Skip to main content

The science of Canberra


What do I do on holiday but go to work, of course!

Just for something a little different during these Easter school holidays we decided to pop down to Canberra for an overnight stay. We drove down on Tuesday morning, stopping at pretty Berrima for a tasty lunch of meat pies at the award winning Gumnut Patisserie rather than suffer McDonalds at the Sutton Forest service centre, like most do.

Alex was so excited to be staying at a hotel, though it took us a little while to find the Aria. It's a friendly place and the rooms had a bit of character with a nice view of the area. We had brought Alex's bike with us, so we drove to the lake, hired bikes for B and I. The quality of bikes had much improved since we last hired, they were now equipped with gears.


Not Alex's, as he is still on training wheels. Despite that, he managed to cycle all the way to the chiming bells of the Carillon and back. The view of silvery skies and Black Mountain Tower silhouetted against the shimmering lake by the late afternoon sun was very scenic. Then there were all the colours of autumn. There is no doubt that Canberra is a very beautiful city.




It was about four o'clock and I thought we could squeeze in a bit of a look at the CSIRO Discovery Centre. I think B found it surprisingly fun, as did Alex. Buttons to press, touch screens to operate, turbines and levers to generate electricity, robot arms to control and microscopes to peer down. It was nice to share work with the family, though with the staff it was sharing the pain of looming job cuts.





It was a short drive to the Canberra Centre, which seems quite classy. We found it funny to go shopping at Zara, considering how many times we've done that on overseas trips.

Met up with a colleague friend and her family for dinner at Papparich. Despite not being particularly impressed by their branch at Chatswood I really enjoyed our meal there. Alex knew exactly what he wanted: Roti canai and prawn mee, though we stuffed up the order of the latter and got assam laksa instead.

He was so happy back at the hotel, singing in the shower, pretending to be a waiter for the hotel room notepad and sharing our bed.

The next morning, after a breakfast at McDonalds in Dickson (Alex told the car to go there), we met my friend again at Questacon for another dose of science. Despite no tesla coil and earthquake simulator for the moment, the displays were fantastic. Alex went wild pressing, poking, prodding, turning, measuring. It's even better than I remember it a couple of decades ago and is an excellent place to take a kid.








At the end he decided he wanted a flip out book on space from the shop.

We headed back to Sydney after Questacon, again stopping at Bowral where Alex demanded we return to Gumnut Patisserie. Their pies (we tried rosemary and lamb, potato, chicken and leek and cheese and bacon) are so good, as is their funky vanilla slice (definitely not a snot block).


It was so nice to visit Canberra for pleasure, not work. Alex was so happy to be travelling that I can't wait for our next family trip. I hope that we can return to Canberra more often too as there is much more to see and do.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

IKEA Museum

We have a packed itinerary today. Flat packed and assembled with an Allen key. There are patches of snow on the ground that weren't there the previous evening. We are a bit sad to leave the Duxiana after the comfy beds and the breakfast of cold cuts, fruits and hot waffles. I tried the Swedish caviar on my boiled egg. It was... Interesting. I was very disappointed to realise that, after talking it up for months, I had forgotten the Disgusting Foods Museum in Malmö yesterday. Too late now. We catch another Oresundstag train, for a bit over an hour. Past yesterday's Lund, past increasingly white fields and towns to Älmhult, home of IKEA. The conductor warns us that the train will split in two so we have to move carriages forward. Unfortunately, there we no spare sets of chairs for all of us. The IKEA Museum showcases the history of the furniture company, along with temporary exhibitions. One of these was "Hacking IKEA," about using IKEA ob...

Asagaya and heading home

How can I be happy? I am about to return to a country where the toilets have at most two buttons and no seat warmers. But the tickets are booked and there are no cyclones, typhoons or other disasters standing in our way. It's almost time to go back to my first home. First B wants to do some "local shopping". So we catch the Chuo Line up a few stations to Asagaya, a residential area with a number of Shotengai, covered and uncovered arcades leading away from the station and narrow alleys lined with bars. It is an interesting area for a wander around. We are mainly looking, do some shopping for toothbrushes and sweets from Seiyu, a Wal-Mart owned supermarket/minor department store. We skipped breakfast and lunch is ramen and gyoza at a small restaurant near the entrance to the Pearl Centre shotengai. With the help of a staff member, I manage to purchase tickets at a branch of Lawson to the Ghibli Museum for a friend travelling to Japan in May. There are some...

One night in Canberra

It's the April school holidays and we are too busy to have a break but need one because of that. And because it's the Easter weekend the options are limited, so we just drive down to Canberra for the night. No, this isn't our first trip for 2023. I wrote about Japan on another site .  I refuse to wake up early so we depart after 8.30 AM. There is not much to say about the drive except that the clouds seem so low and Lake George is very full. We stop at a rest area and at the lookout up the hill to take it all in. Everyone is hungry so we first stop in Dickson and then can't think of anything to eat, so I drive us to Civic, where we can't decide and end up eating at the Singaporean Killiney Kopitiam branch.  The Canberra Centre has nice shops. I dream of getting an iPad from the Apple Store, we buy a blanket and toothbrushes from Muji and wish that Lego wasn't so expensive. Nothing we can't get in Sydney, but then we rarely go out shopping in the city. It...