenadine glaze.
It was probably a good thing I had this one first before I’d had anything to drink because it was tricky enough to try and drink it whilst sober! Jen was much more lady-like in sipping from the glove than I was when drinking from it like it was an udder!
Other interesting drinks here included the Original Zombie, Willy Wonkas Waffle Waffer (Martell VSOP, Frangelico, Chestnut liquier, grilled lemon juice, Smoked maple syrup, vanilla ice cream and a waffle, cherry garnish), I think something called the Thailander (garnished with the Chilli) and the Marshmallow Man (Russian standard, framboise, lemon juice, orgeat and cooked marshmallow foam.) This was only a sample of drinks that caught the eye – if I could have handled my alcohol a little better and if I had money to burn (cocktails were between $AUD16-$AUD20 each – ouch!) I could have happily made my way through the entire menu.
Food was pretty decent at the Salon Lounge too with a special mention to the beer battered chips which came with the most amazing brown coloured sauce and aioli. I don’t know what the brown sauce was – but it was the most unique sauce I’ve ever had. A mixture of chilli, brown sugar, coconut or something like that. Divine. Oh! And waitstaff at the Lounge are pretty friendly and helpful too!
After quite a few rounds of drinks and dinner we decided to hit the Valley to see what was going on. Cloudland, more lounge bar than club, is very appealing to the eye – with lots of different sections each decorated a little different to the last. It is a very tall venue and most of the open space in the middle was opened up all the way to the roof.
Yes, the photo in the middle above is one of the toilet …
The next morning we woke up (relatively) early to take a walk up Mt Coot-tha. Mt Coot-tha is a mountain that can be seen from all over Brisbane. Not only is it a popular venue as a lookout, it was quite often known during University as the place to go to park your car and make out! Hmmm … For our morning adventure we decided we’d try to trek up to the top – we started off on this track along which was a display of art works produced by local Aboriginal artists but made an executive decision that being a bit pressed for time we would drive to the top instead and indulge in some ice chocolate. Haha.
And, just proving how small Brisbane is, we ran into one of their colleagues on a date!
At lunch we head to a tapas train venue, pinxto. Very dangerous in the way that sushi trains are dangerous – you don’t really think about how many dishes you’re eating until its too late and you see all the plates stacked up around you!
Having worked up an appetite we then headed over to Kangaroo cliffs for some abseiling. I’ve never done abseiling so I was looking forward to it. The gals had arranged to do the event with Riverlife. Unfortunately no photos as they don’t advise that you bring your camera – if I’d known that they get you to abseil one by one I’d have brought mine as we could have easily passed the camera amongst us. Oh well!
It was a stinking hot day – which made the climb to the top of the cliffs (via stairs) tough – but even harder when we were coming down as the rope got so hot, even through the gloves, that I was really afraid I’d let go and I’m pretty sure I have a burn on my hand from it! The abseil itself was pretty comfortable but the threat of me accidentally letting go of the rope freaked me out a bit. A good afternoon.
We finished the day with dinner at Urbane, yes another fine dining restaurant. More on that later!
The grand finale of the weekend was a trip North of Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast! Mel joined us for this part of the weekend. The weather had turned a little bad unfortunately so the day started off gray and a little wet. We stopped off at Mooloolaba for some breakfast and to dip our toes into the water. The weather didn’t really stop people people from being on the beach that’s for sure, however cold and windy it was.
We were heading up to Noosa Heads for a very specific reason though Rita and Jen were being very circumspect about what we were doing and what I would need to wear etc. Turns out the surprise was that we were supposed to be doing a Camel Safari on the beach! Unfortunately due to the recent rains something happened to the ground were the camels were staying and they couldn’t move around. How odd!
Disappointing but we gladly hopped on to riding horses on the beach instead. I must admit – still pretty cool to, especially when the girls let us go for a canter.
Though we had dipped our toes in the water at various times of the day – we thought we’d wrap up our visit to the Sunshine Coast with an actual swim. It wasn’t raining by that point but the moon must have been in overdrive as the waves were ridiculous. At one point I think my top nearly came off and I actually lost a contact lens! It was crazy – but really good for body surfing, a skill which Rita seemed particularly good at.
