What to do in Canberra?

On Monday we headed into central Canberra, Australia's capital city. It was a clean city with governmental offices, embassies, art galleries and museums. Our first port of call was the National Gallery of Australia, where myself and Holly looked around while Ross, Sandra, Garry and Jill went for a coffee. It was great to see the aboriginal section as well as Blue Poles, now my favourite Jackson Pollock painting.

After seeing most of the paintings we headed over to the portrait gallery. It was great to see the painting of Queen Elizabeth II commissioned for the diamond jubilee, which was on loan there. One of if not the best painting of the Queen i've ever seen. I also appreciated the cricket related paintings of Don Bradman and Glenn Mcgrath along with the famous Captain Cook painting.

We then headed off to a pub called Public for lunch, set up in place of an old furniture shop. It was the most british pub i'd encountered while in Australia and was also reasonably priced. We all had a pizza and a schooner/wine for $20 and had one eye on the Australia vs Sri Lanka cricket match on the TV.

Afterwards we headed up to Mount Ainslie lookout, overlooking Canberra. From the lookout we got some great views of the city.

After spending 15 minutes or so at the view point we headed back to Ross and Sandra's where we spent the evening chatting, eating and drinking in their garden.