Our nation's capital

This weekend saw the man and I take a trip up to Canberra to catch up with some friends. After making sure that the kittenats were looked after we caught a nice big plane up there. Only took an hour, right after we flew over Albury we started descending which was pretty crazy. I think flying from Canberra to Albury would be interesting...do they just drive the plane there?

Once we got there we were picked up by Liz who dropped us off at Questacon after trying to convince us to take her car, we insisted on walking to the war memorial. More on that later.

Anyway Questacon is still great. The best bit was the six metre free fall which I hadn't been on before. From the ground it looks high. From the top it is absolutely terrifying.
I remembered while climbing the ladder behind the man that I'm a teensy bit scared of heights. Only heights where I don't feel safe. What you do on the slide of death is climb up, dangle out holding onto a bar above your head (like you would if you were about to do a chin-up) and then you just let go. I'll repeat that, you just let go.

After the man had jumped, I said to the girl up the top...'um I don't think I can do this' and she said 'you don't have to! just walk back down'. Just walk back down? ... Um, no. The taunting and the unrelenting teasing facing me at the bottom of the ladder would be 100 times worse than the zero gravity halfway down that slide. So I ventured out, and there I am - dangling. Watching the man- grinning at me from six measley metres below. Then I realised that while my hot, sweaty slippery hands were strong enough to hold me up there..dangling - they weren't strong enough to pull me back in. There it was - the terrifying realisation that I would have to, in fact, let go.

So I let go, and halfway down my face felt like it would fall off - but in a good way. It was heaps of fun and I decided then and there that I wanted MORE, MORE of this shaky shaky feeling and fun!!! Then I stood up and started laughing and when the guy asked if I wanted to go again...I said HELL NO!

That was pretty much Questacon - lots of cool fun things but no more adrenaline. After we'd finished we checked out their cafe as we were getting peckish...all though I'd decided that healthy was going to have to put the curb for the weekend..I wasn't about to subject myself to the horrors that presented themselves in the dark depths of hell that was their bain marie. The man however, accustomed to eating day(s) old cheeseburgers ordered some hot chips. I think he ate about three, then threw them in the bin.

So we set off on our quite long walk around lake burley griffin to the war memorial. Where, I reasoned, good food would reside. After all, its a classy kind of place. By the time we got there, subsisting on three mentos I had in my bag..we were both pretty hungry. However we pushed hunger to the wayside and started in on the war memorial. Which was brilliant. You definitely do appreciate it more when you're older. I'm still in shock about the 'midget' submarine recovered from Sydney Harbour. 'Midget' is obviously a term used quite loosely. I just thought they had problems finding them because they were so small! They're huge!!! Obviously whoever was looking was having a 'man's look'. Or the harbour is big.

Anyway half way around after my stomach had started eating itself we saw a sign for a cafe. So far on our trip the cafe's in Canberra were failing miserably. I'm sure if I wanted some caramel slice or some hedgehog it might have impressed me. But I wanted food...and some congealed pasta wasn't going to cut it (yay I finally found something that perfectly fitted the word congealed)!

After we'd finished we sat out in the sunshine and ate a bag of chicken chips the man had, which we rationed out between us. While we waited for liz to pick us up we relaxed in the sun. Until a bus full of tourists turned up. They promptly swarmed around us and one guy who had his shirt off sat down next to us while his friend started snapping photographs. Not being racist but they were Asian and it did really really annoy me. Firstly, you ask if you can take someone's picture. Secondly, you should only have your shirt off if you are somewhat ripped. Thirdly, and of all the things you should never, ever do - is pee on a tree outside a war memorial. Really, you shouldn't. Like I said, if it was dark and you'd had a few, then peeing in public is a pretty common occurence in Australia. But at four in the afternoon in broad daylight when there are toilets less than fifty metres away and you think its the funniest thing ever...

If the man hadn't of had those chicken chips I'm pretty sure he would have piffed the golf ball he'd just found at him. Luckily liz turned up then and we went back to her place for dinner. We actually stayed in as we were both incredibly tired...think we were in bed by 10:30!

- tbc.