Abgeschickt von Nicole am 18 Januar, 2006 um 01:59:34:
Our drive thru Canberra the other day showed us, how huge the distances are. So we decided to hire bikes to explore Capital Hill, Government House and War Memorial.
How long ago did I use a bike? I have no idea. I was thinking about this question the whole day. AND the next day because we both felt ... I don't know. Like riding a bike a whole day, I guess.
Well, we startet with Capital Hill, of course. When we arrived, we were thinking about: where can we leave the bikes? And while we were thinking, a few police officers arrived next to us ... uh, did we something wrong? But they just wanna tell us where to go with the bikes. Very friendly.
This day was our education day. We visited Capital Hill with a guided tour, we went on with the old government house - also with a guided tour. Then we had a break - we had 35 degrees again. Our last stop was far away: War Memorial.
This was quite an experience. It is huge ... but not really a memorial. It is a museum ... but ... all the soldiers are smiling! And ... honestly I was a little bit shocked. There was nothing which was saying something like: hey, war is a bad thing and we have to do everything to avoid another war. Where is that message?
AND - unbelievable for Germans - we found Hitlers biography and Mein Kampf (60 Dollas) and there was a second book which was obviously also written by Hitler. I didn't know that he wrote two books. And I am still thinking that nobody should sell this book. At least it was expensive and it was in English. We were thining about buying it for a few seconds. But what would happen when we go thru the German custom? Would they arrest us? Probably!
Ok, we decided this was enough experience and enough bike riding. So we went back to our accomodation.
The next day we spent with well-earned shopping. Wow! Canberra is such a nice city to go shopping! We find great stores with great clothes. But we have limited space and budget. We forced ourselves not to buy anything we wouldn't need for the journey. Good girls!
The third day in Canberra we planned to spent in two museums: the Mint and the Australian National Museum. We got by bus to the Mint and it was really fascinating. I really liked it there. But we didn't make it to the National Museum. What a pity! But it was already five and it was closed. So we were sitting in the university area to have a rest before going home. Home was the station. But ... psst, don't tell our parents.
To have it nice and warm as long as possible we spent some time in the pancakes restaurant. Wow, what a pancake! This thing was huge and it had so much cream, ice cream and chocolate souce araound, I hardly found the pancake. What a sin!