Scarborough

Now that we're temporarily living in my parents house in North Lakes, we're exploring more of the northern suburbs and attractions. One such excursion was to Scarborough - a seaside village similar to Manly/Wynnum in the south, but with great views out to Moreton Island, Bribie Island and back across to the Glasshouse Mountains. Again, the beach area is not much to rave about, but the parkland is pleasant with lots of big pine trees and there is a strip of cafes/restaurants which looked worth checking out. We even saw a couple of weddings being held in the parks - I think largely because the views are such a beautiful backdrop for photos. We then sampled some fish and chips at a place called Morgans Seafood. The place was absolutely heaving and we had to wait about 20-25 minutes for our food. Given the length of the wait, I was a little disappointed with the crumbed barramundi we had - it wasn't the best. Maybe we just ordered the wrong type of fish? But the fresh seafood area there looked promising and I'll have to give that a try at some stage.

Manly

Not to be confused with Manly in Sydney, Brisbane has it's own suburb called Manly. Like in Sydney, this Manly is also on the coast, although it doesn't really have the nice sandy beaches. It's more like a rock-coral mixture and the water is a little muddy, I guess being closer to the Brisbane River system. Despite this it's still a nice area to visit on a weekend - it has a lovely esplanade with parkland, BBQ spots and there's some nice cafes and fish and chip shops. We grabbed a good take away coffee (from Cafe Da Vinci) and enjoyed a piece of my home made banana cake (courtesy of a Lyn Sauter's recipe). I also made the happy re-discovery of the Moreton Bay fig tree. I forgot about Queensland's version of the fig tree, given that they're an iconic image of Sydney.