I assume it’s no surprise for most of you that I spent my mid-term break in Australia visiting Camilla (woohoo!). I departed from Milan on Saturday 27^th of October, following a nice Friday party evening of course, flying over London and Singapore, and arriving in Brisbane Monday morning. Camilla and I spent the first week in Brisbane where she showed me around town, got accustomed to her place and friends, went partying and barbequing and we celebrated having been together for a year (with some delay, too).

I actually ended up being a tourist on the way down to Australia. With the stopover in Singapore I got the chance to see probably the most amazing airport I have ever seen. Not only does it have grandiose areas, it has several fountains, and it of course also has an outdoor(!) cactus garden and bar…

As mentioned, the following days were spent in Brisbane. For those unaware about Brisbane, it’s a fast growing city with 1-1½ million inhabitants. It’s located about 2 hours flight north of Sydney, meaning the climate is a lot warmer. A river swings it way throughout the town and one of the public means of transport are the rivercats that travel up and down on the river. Finally, downtown Brisbane is basically covered by skyscrapers with hotels and businesses.

The pictures just show some of the buildings and areas. The cafe we’re eating at is called The Coffee Club. It’s basically a Starbucks/Baresso/etc type of place except that some of them also have a “restaurant” section which serves cafe food. They make awesome all-day breakfasts as seen on the pictures.

The first Wednesday Camilla and I joined her house mates for a night out. Camilla’s favorite place in Brisbane is a place called Downunder which basically caters to students and internationals. The first couple of pictures shows our cab ride to Downunder, which of course turned up to completely overcrowded as you can see in the queue… maybe going there on Halloween wasn’t the greatest idea. Anyways we went to an other place nearby called Victory for drinks and Karaoke. After some time we went back to Downunder for drunken dancing…

Camilla and I had agreed to spend one of the days celebrating our 1st year together, although we were a couple of weeks late. We decided to check into a fancy hotel in Brisbane to get a bit away from everything and just be able to enjoy one an other. The hotel had an outdoor pool on the roof, but unfortunately we didn’t get all that lucky with the weather so we only used it a little. As for dinner we had booked a table at a restaurant on the riverside called ChaChaChar. ChaChaChar was a great place, awesome service and great steaks (their specialty)… pay attention to their steak knives…

The week ended with a barbecue on south bank. South bank is basically a recreational area on the opposite of the river from the central business district, but on the same side as Camilla lives on. There’s a large pool (which was closed), plenty of grills to use, and grassy areas. Food, good weather, football…