"Gonna have to hang by your hands for that"

Myriah and I were able to get in a morning routine with each other and successfully be out the door on time. We had a big day planned for ourselves which consisted of the Parliament House since we never made it there yesterday, War Memorial, hiking up Mount Ainslie, and going to the markets. I had bought my return bus ticket for 5 o’clock so that was our deadline, which we were determined to have everything done by. Not that we weren’t going to enjoy ourselves, but we just wanted to make up for our bus mistakes the day before. Bus after bus, we found our way to the War Memorial since Mount Ainslie is behind it. The War Memorial is huge, but we told ourselves we’d wait for the guided tour before we explored. Mind you that it was probably about 50 degrees outside, with a pretty serious wind factor, and people were still hiking in shorts and tank tops. I have no idea how they do it, since I don’t think I could ever get used to this wind. Myriah had warned me that the hike was pretty difficult since it was practically a straight shot up the mountain. I didn’t think she could be that serious, but five minutes into the hike I knew it was going to be a challenge. Especially since the wind was so cold that we could barely catch our breath. We took mini breaks throughout the way up to read the many signs and even do a little kangaroo spotting. We must have looked like such tourists to the other hikers.

Glad Myriah spotted them!

The view at the top of Mount Ainslie was just as gorgeous as Myriah had described it. We could literally see everything in Canberra and point out places we had been. The trees were all still lots of colors which reminded me of the mountains of North Carolina in the Fall. I had no idea that Canberra was covered by so many mountains, but it makes for good pictures.

The War Memorial straight across from the Parliament house. Reminds me of Washington, D. C. 

Myriah and I at the top of Mount Ainslie. GO NINERS!

A present from the United States to Australia. Note the eagle on top.

Canberra has everything that a capitol city should I think; an eye tower, lake, war memorial, parliament house, tall buildings, an university. I personally thought it was a cute little town/city, much more under control than Sydney.

All of Canberra. The eye tower is over to the right.

We easily made our way down the mountain to the War Memorial and were able to join a tour. This was Myriah’s third time to the War Memorial, but she thought the tour was worth it for the first portion since they often told stories about the people on the wall.

Outside view of the War Memorial.

Poppies that lined the names of loved ones lost. A total of over 60,000 soldiers for Australia.

The tomb of the unknown soldier is what got most of my attention since it was absolutely breathtaking. The whole enclosure is made out of six million tiles since all the walls are covered with them, including the stained glass paintings. The tomb itself was very simple and sacred, making the contrast even better.

Stained glass covered all the walls.

Mosiac made out of individual tiles, absolutely amazing to see in person!

The ceiling looked like I imagine the Sistine Chapel to look like.

The tomb itself

We had to depart from the tour once we got inside since we had limited time left before we had to catch a bus to make it to the Parliamont house for that tour. I knew that the War Memorial was huge, but I had no idea how huge until I walked inside. There were rooms upon rooms displaying artifacts and information from every war and battle that Australian has fought in. Their displays are so life like that they sometimes scared of into not looking at them. We barely stepped inside this submarine/boat control room because the voices and graphics were so real. 

A display made out of miniature soldiers.

So life like its crazy!

I really enjoyed looking around to see Australian’s involvement in the wars, but was kinda thankful when it was time to go since I can only take so much history at one time. I definitely felt overwhelmed and would suggest giving this place a whole day of exploration for those that love history and wars. We had mapped out our next bus route and sat down at the proper bus stop to eat our packed lunch. I think their bus stops are so cute since they are like tall half igloos, all painted tan with oval windows on either side. I just like how all the stops have these little huts so it’s an uniform way of recognizing a stop. We successfully made it to the Parliament house with a little bit of confusion about where the pedestrian path was. Let’s just say we made our own path. We were on a mission to make that Parliament tour and I’m so glad we did because we got to go into both the Senate and House of Representatives rooms which are closed off to the public. The Australian system seems to be very similar to ours except their Senate has twelve representatives from most of the six states. I did learn something interested about their country’s crest though.

When Canberra was established as the place for government affairs they wanted to create a crest. They knew that their country was moving forward and wanted something to show that thus why they chose the two animals – Emu and Kangaroo to represent the country because neither animal can move backwards. The kangaroo’s tail gets in the way and the Emu’s joints in its legs will not allow that to happen. Another fun fact – Canberra was created just to be Sydney’s capitol city since they couldn’t decide between Melbourne and Sydney and wanted something in between. Other than that, the Parliament house was a normal Parliament house with all the leaders’ pictures and artifacts. The roof was quite the sight though with these huge structure to hold up the Australian flag. It was said that they did not want the Parliament house to be a hill since they wanted the common people to feel that they were on the same level as the government, but I don’t think that exactly happened. We were clearly on a hill with a great view of the War Memorial and mountains behind us.

Since we had successfully made it through the planned day with no interruptions we thought we might as well kill the last two hours by exploring the markets. However, we didn’t realize how long it would take us to get there and then catch a bus all the back to her campus, so that left us with only about ten minutes to walk through the markets. That was a little disappointing considering all the walking we had to do to get there, but we figured we wouldn’t be doing anything better with our little bit of time before my bus ride back to Sydney anyways. The markets were cute and had a lot of neat stuff. They were also much calmer than the Sydney markets so that was a nice change. Plus, I was lucky enough to get a ride to the bus station from Myriah’s friend Tayla. She didn’t want me to miss the bus and needed a study break anyways. Sitting on the bus back to Sydney was a nice relief since we had been worried that I wasn’t going to make it an hour beforehand while sitting outside the markets. My visit to Canberra had been everything I had hoped for and more. I was very happy to add yet another city to my list of places I’ve visited and even better since it was the capitol city. Hanging out with Myriah and her new friends definitely made the experience!