We were up in Canberra over the weekend. To make the drive more manageable and to let us get to Canberra earlier on Sat without too much grief, we took off on Friday and broke our journey by staying in Albury overnight. It was cold and wet and though we got in relatively early, the conditions were such that we cleaned up and went to bed pretty much straight away.
The little black jedi was a bit restless through the night so we didn’t sleep very well and took off a little later than we expected to on Sat.
We got into Canberra just before noon, and it was great to see Kiddo again. She took us to Dobinson’s which has a very good coffee and their burger on sour dough buns were also very good – as were their model-good-looking counter staff. I had mine (burger) with the lot and I was a stuffed pig for the rest of the day.
Which isn’t a smart thing to do because that night we went to a really nice restaurant at the corner of Mort and Bunda in the city, called Dieci e Mezzo. Thankfully that afternoon we went to the National Gallery and we walked around a little bit. My chargrilled swordfish was very nice (washed down with over-priced glass of Pinot Grigio) and kiddo swore her dessert of a lemon torta with a whole range of other stuff (masala infused raisins in caramel -?- sorbet, caramelised something, etc) was worth every morsel-full of calorie – even after a main of falling off the bone-soft veal cheeks. Tress’ pork cutlet as usual, got shared with everyone. Even after watching the very dumb movie Armageddon on tv for the umpteenth time and it was past midnight, we were still feeling stuffed.
Sunday morning we went to the Old Bus Depot in Kingston and got some of Kiddo’s favourite pick me up’s. Later that arvo Kiddo wanted to take us to Brodburger in Kingston, which apparently has the best burgers in town. The very long queue confirmed its status but thankfully the wait was an hour, otherwise I would have burgers for lunch 2 days in a row which would have represented a bit of a risk factor…
We ended up going to Gus’ in town instead, and Tress and I shared a relatively innocuous chicken sanger. We left close to 3pm, and although the goodbyes remain difficult, the knowledge that we’d catch up again in a few weeks over the mid-semester break helped a great deal.
The drive home was a big push – we left Dickson in Canberra after refuelling and didn’t stop till just outside Seymour – some 550km later – and even then it was a mere 5+ minutes’ stopover for more fuel and toilet. We got home just after 9pm, knackered. All that food and driving weren’t what made the weekend really nice. It was just being together as a family again. Including that poor little black jedi. I am very grateful.
Ante 