Saturday morning saw us off to the Nation’s capital for the long weekend and the first time we’d taken wee bav¹ for a road trip. I’d not been to Canberra for some time and Don had not been at all.

Almost a year of ownership and the first time bav had hit 100. I think he liked it. I think he liked it at well over 100 too, when I was a little too enthusiastic on the accelerator.

Given that poor Don had done all the driving in Toscana, I decided it was my turn to let him look at the scenery (frankly, I’d trade looking at Tuscan scenery for that on the road to Canberra any time).

And Canberra, well, it’s still Canberra, terribly pretty and all that, but I think people either really love it, or are all, “wtf?”. I kind of fall in the wtf? camp. Planned “cities” are strange beasts, aren’t they? There was a distinct lack of footpath-age, except for the designated walky paths and really, there weren’t terribly many people walking on them. It feels like you may walk only where The Man wants you to walk. Not a lot of people about anywhere if it comes to that (but then it was the weekend, so perhaps the residents were elsewhere?). Everything was kind of dead.

We are really slow tourists – one attraction per day is about all we can take – although we do tend to spend hours and hours in that attraction – so we hadn’t really planned to do overmuch.

Saturday afternoon we just walked around to orient ourselves – walked over the bridge to South Canberra after eventually finding the path, got very cold and found a pub (packed with people but eerily silent) where we enjoyed some quiet beers, later, after a quick meal, we enjoyed the latter part of the amazing Swans game in the comfort of our king sized bed.

As to be expected on the last weekend of a big exhibition, the crowds were nuts at the National Gallery on Sunday. We had to queue for about 30 minutes (listening to complete morons² rabbit on) to get in – thank goodness for pre-bought tix, as it would have been an hour to even buy tickets. I think we left feeling a little underwhelmed – although Ostermorgen was utterly stunning in Real Life and I think made the wait worthwhile. I got a lot more out of the rest of the gallery than Turner to Monet (or was it Monet to Turner?). I really like their collection.

National Gallery sculpture garden. It was so cold that I had to get myself a rather fetching pink hat.

Monday saw us at the War Memorial, where I discovered that Don is a total war plane nerd. He’d be all like, “Oh! I think that is an x” and he would be totally right. I hadn’t realised that there is some awesome art there – particularly the sculptures by Lydon Dadswell, pity it gets somewhat lost amongst the diaoramas and guns and such.

The most fabulous thing was the completely amazing, to-die-for, quite possibly the best I have ever eaten, bread at our brekkie place of choice. I think I could brave the lack of footpaths and people (and life) for that bread alone! Also, in Canberra, they make a flat white that doesn’t have 3cm of froth on it – which is again, an awesome thing and something that just doesn’t happen in Sydney.

It was a “nice” break, but we were quite glad to return to the teeming masses and the inability to find a parking space. I am left rather envious of Jano’s whirlwind Melbourne adventure.

Also, I have memes to do – I have been a very bad blogger.

¹Our car, for those who have not been playing along.
²Honestly, there should be some form of test to get into a gallery. Opinions such as “that is not art” expressed with alarming frequency, should cause one to be expelled post-haste.