You'll be hard pressed to find a reason to stay in Canberra for a whole weekend, but we thought what the heck we'll give it a shot! For most, Canberra is a place of work, government meetings, or somewhere you skirt round on your way to the Snowy Mountains.

Designed as a purpose built capital for Australia in the early 1900s, Canberra lies inland between the more dominant coastal cities of Sydney and Melbourne. Its saving grace is the man-made lake that bisects the capital called Lake Burley Griffin, named after the original city designer. Without this, Canberra would be doomed.

We took advantage of the cheap weekend hotel rates and checked in to the five star Hyatt Canberra. For the most part it was a quality experience, with the exception of the breakfast service. On Saturday, we wandered down there only to find that we had to put our names down on a list and then go and wait 20 minutes in our room to be called down! On Sunday it was 30 minutes - tsk tsk Hyatt, must do better!

Apart from the lake, other notable attractions include the wide array of birds that make it their home, the National Gallery of Australia with free entrance, a decent shopping experience at the city mall, and to round it off a trip up the Telstra Tower.