Brisbane, Australia. Christmas, 2011

    Christmas day found us in Brisbane. This shiny city of 2 million is located a few miles inland on the Brisbane River. The ship we are on, the Zaandam docked about 4miles away as the river becomes too shallow to navigate.  To get to the center or CBD central business district , as it is called, we took a catamaran called the CityCat. These catamarans effectively are used as busses. We were one of the first off the ship at 7AM and had the cat to ourselves. Since it is Christmas virtually nothing is open so we rode the 35 minutes to South Bank which is the main park in the city center. It is an urban oasis consisting of different walkways, bamboo gardens, rainforest boardwalks.a Nepalese temple and a giant ferris wheel left over from a world exhibition held here in 1988 . It was interesting to see how Aussies observe the holiday. Basicly they have huge picnics in the parks comprised of large family groups and friends. South Bank has a man made beach with lots of water features and young and old  had a blast playing in the various pools and fountains and beach. I searched in vain for WIFI to no avail so felt awful that I couldn't get in touch with our children and grandchildren. After a couple of hours we headed across the. Ew solar powered bridge to walk through the botanic gardens. Much of Brisbane was inundated a year ago by a massive flood. Many of the gardens were flooded and washed away. Still, though,there were camellias, what a wonderful scent! there were also the ubiquitous black necked ibises. These funny birds are about 2-3feet tall with very long skinny beaks.I have seen them stick those slender beaks in ladies pocketbooks looking for food. When they fly they look like herons , only less gangly and more graceful.  I liked what we saw of  "Brissie" . Like Sydney it was clean, lots of public conveniences, safe and friendly. The ride back on the cat was equally fun, even better because the guy never charged us,, Merry Christmas to the yanks.  He was happy because he was making $450 for his shift.