Skip to main content

Flowers, coins and Kung-fu Panda in Canberra


We arrived back yesterday from a couple of nights in Canberra. The three of us drove down there on Tuesday, staying in a two bedroom apartment at the new and rather nice Deco Hotel. We were all rather tired and the weather was grey and miserable, so the only thing of note I did was to ride the length of the new light rail system from Civic to the Gungahlin Town Centre.


Though the scenery outside was not particularly noteworthy, I rather enjoyed the smooth ride. There's something special about rail travel and I'm happy to see Canberra get such a system.


Wednesday saw us doing a tour of the Royal Australian Mint, where the nation's coins are manufactured. There wasn't much activity going on, but the process itself is interesting, as was the display of the history of Australian coins.


The next destination was the National Museum of Australia. Most of the visit was spent in the non-Australian Dreamworks Animation Exhibition, featuring sketches, models and videos of a variety of their characters and locations, including Flushed Away, Shrek and Kung-fu Panda. It was very interesting.




Alex cried over the Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) exhibit, mourning their extinction and the stupid selfishness of humanity. I would like to have seen more of the main museum, but by now Alex was desperate to enjoy the sun outside.


We drove up to the National Arboretum with its spectacular views across the nation's capital, but it was a rare still day, the few light gusts insufficient to keep a kite afloat at a location that is normally superb for such activities.


Driving down to the lake we discovered that our bike hire shop was closed. All that was left was to explore Floriade, the annual flower festival.


It was, as always, very pretty. But Alex was tired and disappointed, then feeling a bit queasy from the shaky ferris wheel ride. We grabbed disappointing dinner from Dickson Asian Noodles and returned to the hotel to relax.




We returned to the lake on the final morning, watching the Captain Cook jet spray high into the air as school kids argued as they learned to sail. Alex rode his scooter along the lakeside while I admired the cherry blossoms of the sakura trees donated by sister city Nara.




Then it was time to drive home, our brief term break holiday at an end.

There is still much remaining to be seen in Canberra, if only we can convince Alex to enjoy some history over physical activity. It was nice to visit for a holiday instead of work.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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...

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...

To Melbourne on the XPT sleeper

Excited by the prospect of reliving the experience of seeing my very first movie and hearing the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra perform it I bought tickets to The Empire Strikes Back in Concert in Melbourne back in February. Then I did nothing about actually getting there. Much as I love Melbourne, due to family commitments I didn't want to spend more than the Sunday away. Flights there and back made sense, but  my flight down to Melbourne in late October reiterated the fact that I usually don't enjoy descending into the city. And the concert was in December, a season of summer storms. I really didn't feel like driving the whole route alone and in a hurry, so that left one choice. The train. My very first trip up to Sydney from Melbourne was aboard the luxury Southern Aurora. Or it was supposed to be luxury. I wouldn't know because I spent the whole ride up very sick with the flu lying in the top bunk, unable to stay awake for my whole of night vigil. Now only...