It started with a tweet. It ended with a coating of squashed bugs on the windscreen. It was? A trip to our overly-circular capital city.
Friday
We (Amanda, her boyfriend, her brother, and I) departed Melbourne at around two o’clock in the afternoon, and after various stops (such as Albury, for dinner), we finally arrived in Canberra, where we met up with two people who I retroactively discovered were also bloggers. Let’s hope I get these links right: Carmen and Michael1. Canberra is a pretty quiet city, but it was a Friday night, so we went bar-hopping, and Fun Times were had.
Saturday
We left early for the the main purpose of the trip: the Masterpieces from Paris exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia. We had to queue for a few hours, but we saw some pretty impressive stuff. I was most impressed with Cézanne’s and Khnopff’s work, but less impressed by Monet and pointillism.
The other main tourist-y attraction we went to see on Saturday was the Australian War Memorial, which is enormous in comparison to Melbourne’s Shrine.
The night was capped off with pizza, Yet More Alcohol, and Skyfire, an annual fireworks show over Canberra’s large man-made lake, Lake Burley Griffin. It was pretty cool, and lasted longer than New Year fireworks shows (i.e., the only firework shows I ever see) generally do, and it was easy to get a prime viewing spot, which would not be so readily-available in Melbourne or Sydney.
Sunday
We did a few bits and pieces, and then drove all the way back to Melbourne. I’m supposed to have read a lot for uni subjects this week, but alas, I only managed a page. Overall, I had a completely excellent weekend.
- Canberra has a small enough population that the bloggers:non-bloggers ratio in Canberra over the weekend totally had a significant change. [↩]
I’m glad you had an excellent weekend! The last time I went to Canberra, I was three years old, so I don’t really remember much about it. (They had a flower show on when we were there though… that’s the grand total of what I remember!) The fireworks in particular sound pretty awesome.
…but don’t remind me about uni readings
@Jess: DO YOUR READINGS!!
Sounds like you had fun! I wish I could just meet up with some of my blogging friends and go on a road trip. For one thing, none live near me…
Your post reminds me of how I want to go to Canberra to visit the National Museum of Australia (I know, I know, not the same thing as NGA, but related…yes?
) I don’t know, I find artworks of the ‘masters’ that go on traveling exhibitions to be rather lacking and serve more as a means to bring funds into the art gallery than anything — which makes sense I guess, because the good stuff, they’re going to keep in France and not ‘lend’ out. I hear Monet’s waterlilies in Paris (they’re about 11×6m) are simply overwhelmingly breathtaking — must visit someday!
And readings. Urgh! I had about 170 pages assigned, ’cause one of my lecturers decided to be sadistic and assign 120 pages for one week!
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