Our weekend away

So much to talk about, so little time!

So, Brisbane was pretty much one of our best visits ever. I don't know if it's because it's been a full year since our last stay there or if it's because it's been so long since we took a romantic weekend but it was just a really special time. The Wintergarden (shopping centre adjacent to the Hilton) on Queen St. is undergoing a lot of renovations at the moment, so that kind of forced us to get out of our comfort zone and walk further than we usually do. There's lots of new shops and things going in everywhere you look, it's really exciting!

On Friday we were lucky enough to have our luggage be the first off the carousel giving us just enough time to SPRINT to the train ticket stand and be on our way with one blinking minute to spare as the green sign so kindly reminded us. I was not going to sit on that platform for 30 minutes in the freezing cold! This worked out well because we were able to check into the hotel by about 9am and go straight to Coffee Club. They make a better Flat White than anyone anywhere, hands down! Then we proceeded to partake in one of our very favorite pastimes: people watching. :) We like to make up stories about the people as they pass. And 9am is one of the very best times because you get to see all the people commuting to work. I must say, everyone in Brisbane is much thinner on average than anywhere else we've been. It must be all that walking! Perhaps if we were looking at the people who drove to work they would be significantly softer. Perhaps. ;)

After Coffee Club, I'm not quite sure what we did with all our time. Mostly just browsing shops while Chris trailed behind me I think....but before we knew it it was noon and time to start heading to ARIA for lunch. But we were le-tired and decided to order room service and have a nap instead. lol It was my first steak in months and it was everything I'd dreamt it would be. The nap was nice too :) From there we proceeded to trek to Spring Hill for our appointment with our photographer and boy is Brisbane hilly! They don't call it Spring Hill for nuthin! My calves were screaming in protest, my forehead was glistening and I was a bit huffed and puffed by the time we got to the studio. And the secret of all the thin ones in Brisbane is revealed: hills. I am decidedly out of shape, but that is quite beside the point isn't it? :P

We spent the next 3 hours poring over 900 pictures and were, somehow, meant to narrow them down to less than 200. It was a really special time for us though. It was different being able to look at the photos in real size without a watermark and some that we'd completely looked over before became real gems in our eyes. One of the most special moments for me was at the reception as I was dancing with Daddy and seeing the way he looked at me. That one's going in a frame! We hired Marcus 1st and foremost because of his unbelievable ability to work the landscape around you into the shot in ways you'd never imagined and some of the shots just took our breath away! These are our top 3 shots:

He loves:


I love:

We love:







After our appt. with Marcus, it was almost time for pre-dinner drinks and canapes which are free in the executive lounge of the Hilton when you are in an executive level room. So I got my party dress on and we had a couple beers and tried all kinds of different canapes...only to find an hour later that we were both stuffed on canapes and didn't need dinner after all! So we went downstairs for the ceremonious overpriced cocktail in the lounge and found that they have DISCO'D my favorite cocktail. :( In all the years we've been going to the Hilton, I've gotten the same thing and now they don't even put it on the menu?? Sad day. Ah well. We had drinks until about 9pm and planned on going upstairs and ordering room service and maybe watching a movie...but next thing I knew it was 4am and I was in bed, fully clothed, shoes and all. Chris was much the same next to me. HA! You'd think we were seniors.

Saturday we had the breakfast buffet downstairs and it was SO nice. Gourmet chef doing omelets made-to-order in the middle of the restaurant, every fruit, muffin and danish you can imagine. Fresh barista brewed coffee any way you like it! It was the nicest breakfast we'd had in a long time. We were happy chappies. :) After breakfast we walked to the Myer center. There I found out that there actually IS quite a good selection of nice fashionable plus-size clothes designs for women in Australia, just not in Mackay! (I'll remind you "plus-size" in Oz is anything over a US size 10.) But Myer is coming to Mackay, they're building it as we speak, so I could be in luck after all. :) Okay, I am seriously digressing from the point of our trip to Myer: TWILIGHT ECLIPSE! woooo! I even bought a sparkly ring from this new accessories shop in the Myer center that's two wolf heads. It's prettier than it sounds and does NOT look like two llamas as my friend Hayley keeps insisting. It's my Wolf Pack ring, in honor of our trip to see Eclipse. :) It was so good! I only read the book once like 2 years ago now so there was some stuff I'd forgotten about and of course there wasn't enough fight scenes for Chris but we both agreed it was one of the best movies we've seen all year. Maybe if I was more of a "twihard" or whatever I could complain about it, but I just thought it was great. :)

That night we had dinner at a place called Gusto da Gianni, because I was craving GOOD pizza and had looked at reviews online that said this isn't the best in Brisbane but is still worth checking out. (pizza is my favorite food in case you didn't already know.) We had so much fun! I don't know what it was, it felt like it did when we were dating again when everything is new and fresh and exciting. We laughed through the whole meal and shared stories we never had, even though we thought we knew everything there was to know about each other. We went back to the Hilton and had a few cocktails in the lounge (yes there's lots of alcohol in our weekend away, what can we say? :P) and there were a bunch of beebs there for their "formal" which, from what I can gather, is like the Aussie version of a prom. It was so precious!

We had another early night and were in bed before 10pm but still slept in until 8 the next day which was nice, and had a quick breakfast in the exec. lounge before heading back to the airport.

Last weekend was so good for our marriage! I don't know what it was, it's not like we were having problems or anything before, we're both still very much in love and that's never wavered...but it's like last weekend put a bit of that uninhibited infatuation back into our marriage and it feels like the honeymoon phase all over again and it's really nice. :) Even though it was an expensive time away, I think it was worth every penny when it brings us this much closer. I'd recommend it to anyone. :)