Peaceful and green (Canberra)

Member Name: TigerMystery

Product:	Canberra
Date:	16/07/09 (20 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Peaceful, relaxing, makes a change from the pace of busier cities like Sydney or Mebourne

Disadvantages: Everywhere seems to close at 5, and it's pretty dead after that

I absolutely love Canberra. I had only been in Australia for three weeks when I came here, and had spent all of them in Sydney, so Canberra was a nice change of pace.

The first thing I noticed was how quiet and peaceful it was. And how green! For a city, there are certainly a lot of trees!

I like to do a lot of walking when I am visiting places, and Canberra is great for this because all the sights are withing walking distance.

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Things to do:
- The Film and Sound Archive: located on the university campus. This is pretty much what you would expect from the name. In particular, it focussed on Australian achievements in film and sound, which I found very interesting.

- Botanic Gardens: these were nice, but not all that interesting. Some people would enjoy it though.

- Parliament House: tours available. On the walk up to here, I passed the Captain Cook memorial jet, which is definitely worth checking out. It's bascially a big jet of water that comes out from the river, and from some angles you can see rainbows in it (ok, I have a bit of an obsession with rainbows, so maybe not everyone would find this exciting).

-There are are lot of other things to do in Canberra, but I have only mentioned the things I did. A lot of people say Canberra is boring. I disagree, but then I quite like places that are peaceful and I'm not bothered about somewhere having a thriving nightlife. However, I did end up going to the cinema both nights I was here, because everywhere else seems to close at 5pm, and the whole place goes a bit dead. I think a few days here would be enough though if you were just wanting to see the sights.

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Travelling to Canberra:
I got the Greyhound. Took about 4 hours from Sydney, and then another 8 hours to get to Melbourne. The bus station is fairly central, and I was able to walk to my hostel (YHA Canberra).
I got the overnight bus to Melbourne, which didn't leave til about 11pm, and they closed the bus station at about 10.30 so I was sat waiting out in the cold for a while. Although I guess this was partially my fault for getting there so early!

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Accomodation:
I stayed at the YHA, which seemed to be the only hostel in Canberra when I looked. It is pretty much the same high standard as other YHAs: very large, and with a good range of facilities. It was fairly quiet, I didn't really see many people about and so didn't really have much chance to socialise. Oh, but I did manage to lock my padlock keys in my locker (I thought it would be a safe place to put them): staff were very helpful with this!

Summary: Come here for a relaxing short break