2005 Brisbane Bead & Gem Show news

The Brissy Bead & Gem Show was open from 5pm to 10pm Thursday night 21st July 05 and from 9am to 5pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday 22nd to 24th July 05.

Thursday and Friday for me were taken up with doing classes with Peter Minson, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and the rest of my time was spent traipsing around meeting new friends and catching up with old ones.

Oh, and spending money...  All up I spent just under $2,000.  $785 on various goodies and the rest on accommodation, food etc...  It's a good thing that I didn't buy that kiln I was thinking about...

Dinners out with forum members were a ball.  It was so good to get to know new people, and to get to catch up with familiar faces and and learn that little bit more about them.

The only bad thing that occurred during the four/five days was with our accommodation.  (Oh, and THAT guy with the camera phobia, but that's another story...)

Anita & I stayed at "an unfortunately everything that can go wrong, will" hotel.  It started when we were given the wrong room which meant that instead of the twin share executive suite I had booked, Anita had to sleep on a fold out bed for the entire 5 nights we were there.  Dinner on the first night consisted of dishwater soup instead of chowder and nothing to replace it with when it was sent back...!  Seriously, they took the food back and that was the last we saw of anyone until we called someone over 10 minutes later to show us the menu again!  We ordered breakfast the next morning and got sour honeydew melon and kiwi fruit and squishy grapes...  and we didn't get a replacement breakfast menu until day three, so brekky was had at the BP Servo near the hospital from then on.  The room service stir fry noodle dish I had on Thursday night tasted like the noodles had been cooked in the remainder of Anita's dishwater chowder...  Anita's lobster was nice, thankfully, but in the morning when we opened the door to leave for the show, we were hit with this awful smell and looked down to find that the tray from the previous night was still sitting on the floor outside our room.  ...with half eaten stir fry and the remains of a lobster on it.  PHEW!!  Anita and I just looked at each other in disbelief...   There was more, but I think you get the gist of it...  This place definitely falls into the "where NOT to stay in Brisbane" category!  Another lady at the show said that she had similar problems when she stayed there.  How they ever got 4 stars is beyond me.

Anyway, for those of you waiting with baited breath...  I have finally uploaded my photos.

You can find them here.

Deborah Lewis, PO Box 309 Maryborough QLD. 4650, Australia
ABN: 58 687 596 266  E-mail:   Web: www.debbiedoesbeads.com