Escaping the Cold

With the June Long Weekend came the perfect chance to escape the cold of Canberra and head up to Brisbane for the Australian Judo National Championships.

When I got to Canberra Airport at 7:30am on the Friday morning it was around -5 degrees.. This of course brought with it a great deal of fog, closing the airport for about an hour and delaying my flight. However once we got on the plane (Virgin Embraer 190) it was smooth sailing up to Brisbane. I love flying Virgin Blue the staff are friendly and the planes are always clean and comfortable. Arriving in Brisbane we got a bus to our team accommodation the Hillcrest Central at Southbank. The apartments were great! We had 2 bedroom apartments with full kitchens, bathroom and balconies. The hotel had a spa, pool and sauna (which was well used by the judo team) and we were a 10 minute walk from the Southbank restaurants in one direction and the Gabba and shopping centre in the other.

View to Brisbane CBD from the hotel

As for what we did while we were up there it was the typical Judo trip meaning 90% of our time was taken up by judo and making weight, that said I managed to get a lot of uni assessment done and watched great movies such as Stick It, Bend it Like Beckham (my favourite movie) and Major Payne. We also went into Ginga a Japanese restaurant in Southbank which is a favourite of mine and the Torikatsu once again was delicious. While I was there I also went for a walk along the river and saw the gallery and theatres, a drive to Southbank turned into a tour of the CBD one night which was quite nice. On the last night we went to a club called the Normanby which was quite amazing due to the sheer size and how busy it was on a Sunday. (Although it was a public holiday which explained how busy it was)

There was some good judo over the weekend with some big ippons and some fantastic results for the ACT team. I wasn't particularly happy with my first fight where I managed to waste the best draw that will probably ever be given to me at Nationals. One interesting thing was that the gold medallists were given pineapples as well as medals which was problematic as you can't take fruit out of Queensland.

Coming home I flew QANTAS which was once again disappointing with service and cleanliness nowhere near as good as Virgin.

Well that's it for Nationals this year. It was probably one of the best Nationals I've been to and next year we are going to Perth which will be interesting.

Nationals Time Again

Well just a quick blog tonight because I have a pile of work to get done in the next week. On Friday I'm getting on a plane and flying up to Brisbane for Judo Nationals which should be a good trip despite the fact 4 days is far too short a time to be up there. Hoping that the ACT fights really well and brings home some medals, also hoping I make my weight class although I am quite close. That said I am already making lists of all of the unhealthy food I will eat after weigh in.. Two weeks of steamed veggies and eggs are a bit too much.

Most of all I'm looking forward to being in the warm weather. It has been in the negative temperatures down here recently and I have totally changed from loving winter to hating it with a firey passion.. I need to move somewhere warm for sure.

The next week is bound to be hectic, I have 3 pieces of assessment on Tuesday but the upside of that is that all of my assessment will be over! It's been a long semester and it will be good once it's over so I'm thinking a few brewskies may be in order to celebrate come mid next week.

Better get back to studying.. As of next week I will be free to write to my heart's content and already have a few things on my mind to write about.

So for now that's it! I hope you all have a safe and happy long weekend