canberra

canberra waterfront

the first thing anyone said when we suggested we might stop in canberra was "why?". nice, no? as the nation's capital, it felt like the kind of place we should stop. you know, it just felt wrong to tour a country and not explore it's capital. but aussies (and in fact, many people) find canberra a bit boring. we found it to be lovely.

we arrived in the middle of the day on a thursday. a good time to visit a city, i think. canberra is incredibly green (in colour, not politics...), and is clearly a very planned out town. it's like a giant park space, which happens to be a city. it sits amongst (what i assume are man-made) lakes and small hills of greenery. after a stop at the (uninformative) tourist bureau, we made our way to the botanic garden- where we lazed away the afternoon, reading books in the park. a nice way to spend the afternoon really. in the evening, we rode our bikes into the downtown area. now, having come from perth, i was both surprised and impressed that sleepy ol' canberra had a somewhat hopping downtown. and it didn't shut down at 6pm. no one kicked us out of the restaurant at 9pm. how nice.

random carousel in canberra

in the morning, we managed to find a nice market  to pick up groceries before we drove over to the AIS. the AIS, for those not in the know, is the australian institute of sport. it's where most major australian athletes (and not minor ones too actually) train and perfect their sport. it's a huge complex, with pools, gyms, tracks, athlete village, etc. it started some 10 years before the sydney olympics in an effort to up the quality of australian sport (canadian sport officials, take note. australia is doing a much better job then us...)

after spending a bit of time in the city (and enjoying some delicious gelato at the mall), we drove off, bidding goodbye to the capital. we pulled over at a random rest stop on our way to the blue mountains.


xo