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!
Yay! Kangaroo in a Kangaroo. Sounds like a fun trip.
Yes, we still get excited anytime we see kangaroos, so we stopped to watch this one hop. Then it stopped and the little fella popped his head out to look at us.
I approve this boondoggle