Canberra capital city

We checked out of our hotel and set off through the streets of Sydney in the rain; the satnav was playing up and we managed to do another circuit of the city past China town and Paddy’s market before finally getting out in the right direction by which time Claire was already stressed again. It was a long boring drive to Canberra along mainly featureless roads; well it wasn’t that long at about three hours but it seemed longer.

Claire had chosen our hotel in Canberra from the internet and our guide book so I set the satnav for Olims hotel which is one of the four original licensed hotels in Canberra. The Olims hotel was here from the start and opened around the time that parliament house opened in 1927 but was called Ainslie hotel then. We arrived and parked in the huge car park and walked to reception to ask if they had any rooms available. They did but they have had trouble with their tv reception and now there are no film programs available in the rooms so they offered a discount and would throw in continental breakfast and let us have a garden room with a balcony. The gardens are well kept and our room is nice so we settled in before heading off to find some fresh supplies and to see what was around. It’s very pretty around the river and waterside but there is nowhere to park and get pictures so you will have to settle for the few that I took around the gardens and hotel. Canberra seems like a strange place to put the capital of Australia but when they were choosing there was great rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne both wanting it in their own city so they eventually decided on somewhere in between and not directly on the coast. In my opinion there are too many traffic lights, they should have used more roundabouts like in Milton Keynes to keep the traffic flowing and reduce journey times; but you all know what I feel about traffic lights. When the Milton Keynes Development Corporation first designed MK they chose roundabouts opposed to lights for the reasons I just mentioned and did a great job. Since MK council have taken over they have and are doing everything they can to reverse that original policy to deliberately increase journey times and slow traffic down and all at our expense. If I had the power, I wouldn’t sack them; I would hang them!

Having replenished our supplies we headed off to eat as we were both starving and had hardly eaten anything since breakfast. They had marked a map for us in reception with places of interest and I had asked him to mark decent restaurants which he did in a different colour. The Dixons area according to the guide book was where you could find a variety of Asian cuisine so we headed off there. On the way we accidentally drove through the city centre which is at the end of our road and it looks a bit like Milton Keynes except smaller. When we arrived at Dixons we were a little disappointed as the rectangular block with all the restaurants around it was rather featureless except for the Mc Donald’s and Kentucky close by. We chose the Thai so that Claire could have her usual chicken green curry but it was only average.

We returned to our room to find that not only did we not have film channels we didn’t have any channels at all so Claire stopped off at reception again and they sent an engineer down who discovered that we have no aerial connected to our tv and they have none left so we will have no tv until tomorrow. We are now upgraded to the full buffet breakfast in the morning. I guess we will have to go down to the bar later or catch up on some reading. Since we left home in November I have only read two books and that was mostly on flights, we have hardly had anytime to relax yet. Claire is really looking forward to staying at Geoff and Denise’s place and doesn’t want to see any sights or go on any drives at all. I think a compromise is necessary; maybe we will just pop to Magnetic Island and do one drive to Cairns and back leaving plenty of time to chill. We got talking to the American owner at the Thai restaurant and mentioned having 3 weeks in LA on our way home. He suggested driving up to Vancouver and back so we could see the most spectacular views to be seen. I thought that seemed like a long way and asked how many miles it was and he replied about 6000. Maybe we need another couple of house swaps next year.

We are staying two nights so that we have a chance to look around all day tomorrow so Claire will be at the ready with the camera to take pictures as we go as there are some lovely views to be seen. The best part of coming here is that the sun is shining and when I looked at the forecast for Sydney, Brisbane, even Townsville, and its rain all the way. We did meet a couple on the coast on our way to Sydney that had lived in Canberra all their lives and the chap offered to give us a guided tour but I think Claire wants to do it on our own with the help of the crapnav if we can get it going.