Another weekend, another boondoggle.  Sara was headed up to Canberra for 3 days of training, so I used more of my credit card bonus Qantas miles to secure an award flight up there.  I considered driving the 6+ hours, but decided against it.

I headed up after work on Friday and met Sara at our fancy hotel that was in the CBD and a short distance from a nice trail on the lake.  That night we headed to a Brewpub, Bent Spoke Brewing Company, and had some great beer and dinner.  I had a chili that was probably an 11 on the Australian spice scale (would be medium hot in the US).  Sara had a fancy lamb burger.

We’ve been trying to ramp up our distances a bit in running, so this weekend was scheduled to be our first 8 miler in a while.  Luckily we were near a very scenic trail on the lake – making the longer distance easier to deal with.  We woke up and headed right to the trail early-ish on Saturday.

After that we checked out Floriade, which is *famous* in Canberra.  Tulips, tulips and more tulips!  Canberra is not a very large city, it seemed like everyone in town must be at this event.

We then walked over to the war memorial, which was very large and elaborate.  There were dioramas of the various battlefields.  We found the frank language about the utter waste of World War 1 very interesting for a museum.

Sara’s co-worker who lives in Canberra had invited us over for dinner / BBQ so that afternoon we headed out to the burbs for some wonderful grilled meat and company.

Sunday we explored the Parliament – you can actually go into the Senate and House chambers and see where they work.

The also let you up on the roof which has nice views over the lake back towards the War Memorial.

Also, there are close up views of the super-crazy “flagpole” that you can see from all over Canberra.

Our flight didn’t leave until 9pm that night, so after our self tour of Parliament and a stop for lunch we headed out to a national park to for a nice bushwalk.  Very scenic, no snakes!

On the way back we had our first Kangaroo inside a Kangaroo experience.  Priceless!

We decided to take advantage of the “Grand Final Eve” public holiday (plus an additional day off) and take a 4 day trip to Brisbane to check out the 3rd largest city in Australia and the capital of Queensland.  Here’s a map so you can familiarize yourself.  It is about a 2 1/2 hour flight from Melbourne.

Upon arrival, we took the train from the airport into the city and checked into our hotel.  We then began exploring this beautiful riverfront city on foot.

We even spotted this friend on our walk back to the hotel.  We hope it wasn’t poisonous, because he was awfully close!

That night we found a pub with a good beer list and and had a nice dinner.  We even chatted to a couple of real live Queenslanders for a bit about the US election and living in Australia.  They again confirmed a funny truth about Australians – they are all terrified of the bears in the US.  This is amazing to us given the volume of insects and animals in Australia that are here to kill us.

The next day was reserved for more walking around.  We explored some of the neighborhoods and walked along the river.

We took the free city ferry to get the views from the water as well.

As you can tell, from the photos, the weather was stupendous.  We stopped by the Southbank area for a drink and checked out the riverfront public pool that even has a sandy beach.  Seems like a nice place to hang out on a hot afternoon!  We watched the AFL Grand Final that afternoon and then headed out for some Thai food that evening.

We hatched a plan to take the train and a bus down to the Gold Coast the next day to get some beach time in. The trip is about 1 hour and 40 minutes each way.  The beach was spectacular, but the water was still quite freezing (~ 65F).  We spent a few hours laying on the beach reading before walking around and exploring the various towns on the coast.

We got a late lunch at a cafe across the street from the beach and then hopped on the bus to the train station.

We watched the NRL (Rugby League) grand final that night, but that sport is still pretty nonsensical to me.  It’s like a football game with no passing and hardly any scoring – like a 6-3 Steelers / Ravens game in the early 2000s.

The next day it was time to head home.  I don’t think that’ll be the last time we’re in Brissy.