A day of international culture, sort of

Yesterday was the French Festival in Brisbane, in honour of Bastille Day on Wednesday the 14th..  It was a beautiful day, and as neither Renata or I had anything planned  Renata came over and we drove down to Brisbane, with Renata's daughter in tow.
Unfortunately every other inhabitant of South East Queensland thought it would be a good idea too. It was busier than Disneyland.  There were so many people there. I am sure the organizers would have been amazed and very happy at how popular it was.  We arrived at about 1.30pm and it was packed. The food stalls had huge queues and it was very difficult to work your way through the crowds.

Originally we had planned to have lunch there, wander around, maybe go across to the city and have a look at the shops and then come back to Southbank for an early dinner and then drive back up to the coast.

There was no way we were going to have lunch there unless we were willing to stand in a queue for ages, so we changed our plans and went to the restaurant for lunch instead of dinner. Yumm

The restaurant is called Ahmets, a fabulous Turkish restaurant at Southbank.  

Check out the decor.

We had really lovely meals, although we ordered way too much, they were huge serves and couldn't finish them.  We also had to try  the Turkish Delight Martini, OMG, very sweet but yummmmm.

I think Renata's had plenty.

The Mezze plate that we shared, doesn't actually look at all appetising in this photo,  does it!

Pepper stuffed with lovely fragrant rice, dolmades, falafels,  salad and a mixed vegetable dish.

My dish of Lamb kebabs with rice, salad and a little bit of flat bread.

Renata's lamb and eggplant puree.

None of those dishes photographed well, but they were very very nice indeed. In fact I could say some very rude things about what they look like, but I won't. The atmosphere was great too. On Saturday night they have belly dancers as entertainment.

After lunch we tried the French Festival again, it was still very busy.  Even when we went back for the third time in the early evening there were still crowds of people.