One Night in Canberra

Canberra, the capital of Australia. Home to Parliament House, National Galleries/Museums/Universities, The War Memorial and also my best friend in the world! Never knowing how long she’ll be in Australia for, I jumped at the chance to spend 27 hours with her! So here’s some pictures of Australia’s beautiful capital city!

I caught the bus from Wollongong to Canberra with Murrays Coaches costing about $50 return (not bad), taking 3hours and 20minutes to reach the capital. The first exciting/nerve wracking part of my adventure was going through Macquarie Pass, an 8km stretch of steep and incredibly windy road! I’m normally absolutely fine with roads like this, but at some points, I must admit I did grip the seat. The road is so windy that on one corner, the bus had to reverse and then continue to take the corner. After that (ordeal) was over, the view was quite spectacular and the rest of the journey was smooth sailing.

I arrived at the Jolimont Centre in Canberra at 3:40pm where my friend Jess was there to pick me up. It had been around 9months since we’d seen each other and it was just like it was yesterday we were galavanting through London. That’s something pretty amazing about meeting incredible people whilst travelling, they become incredible friends. Regardless of where you are in the world, the moment you call/skype/whatsapp/viber/facebook/facetime/meet them, you realise just how incredible they truly are and how lucky you are to call them a friend.  Obviously we had much to catch up on and we did so over pizza, How I Met Your Mother and coffee.

We had the whole next day to spend together and explore together, (the 3rd capital city in the world we’ve been to together). We had a lovely brunch followed by some awesome cruising around Canberra and all the hot tourist spots. Some of the must see places for tourists are Old/New Parliament House, The Tent Embassy, The War Memorial, The Corillian, CSIRO Discovery Centre, The Australian National Museum/Gallery and walk around (part of) Lake Burley Griffin. I have been to a lot of the museums a few years ago with my family and Jess showed me the rest of the sights whilst we were crusing. We then did some shopping and had some (more) coffee, where I then lost my shopping 😦 We cruised around some more, realising our love for Ed Sheeran, Kygo and our guilty pleasure, Taylor Swift.

After a few more episodes of How I Met Your Mother, it was time to head back to the bus station and head back to the Gong. Departure time was 6pm so we went down Macquarie Pass when it was pitch black! I tried not to focus on the sheer cliffs we were passing and read my book. I don’t know when or where I’ll be back in Canberra or see Jess (like many of my amazing international friends), but true friendship perseveres distance and time. So I excitedly anticipate the next time we meet!

Note for Tourists: To get around Canberra, invest in hiring a car! There’s no way you can walk around and see everything. Unless you have too a best friend that lives there that can double as a personal chauffeur! 

xxx

A