I have spent the last couple of days at Australian National University in Canberra with Emily. The weather has been relatively crappy (cold and rainy) so I spent most of my days at ANU in a food coma in Emily's dorm room. I have had some amazing food in Canberra which has been quite a difference from the peanut butter sandwiches that had been sustaining me for the first ten days I was in Australia.
I arrived in Canberra on the night of the 23rd and was picked up from the bus station by Emily and her friends Helen and James. Here is a small side story that pretty much depicts our small world. Helen is one of Emily's best friends and happens to be Kat Littrell's sister. I've only met Kat twice or so, but she goes to Bryn Mawr. Small. World.
Anyways, Emily and I ate dinner (Oporto's Chicken Burgers) in her room before going out to a cocktail bar. It was one of Emily's friends 21st birthday so we went to Kremlin Bar where I ordered my first ever cocktail (without being carded). I had never been to a fancy bar before and was intrigued by all the cup flipping, ice throwing, multi-bottle pouring, bubbling, flaming wine glasses, shots that threw sparks out at things and so on and so forth. I ordered a Day Spa which consists of apple schnapps, vodka, and cucumbers. It really just tasted like cucumbers and vodka, but it was alright.
The following day was a day of rain and driving from place to place for delicious food. We first stopped at the top of Mount Stromlo for lunch. Emily and I both had lamb burgers and they were amazing. They had tzatziki sauce, lettuce, beet root and some kind of saucy type thing. There were also amazing views at the top of the mountain. I even saw a few wild kangaroos.
We then drove to Adore Tea, a tea shop not too far from where we had lunch. The tea shop was so cute and had little displays of different kinds of teapots and teacups. I had a teashake, which is a milkshake, but based on tea. It was chocolate banana flavored and equally amazing as the lamb burger. I also had some of Emily's sticky date pudding, which for those Americans (including me) that don't know, pudding is more like cake, and what we know as pudding is called custard. Anyways, the sticky date pudding was also delicious and at this point I was so full my stomach was beginning to hurt. We went back to Emily's room, where I flopped on the air mattress for a mere two hours before we went out for dinner at a Japanese restaurant where I had sashimi sesame noodles. Again, delicious and full to the point of stomach pain. It was okay though, because it was Thanksgiving, and I assumed that everyone else was also in the food coma state that I was in.
The night we went out again to Mercury Bar for Emily's friends farewell party. Mercury Bar serves alcohol in teapots. I only stayed for a little bit, before going back to the dorm with Lily (one of Emily's friends) and watched The Prestige.
The next day began with a large meal of fish n chips. In my continued food comatic state I flopped, once again on the airbed and spent time on Facebook while it rained outside. Emily and I took a walk later on that night to the Civic Center (mall) to take a look around. The walk helped digest some of the food, only until we got dinner at the mall. Delicious lamb korma...
That night I went to bed really early, probably because I needed to hibernate in order to deal with the amount of food i've eaten. I think the food I ate in Canberra made up for the lack of food I was eating the first week or so...
Most of Saturday morning was spent packing up Emily's room before her mom came in the afternoon. We stayed at a nearby hotel before heading down to Melbourne earlier today. The drive was pretty, and I am amazed by how incredibly flat Australia is. I'm sure the entire country is not flat, but after being in New Zealand for five months, I found that you can see miles and miles of flat land in Australia, and see mountains in the distance, but they always seem very distant because of all the flat land. Nevertheless, still pretty.
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