Canberrra, capital of drizzle.

I think it was a mistake going to Canberra over the Easter Weekend. When I arrived here after an 11 hour night bus journey (which I thought could save me a night in a youth hostel), I arrived to a city centre with no one in it, apart from a few pigeons. I found a brekkie place and had a fry up for the first time in months, checking out what the guide book has to say about Canberra. Quite generic stuff, to be honest - Museums, Galleries and tours around the sights. I thought I'd try and get a tour around these sort of places, so I hopped on a tour bus. Got talking to a Slovakian guy called Lukas, who reminded me of the Comic Book guy from the Simpsons.

According to our white-haired tour guide, our first stop received the most visitors per year out of every attraction in Oz, the War Memorial. Slightly doubtful about that fact, considering it's up against things like the Opera House in Sydney and the likes. Granted, it was interesting, including a real B52 bomber and Japanese Midget submarine which blew up a lot of Australians, all in a great hall 6 floors below ground level, but war is always depressing!! I still can't see how it can be called an attraction...

The rest of the tour was interesting. For those who don't know, it was built from the ground up from 1909, officially becoming the capital in 1930 ish. The result is that the only 'industry' is administrative - everyone works as a civil servant. It also meant that the city has had great national parks established within a very short distance of the centre (which is positioned either side of the huge man made Lake Griffin), creating leafy green views at the end of a lot of roads in the city. This combined with the super wide and generous road networks and absence of the bustling you'd normally find in a city, Canberra seemed a little too clinical and unreal.

That night, after my $10 shopping spree in Aldi for nutritional items, I went out to find the city centre dead. This was a Saturday night, and there was only one place that had a number of people in it. Lukas and myself having a few in here, we ended up talking to some locals who were our sort of age and confirmed my suspicions that its not the best city to be young in!

Cherishing sleeping in a real bed that night, I got up the following day and decided I'd rent a bike and cycle around the lake. Getting the one with the meanest bell and a helmet with go faster slits (a legality in Canberra and the state it's in, ACT), I started around the lake.

Lucky me! Mother nature was threatening to rain, so I made for the National Museum of Australia. Discovered some quite intriguing things - in northern Oz, buffalo were considered a pest, and were hunted from the 60s by men in reinforced Toyota cars with great grabbers on the side, almost like a modern day lasso! Reminded me of Robot-Wars, but without Craig Charles.
It also took the white settlers 100 years to believe the Aborigines when they said platypuses laid eggs...

The whole cycle round the lake was wonderful. It must have been about 20miles altogether, so I got back just before sunset (its also illegal to cycle after sunset without lights), having cycled through forested areas, grassy lakeside parks, mud and hills that demanded gear 2 going up and 21 going down (a fun that we can't have in the Fens!)

If I thought of a youth hostel, before I came to Canberra, I'd think of back to basics living, dirty cutlery and thin mattresses. It surprised me, then, to find out the basement had a swimming pool, jacuzzi and sauna, all included in the $30 (14 quid) price. To top it off, they had frequent film nights with free popcorn upstairs! There was still some dirty cutlery and plates, or none at all, on account of the group of 35 beefy rugby players who were in residence.

That night, a pair of Canadian cousins, Mark and Leea, who came to Canberra on the same bus met up with a guy they knew from home. Taking us out to a place called Black Mountain, the view over Canberra was amazing. The avenues and their linear blue lights shone through, creating odd patterns which led up to the New Parlaiment building (Which cost $1.1bn to make, has 24km of corridors and the biggest tapestry in the world in it, according to my very proper tour guide from the day before). Quite randomly but seemingly the right thing, there were a group of people up at this lookout already, who seemed to be having fun, so we joined in and had a chat. We tried getting into the Casino, for the sake of it, but soon left when the minimum bet on the tables was $15 and there was an absence of machines.

All in all, the people made my stay in Canberra enjoyable, despite one of our dorm 'buddies' being an excentric Moldovian 50 year old who talked at me (and Mark) about everything from YouTube to the clean shaven Republicans who want the Queen off the throne to my hair to his artist friend to his overbearing mother to liberating Tibet and beyond. Quite exhausting and it meant that my pasta overcooked...