Yes, I've vanished from PADing and commenting for the last few days, but not because I was taking a break from photography; quite the opposite in fact. I clearly have some gaps to fill in both posting and commenting, but we had gone away for a four day weekend to Canberra to see Renaissance, 15th and 16th century Italian paintings from the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo at the Australian National Gallery.

The Canberra Festival was on while we were there so there are also shots from the hot air balloon spectacular to be processed, in addition to which there was a trip to the National Zoo and Aquarium. And there were other events that I didn't take shots of like the Symphony In the Park. But even skipping that and a visit to the Black Mountain Tower (where the views were great but the light and air clarity were a waste of time), I still filled a 16 gigabyte card (admittedly with quite a bit of bracketing) and 2 gig of an 8 Gig card.

And of course the trips to restaurants around Canberra racked up a pretty significant kilojoule tally as well. The first night we had dinner at the hotel restaurant which was adequate but unexceptional, especially for the price. My partner was a little surprised when I dragged her off after the mains without even looking at the dessert menu but I had an ulterior motive in mind; specifically a specialty chocolate café called Koko Black, which was within walking distance of the hotel. There we had a Belgian Platter consisting of Belgian chocolates, ice cream and mousse which will make its way into into another part of these galleries.

They were closed after dinner on Sunday but were thankfully open again on Monday. (It was a public holiday in Canberra, but Koko Black was open. Unlike tyre stores, which were closed right when I got a screw wedged in my tyre, which was found just before we were due to drive home. Doing 110 with a dodgy tyre is not something that you want to do so we had to make our way back across the border to Queanbeyan in NSW to find a place that could do a repair. However that was in the future at the time that this shot was taken.)

This is what we had for "lunch" before leaving Canberra since it was too early for a "real" lunch. Iced chocolate for me (mocha for my partner) made from rich Belgian chocolate, plus vanilla bean ice cream, Belgian chocolate ice cream and Belgian chocolate shavings.

Although it was delicious, rich, sumptuous even... for the sake of my waistline it does make me glad that trips to Canberra are infrequent and that Koko Black has yet to open in Sydney.

I'll catch up with my PADing and commenting over the next week or so. And possibly even find time to post the other photos as well...

Last Year