Meeting blogger, high places, train home

We went to get a free Marriott breakfast. Normally hotels don't bother to check, but this one was thorough. I had to stare at the man with a look of silent incomprehension for about a minute before the queue behind us got too long and angry. They were fed up of him asking "Could I see your token please?" and me smiling pleasantly in silence. He just crumpled and said "OK sir, this way please!"

It was a wonderful breakfast. TT had fruit salad for starter, egg and bacon for main and then a massive pile of cakes for finishes. I went for some continental style (my fave, meat and cheese) to start and then biggest English breakfast in the world. It was all self-serve buffet, so I stopped one of the waiters: "Excuse me mate, my girlfriend and I always prefer to share a plate of food. Do you have one of those steak platter plates?" He nodded and fetched me one. I then piled it up with about a kilo of bacon, loads of potato wedge thingies, 3 fried eggs, a whole pigs-worth of sausages, and everything else that wasn't squidgy. Have you ever seen a truckers breakfast? Well, imagine that x 3. That's what I managed to tower onto my platter.

Why did I do this? Simple. Last night I'd grabbed some of those foil lined bags from the local kebab shop and I'd accidentally taken them into the breakfast room with me. Shame to waste them, eh? We now had food for 2 days. Sometimes on this blog I joke and say things that are exaggerated or sarcastic. I'll let you decide whether this is one of the those comments. Lol. I'll be right back, I'm just off to grab a steak, egg and sausage sandwich....

We then packed our stuff, and went to meet Helen. She and her boyfriend were great fun. They took us to the tallest building in Australia. Helen asked whether we'd seen it yet. I made a wonderfully intelligent comment "Er, I don't think we have. We weren't sure what we were looking for?" Helen just turns to me, cool as an Eskimos nads, raises her sunglasses and suggests "Er? The tallest building in the place?" Seconds later the car it parked, we get out and she point skywards. "That one" she confirms.

I honestly don't know how the hell TT and I had missed it. It's fucking huge! We were staying on floor 21 of the Marriott and that was high. The hotel had 36 floors and we thought that was amazing. This bloody place had 78 floors plus a bloody spire!

It's 20th highest building in the world, and the highest one I've been in. They had a comparison chart and I'd only been to three other ones. Pointy thing in Paris (bit of an eye-full), twin towers in Kuala Lumpar and Amoco Building. This was higher than all of them. I think. The stupid thing about the chart was that it was in no particular order. It had spectacular illustrations and all, but it was nonsensical.

They also boast to have the fastest elevator in the world. They are not lying.

You get in and within 20 seconds you're at the top of an 80 storey building! It's just a case of:

• Get in
• Ears pop
• Ears pop again
  
• Ding!

You're there. 360 lookout. It's pretty amazing.

When we arrived at the top TT and I realised we'd left our camera in the car. Fortunately Helen and Andrew (her boyfriend) are wonderful people and simply said "We'll take as many as we can and put them onto CD for you. If there's anything you want in particular, just ask" Wasn't that nice of them? I like Helen and Andrew. They're cool.

We looked around the building and done all the appropriate oohs and aaahs. I shouldn't dismiss it so lightly, it was incredibly spectacular. Every 5m there was a pair of rack mounted, pay-by-the-second binoculars offering "Auto focus". I guess that means they focus on what they want to rather than what you want to look at?

Also, why the hell would I pay $16 to go up a hugely high building and then pay $2 to look at something on the ground? Jeez! If I want to look at it closely I'll just wait until I go back down. Fucking numb nuts....

For pictures go and look at Helens blog for now, I will put some on here but I'm a bit pushed for time for now.

By the end of the visit up the tower Helen made her offer even kinder: "Why don't we take you back to our house? I can burn these photos onto CD, you can see where we live, and then I'll give you a lift to the train station?" How kind is that?! Someone we've only just met and she's offering to do that for us!

We accepted. No wonder she wanted to show us her house though, it's amazing! I've been to smaller hotels than her house, and it's only her, her boyfriend and one other guy living there!

They have their own pool, outside area with basketball hoop, two living areas (both approximately the size of a football pitch), gods only know how many bedrooms, lovely kitchen, double garage and outside parking! It's pretty amazing. I guess when you move away from Brisbane property gets cheaper! Either that or she's a millionaire. In Brisbane that sort of place would cost.............er, my brain just done an overflow error thing.

It was a wonderful house. To make it even better it has Helens own photos dotted around the place. And TT noticed that the DVD collection met her tastes perfectly. Personally I'm not sure if I like Napoleon Dynamite or not, I've only seen it once and I'm currently sitting on the fence, but TT loves it and she's well impressed that Helen has it to. She's also impressed that everything was arranged in alphabetical order.

Given a million years I probably wouldn't have noticed either of those two things. I would just be happy playing with the dog (he was cute) and talking to anyone willing to listen. In this instance, Andrew!

After burning the photos onto CD Helen gave us a lift to the train station - she's lovely isn't she? The train ride home was fun - There was a huge match that night between Wallabies and All Blacks (Aus and NZ) in Brisbane, and our train was filled with Kiwi fans. Wasn't hard to tell, they were all in black - strangely enough! They were taking the piss out of Aussies the whole way.

At one stop a girl hopped off the train and as she done so she swung around to the door and raised both hands in classic V fashion and yelled "GO AUSSIE! GO AUSSIE! WE'RE GONNA STUFF YA! FUCKING SHEEP SHAGGERS!" The kiwi's all bawled and tried to get off the train but she'd timed it perfect. The automatic doors slid shut and the train pulled away. She pulled down her pants and done a sideways-shuffling-moonie at the carriage all the way to the end of the platform as it pulled out of the station. I almost pissed myself laughing at the irate kiwis.

Unfortunately Australia lost the game.