Why Canberra?

Embassies follow a normal Monday-Friday work week, and for some reason they appear to be pretty rabid about sticking to that. So, we had the whole day off today!!! Katherine (soprano) and Kay (piano) and I decided to meet up at 11 to check out some of what the city has to offer. However, I ran into Elliott (violin) and Marlou (viola) on my way in from my run this morning and was suckered into rehearsing at 10am. There's no such thing as a free trip to Australia.

Our first order of business was to go to the Floriade - the city's premier tourist attraction. Floriade is a spring festival (yes, it is spring right now) where they plant many many tulips and other flowers in beds in the park near the man-made lake and then have booths where you can buy crafty things and fudge. Today was the last day of the festival, and many of the flowers were past their peak, but it was a pleasant way to spend the morning.

Much like D.C., Canberra's streets are set up like spokes in a wheel. By heading down one of these streets we were able to check out the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery. The Portrait Gallery would likely have been more significant to us if we were Australian, however, the first gallery contained portraits by Jenny Sage that were done in encaustic and of particular interest to me because of my father. The National Gallery had a large collection of Aboriginal art that we enjoyed very much. The National Gallery also has a very nice sculpture garden and we made it just in time to see the fog sculpture by the Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya that is only on for 2 hours a day. It was super cool. (New! Mom found this link to the sculpture garden, thanks Mom!)




Tonight we go in search of 'roos!