Cruising through Canberra and Traumatizing Train Rides

The capital of Australia is a great place for a day visit in my mind. We were there for 2 days. It has some nice touristy sites and the parliament buildings. It started off well with Mark and I finding out that our hostel room was empty so we had it all to ourselves! Naturally we both opened our bags and let everything avalanche out of our stuffed packs onto the floor, home sweet home. We arrived fairly late at night and just had enough time to watch a movie before passing out for a well-deserved slumber.

Morning came around and it was time to get up and start exploring the wondrous town of Canberra. We took a little walk to head out to the Botanical Gardens which turned out to be quite a ways but we’re used to walking a lot so it was actually quite pleasant. The gardens were nice but unfortunately we had just missed the flowers that bloomed in the winter and were a bit too early to see the flowers that bloomed in the summer. Great timing eh? We walked around the gardens for an hour and then decided to head back. I (being the smart one…) decided to take a more direct route back to the hostel instead of the winding road by the lake. So off we went in a direction that was straightish and started heading back to the hostel. About 45 minutes through the walk back I decided to check the map because it seemed like we had been walking for a long time and didn’t recognize anything. Of course we were going somewhere, but that somewhere was nowhere near our hostel! About half way through while trying to avoid a construction site we somehow turned slightly left, kept walking, and walked about 3km past our hostel. It ended up taking us twice the amount of time to get back as it did to get there. I take full credit for us getting lost that time.



After we recovered from the disastrous adventure we built up the courage to go check out the parliament buildings which turned out to be a bit more “epic” (as mark would put it) than I anticipated. Essentially it’s in the middle of a giant ring road and built into the ground like a hobbit hole. I liked that you could walk on top of the building and stand on top of parliament. There were other cool things but I have to admit that I didn’t pay enough attention to anything else to comment on it. However, one thing I did see from the top of the parliament building was the war memorial that lines up perfectly with the new and old parliament buildings. It’s just one giant line! Anyways…that was my excitement about the whole ordeal. Life got better when dinner time came around and I got to eat a giant burger. It was amazing. What’s weird here though is that ketchup here isn’t normal. People don’t eat it with fries and you always have to ask for it and sometimes pay for it. They call it tomato sauce and it tastes different than at home.

 

n our last day in Canberra there was a massive wind storm! They seem to follow us wherever we go. We stayed inside most of the morning while Mark attempted to watch the last episode of Breaking Bad until he got frustrated enough to leave it be so we could go see the War Memorial. There is a massive walk up the memorial that has statues alongside the road remembering certain battles fought through the ages. The actual memorial building was a lot bigger than anticipated. The inside was a huge museum that showed many war heroes and told their stories. We had an early night that day because we had to wake up early for our ridiculously long travel day that started at 5:30am.


As a pre-warning, the next portion of this blog may be a little depressing for those who actually care about my sanity. I’m willing to share this with everyone because I feel like when most people write about their trips they tell everyone how amazing everything is in hopes to make them jealous and then leave out all the awful horrific encounters. I say that’s selfish so I’m going to at least try to entertain people with my misfortunes so here it is…

Our first long journey started on October 2^nd at 5:30am and ended at 3:30pm on October 3^rd. Granted, some of the time was layover time in Sydney, but that part wasn’t the issue. Problems began to occur at around 4:30pm when we boarded our 14 hour train to Brisbane. We found our seats and began to get settled in when we heard some overly obnoxious man come stumbling down the pathway and plump his drunk ass into the seat right next to ours. Immediately we both knew it was going to be a bit of a painful train ride. It was fine for the first hour or so because he wasn’t bothering us directly so we put on a movie in hopes that he would realize we were not in the mood to socialize. This was actually the biggest mistake we made. The flashing of the movie must have attracted his attention because within 5 minutes of turning the movie on he had his full attention on the computer screen trying to turn it so he could watch. He continuously tried to make “jokes” and tell us about his farm. It came to a point where we had to stop the movie and just listen to his rambling because he wouldn’t stop and we couldn’t hear the movie. He spent about 30 minutes repeating the same things about his farm and how his dogs are great and if you’re not good enough to work there you’re on the next bus ride into town. He then attempted to hire Mark and me to work on his farm which we politely declined but he took as a “we’ll think about it” answer so he continued to talk again telling us about his dogs and if they don’t like you then you’ll be back on the first bus into town. Am I repeating myself? Oh well…Thankfully we started to bore him with our sarcastic answers so he moved on to talk to the girl sitting behind him. We were so thankful that we could go back to watching our movie but that wasn’t the end of him…

We had time to finish our movie which was a magnificent break from the crazy on the train. The endless annoyance started again when it was time to attempt to sleep. It takes a while to get comfy because you’re sitting in a chair and it’s not the easiest thing to fall asleep just sitting there. What makes it even harder is when the drunk guy beside you gives you his best rendition of Roxanne while chugging down a mini bottle of red wine. That was at about 1am. Thankfully he was removed from our cart shortly after and put into another one. We later found out that not only was he drunk, but also high from shooting up in the bathroom! You really meet some great people on the trains here.

 You’re probably thinking now “oh good, he’s gone, now Jane can sleep”…WRONG! How dare you assume the rest of the train ride would be just peachy from that point on, oh no…After the drunk/high obnoxious guy left the cart someone obviously had to step in and keep everyone awake. For the remainder of the train ride someone (we’re not sure if it was a man or a women) was dying in the back of the cart. Ok, they weren’t actually dying, but it sure as hell sounded like it! You know when you have a bad chest cold and you cough and there’s that awful phlegmy wet cough you get? Now imagine that, mix in some gurgling and gasps of air that sounds like someone’s choking on their own tongue while puking up the 5 star train meal they just ate. That was the majestic sounds of the rest of the train ride that occurred about every 10 minutes or so until we finally arrived in Brisbane.

Only a 3 hour layover then 3 hours on the train to get to…HERVEY BAY