Travel Guide: A Weekend in Canberra, Australia.

Last updated: November 2024

While I was in London I realized that despite living in Sydney for almost a year, I actually haven’t seen much of the East Coast.

I’ve seen a large chunk of the West Coast from when we lived over in Perth, but since moving to Sydney I’ve barely touched this side of the country.

I promised myself I’d change this ASAP, so as soon as I got back I booked in trips to Canberra, Cairns, and Melbourne (again).

Canberra – Australia’s Capital City – is just a 3 hour drive from Sydney, so Nikki and I set off early Saturday morning, and spent 24 hours exploring the home of the Freakshake!

So, let’s get into Canberra and the best things to do, see and eat!

Stop at Lake George enroute

We stopped off at Lake George on the way, but it’s actually barely a lake at all as it hardly has any water in it these days!

I found this hilarious, so obviously had to get a photo in-front of this lake with no water.

The scenery and vista though is absolutely stunning, even without water!

Lunch at Brodburger

We then drove to Brodburger for lunch, as we’d heard they were the best burgers in Canberra.

Unfortunately they lost our docket and it took us over an hour to get a burger and fries, which sucked as we were both starving.

Eventually we got them though, and I have to say it was worth the wait…they were pretty darn good!

After checking in we got back in the car (Canberra is not a walkable city), and drove up to Parliament House.

We got there around 4:30pm, just as it was closing, so we raced around to quickly see the Senate and House of Representatives, and then drove over to the Australian War Memorial.

Australian War Memorial

The Australian War Memorial was so beautiful, a very calm and tranquil area perfect for taking a moment to stop and reflect.

To visit, you need a free two-hour timed ticket, but you need a separate ticket to attend the daily Last Post Ceremony.

The galleries are open 10 am to 4 pm daily, and the entry for the Last Post Ceremony is at 4 pm each day, with the ceremony commencing at 4.30 pm (last admittance at 4.20 pm).

Cocktails at Joe’s Bar & Pizza at Agostini’s

It was about 6pm by this time so we made our way back to the hotel to get changed and have some dinner.

We had cocktails at Joe’s Bar and ate in the hotel’s restaurant, Agostini’s, before meeting one of Nikki’s friends for more cocktails. The pizza and cocktails were SO good, so I 100% recommend going here!

We did a little bar crawl around Kingston (the area the hotel is situated), but despite it being a Saturday night the bars were completely empty!

We were desperate for a good night out though, so we got a taxi into the city and found an awesome hip-hop bar!

Let’s just say I don’t remember much of the night, apart from dancing and the numerous shots of Cafe Patron (I don’t even like coffee).

We have zero photos from the night. I’m not sure why.

The next morning we both woke up extremely hungover, and in desperate need of some hangover food.

After a quick Google we realized we were staying close to a branch of Patissez, which was the very first cafe to start the popular Freakshade trend about ten years ago, so we checked-out and drove straight there.

Luckily it didn’t disappoint, and I devoured the ‘Michael Jackson’ freakshake which was a combo of chocolate fudge, ice-cream, brownies, marshmallows, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream.

We were also good and had savoury food though!

I chose the Corn and Zucchini Fritters, while Nikki went for the eggs with bacon and tomatoes. Everything was delicious!!

Visit the National Gallery of Australia

After filling up on food we drove down the road to pick up Nikki’s friend and decided our first stop would be the National Gallery of Australia.

As you can probably tell, this little trip was a very cultural one (aside from the drunken night out).

The gallery was free to enter, and actually really interesting – they have numerous works by Monet, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and they also have the paintings from the Australia Exhibition I saw at the Royal Academy in London a few years ago!

It was really surreal seeing them again…but actually IN Australia.

Lunch at Akiba

After hours of wandering around the gallery we were surprisingly hungry again, so drove into the main city area for lunch at Akiba.

We got a whole bunch of dishes to share, and were really impressed with the food overall, but I think a couple of the dishes had far too much sauce (the tuna and the buns).

Once we’d had a long lazy lunch we walked back to the car and had an hour or so before we needed to start the drive back to Sydney.

We decided to go back to Parliament House and have a proper look around it this time, as we’d had to rush around the evening before.

And then before we knew it, it was time for the long drive back.

The problem with Australia is you can’t really drive in the dark unless you have a huge 4WD with roo bars on the front, because it’s just too dangerous due to the risk of a roo jumping out into the road and hitting the car.

When we were driving back something very exciting happened though – we saw a Wombat!!!

A real life wombat in the wild snuffling along in the bushes at the side of the road!

I’ve only ever seen them in zoos and wildlife parks before, so it was very exciting and lots of squealing occured haha.

Canberra is definitely a great little city to spend a day or two in, but I personally wouldn’t ever spend more than two days there as there really isn’t that much to do there.