Trip to Canberra

We went to visit Australia's little known Capital of Canberra over the weekend. I have never been there and my friend Charissa was running the Canberra Marathon. For this excursion we rented a car as the old Mazda was too risky and uncomfortable and is really a horrible car.
Picked up Charissa and Terry around 9 am and set off to Canberra. Unfortunately we did not wait for the SatNav to decide which route we would take until after we set off, which caused some initial trouble. Apparently it was set to "shortest route" rather than "fastest route" and we got to see some parts of Sydney we would not normally have driven trough… Eventually we made it onto the high way and after around 3 hours of nothing we entered Canberra. It really was nothing. We set off a game of "I Spy with my little I, something beginning with x", but after having done Car, Road, Sky, Cloud & Tree - we gave up. After 2h Terry spotted "wire" at the edge of the road!
If you look at the attached map - you'll see it is really in the middle of nowhere!
http://www.google.com.au/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Eurobin+Ave,+Manly+NSW+2095,+Australia&daddr=terry+street,+rozelle+to:canberra&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&sll=-33.785781,151.282553&sspn=0.009309,0.012145&ie=UTF8&z=8
Our initial plan was to drop our stuff off at the hotel and then have lunch. However it looked like there was nothing in the area - so we went back into the CBD and found an open pub. Afterwards we then walked to the park where the 5km fun run that Terry was doing was to start. Canberra is very strange. Huge boulevards with no traffic and no people. Monuments and museums, but really nothing else. Very empty and odd. When we got there we found out he had missed the 5km run and he now had to do 10km, which he had never done before. But not to worry, Terry did very well. He passed us 5 times and we all cheered on him.
In the evening we went out to a seafood restaurant where they had great lobsters.
Sunday we went to cheer on Charissa at 25km, 27km, 38km and finish. They started at 7 am and run that part in the mountains - so too much trouble to start earlier. Charissa finished at 3:56h.
While Charissa recovered with a shower we did sightseeing (The old bus depot market, glass works and railway museum - closed), then we met up for lunch. Charissa, who has not been drinking for weeks in her Marathon preparation was downing the beers at the speed of light!

Drive home was long and boring and weather bad, but we got to go on a new route and pay toll charges on the Eastern Distributor, which was different!