We haven’t rented a car for this portion of the trip, so we took the bus to the Gallery of Modern Art. I guess we hadn’t communicated that to Millie because while we were waiting at the bus stop she said “uh, why did we stop walking and we’re just standing here?”

It was a quick 15 minute ride through downtown and to the cultural center across the river, where all the museums are. It has been a while since we’d ridden public transit and I remembered how much I love it.

The museum was huge and free. We first followed signs to the children’s art center. They had two huge areas dedicated to children’s programming. The first was an artist-led project with clear instructions and a video playing about why the artist chose these materials.

Then we went to the second large kids area, which had multiple activities. They had screens to design faces matching a Thai artist’s style, booths that guided kids through meditations, TVs with dances to follow, a hallway of things to smell, and lots of little areas to sit and do a guided craft. It was incredible.

We spent some time up in the “grownup” galleries but most of our time was at the kid stuff. On our way out Millie played at the cafe playground while Nick and I had coffees.

From here, we walked along the South bank of the river in search of lunch. The river here has boardwalks and bike paths all along it, and reminds me of so many other classic river cities that I love: Austin, Chicago, London, etc.

We came upon an amazing playground before we discovered a decent lunch place. Millie ran to it and spent at least an hour playing. Her confidence and friend making abilities continue to amaze us. Today we heard her run up to kids and say “hi! Want to play? Where are you from?”

The playground was awesome. By this point we were already all-in on Brisbane; free museums, riverside trails, great playgrounds, perfect weather, friendly people, clean buses. Everything we had read about the city sells it short, like the less cool sibling of Sydney and Melbourne.

We had a simple but good late lunch overlooking the water. This has become a common occurrence of the trip. A huge lunch at 3pm and then just some snacks for dinner. It is so nice to not be on any sort of schedule.

As we were leaving the restaurant we walked past a large public pool and faux beach, right beside the river.

Millie wanted more play time so we went back to the cool playground. She met two little girls and they went crazy on the human hamster wheel. They all had similar hair which was extremely cute.

As Nick and I were sitting, we noticed we were right by the ferry stop and decided to take that back to our neighborhood. It cost 50 cents.

As we were pulling up to our stop, we saw a large and well-designed building on the cliffside with a sign that said “Felons Brewing”. A waterfront brewery at magic hour? Twist my arm.

We sat in beanbag chairs and I continued to wonder why people don’t talk about this city more. Maybe they do and I’ve missed it?

After our beer we began the short walk to our Airbnb. We walked past yet another incredible playground, bars, coffee shops, and restaurants.

At home we remembered that Nick had bought some “beanboozled” jelly beans. With these you don’t know if you’ll get a good one or a terrible one, and we had so much fun trying them.

It was a great day. At the end of it, Millie said “I need to remember to tell granny about our day when we FaceTime” so she wrote an agenda for the next time they talk. She has no idea that granny is reading this very detailed account. On the blog.