Our first few days here have been spent doing some non-touristy things: we have explored several neighbourhoods where we could potentially rent a home and we spent at least an hour on four separate days getting our cell phones set up (that's right, four days: the Blackberry handsets that we brought with us had to be converted over to accept a SIM card from any provider; we had to provide copies of our passports and visas; we had to get copies of our "welcome" letters from the bank showing that we had a bank account, then we had to go back and get another letter with a temporary Australian address on it...the list goes on and, now that we finally have phone numbers, we still need to go back and get them to trouble shoot a few things!)
Today, Sunday, we decided to take the City Cat on a tour of the Brisbane river. The City Cat is part of the Brisbane public transportation system. It is a catamaran (actually, they are a number of catamarans) that go from the University in the South to Brett's Wharf in the North. We took a trip from outside of our condo to the University, then back to the Eagle St Pier. The entire trip took about an hour, and we had a great view of the city from the river. The City Cat is a fantastic way for people who live far outside of the CBD (Central Business District, the same thing as a downtown) to get to work. It was also quite well used by both tourists and locals (we fall into both camps now) on a mild Sunday at the end of winter. It is warm enough to sit out on the deck of the boat, but not nice enough to welcome the wind.
Many locals choose to recreate on the Brisbane River despite being in the middle of winter. Today there were many jet-ski's and even a wakeboarder and water skiier...so much for the bull sharks scaring them away!
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