West Wing

We'd been invited to Canberra to stay with a guy we had met in Argentina. If you have read the other blog you will know him as one of the guys we did the Mendoza bike and wine tour, consequently we met whilst under the influence! It turns out that he is an all round great guy whether intoxicated or not and despite the rumours we found Canberra to be a new nice city. The only complaint was its temperature at night, which is bloody freezing!

We arrived around lunchtime to find that Matt had only just got home from
last night! He had a housemate in high places and Toly (said housemate) introduced himself and we immediately felt as if we had known him for ages. Toly works in the government or does sometimes anyway. He had a pass that meant he could show us around the Houses of Parliament, back door style. We felt as if we were on an episode of the West Wing going into places tourists aren't usually allowed. Toly thought we were taking the mic when we said it was one of our highlights of our trip but we're serious it was so interesting and pretty darn cool! However, it wasn't all fun and games... When we went through the first security gate the lady specifically told us we had to stay with Toly at all times. Matt took so long getting his stuff back together after the security check we had walked ahead without him, consequently he got told off! At the end of our unofficial tour we saw a great view of the entrance so walked out with our security passes and then got severely told off by the power happy security guy who made us walk around the outside of the building so we could collect the car. We also couldn't figure out a sensible plan to assist Toly in acquiring a chair with Australia's coat of arms on, we had to face facts even if it would look good in their flat it just wasn't going to happen!
The rest of the afternoon we drove to some of the other sites with Toly giving us a tour as we went (Matt was pretty useless to be honest!). James and I felt bad as a few of the ideas they suggested we couldn't do as the places were shut we didn't mind but they got a bit frustrated. We shouldn't have visited on a Sunday! Despite the closures we had a great day in the Nations Capital.

Unfortunately Monica was playing up a bit so when they guys left for work we took her to the garage and in the afternoon went for a lovely walk around the lake. It was a clear crisp day with the leaves filling the city with a beautiful autumnal colour. We chilled out in the evening and I made bolognaise with kangaroo meat and it turned out pretty good! We left Canberra the following morning after a shower and some cheese!