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Published: July 13th 2008
Well thankfully the rain stopped just in time for our arrival in Canberra. When we arrived it was dark and damp and after ten hours traveling we just wanted some dinner and a bed so we didn't pay too much attention to our surroundings but we were in for a shock when we woke up.
The capital cities that I've been to (not that many admittedly, but enough) are large and bustling with people. Not so with Canberra: after Melbourne we were amazed that there wasn't a high rise in sight and that the place seemed dead - even on a Friday night the streets were quiet and some shops shut at 3pm on Saturday! However, the trip to Canberra was definitely worthwhile as we got to learn lots about Australia as a nation.
On day one we wrapped up warm against the bitter air (it sleeted at one point) and headed out to the National Museum of Australia which provided a really good introduction to the land the people and the history all for the very reasonable price of nothing! We did plan to end the day with a walk up Black Mountain which (apparently) offers brilliant views
Windswept by the river
You could almost imagine it was hot...of Canberra but when we reached the bottom of it we were approaching dusk, could no longer feel our extremities (n.b. linen trousers DO NOT keep you warm in winter!) and chickened out when we saw how steep the road was. So the only mountain top views of Canberra we saw were pictured on postcards.
In the evening we had planned to have a quiet drink in a bar somewhere but then we met Amber - a 32 year old woman staying in our room. Although we did have a cheap and fun night the woman is nuts (actually I think) and we were glad to escape back to the hostel!
Happily Saturday was a little bit warmer and the sun shone all day, so we embarked on a walking tour (a la Lonely Planet of course) which turned out to be
10 miles long (according to Kelly's phone pedometer)! We started by crossing the city to the Parliament where we looked round and got to grips with how the Australian political system operates. The rest of the walk included Old Parliament House (build in the 1920s) and Anzac Parade which is a long road lined with memorials
for every conflict or armed service you could imagine. It was really interesting but I was glad when we got to the end and sat down for a hot chocolate in a cafe staffed by cute guys!
I was pleased to find my first ever youth hostel actually really clean, comfortable and full of friendly people (even the crazy ones are harmless) so I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of our trek up the east coast.
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