But...we were apparently ghosted by the adventure tour company that was supposed to catalyze this massive adventure on our behalf. So...f**k those guys.
We had tried to call the adventure tour company the day prior, to confirm the early morning pickup not far from our hotel, but the phone number we had been given by our travel agent appeared to be out of service. This should have been the first indication that something was amiss. The second indication that something was amiss occurred after we got up butt early anyway, missing the free hotel breakfast as a result, and cabbed it to the supposed adventure tour pickup address in Brisbane, which was an empty store front, with a "for rent" sign in the window. None the less, the site did have a bus stop island that one could reasonably assume an adventure tour company might commandeer for the purposes of picking up tour participants in a large minivan or something. We held out some hope. But the 7:10 AM rendezvous time came and went, so we messaged our travel agent, who was - remarkably - available to receive our message and said she would expediently look into what was amiss.
In the meanwhile, we decided to wander back toward our hotel, which was not far away. We had only cabbed it the few blocks to the purported pickup address because the pickup time was so early and we wanted to be on time, unlike the adventure tour company, apparently. Our travel agent messaged us back as we were walking and told us she had been informed the adventure tour had been canceled due to weather (odd...because the weather was awesome...sunny skies and temperatures in the 80s...ideal weather!) AND that the adventure tour company had messaged us the day prior to communicate this fact (neither Deborah nor I had any email, voicemail, or text messages from the adventure tour company on any of our devices). So, we concluded we had been ghosted by the adventure tour company, for whatever the f**k reason.
Always the first to reframe adversity as opportunity, we got back to the hotel in plenty of time to have the complimentary breakfast we would have missed had the adventure tour happened. At breakfast, I did a bit of research on local attractions and discovered a sunset river cruise happening later in the day, which I promptly booked online.
The remainder of the day involved more chilling by the rooftop pool of the hotel, some more sauna exposure to loosen up the lung butter from my slowly resolving chest cold, a lunch at a vegan junk food vendor called Lord of the Fries, and finally the aforementioned sunset river cruise, by way of a cab ride down the the Brisbane Cultural Center Public Pontoon (aka, jetty) and a wander through the Brisbane Modern Art Museum prior to boarding the boat for the cruise (we had cabbed it down to the cruise launch site quite early, to get our bearings in advance, since it was unfamiliar territory).
The sunset river cruise was pleasant and we chatted with some locals (Brett and Ann) on the 90 minute boat ride up and down a short stretch of the lengthy Brisbane River. As the sun went down, the city of Brisbane AUS lit up in some aesthetically pleasing ways. After disembarking from the boat and bidding Brett and Ann farewell (with some challenging attempts to befriend them on social media), we made our way through the labyrinthine urban thoroughfare along the river's edge to a vegan Mexican restaurant called El Planta, not far from the jetty. We had reserved a table online for 8 PM and got there a little early. This pleased the hostess for some reason. We had a very enjoyable vegan dinner there, comprising mainly an assortment of vegan tacos (hearts of palm simulating fish, jackfruit simulating pulled pork, and cauliflower emulating cauliflower) and a margarita (for me).
We took an Uber back to the hotel and slumbered.
Fin.
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