Brisbane

The best thing about travel, and the experiences you remember from traveling around, are the firsts. Usually the first time you've been somewhere, done something, seen something, insert-a-verb-here something. I was only meant to spend about 8 hours in Brisbane with my original schedule, and ended up extending it to 28 so I could finish my dive course in Cairns. And it's a good thing, too, because I had a blast. My list of firsts for Brisbane:

• The first time I'd seen the college friend I'd stayed with, Rebecca, in several years
• The first time on this trip someone's actually met me when I arrived (voluntarily, that is... a guy with a sign met me at the airport in Bali, and that was pretty cool, but I had to pay him ten bucks to do it and I don't see myself getting nostalgic about that at a later date)
• The first home-cooked meal since I left
• The first time I've ever managed to mess up hard-boiled eggs
• The first time I thought drinking at a bar was too expensive
• The first time I went to the bottle shop next door to the bar for a bottle of wine because of the above economic assessment
• The first time I've evaluated wines according to whether their tops are cork or screw-off
• The first time I've smuggled said wine into a bar
• The first time I've really appreciated the size of my purse
• The first time I've gone to the bathroom for reasons of getting a liquid substance into me
• The first time I've later decided to hell with it and just refilled my glass from my purse while I was in the bar
• The first time I tried to repeat that entire process and was thwarted by the fact that bottle shops close at midnight
• The first time I bought a bottle of wine at the bar because I wanted to bring it home
• The first time I smuggled said wine out of a bar
• The first time I couldn't even finish the damn bottle and really shouldn't have bothered
• The first time I was really hung over on a day when I had to travel
• The first time I've come close to missing my flight
• The first time a two-hour flight delay has been a good thing