Our first tourist stop was the incredible National War Memorial in Canberra. The upper level of the memorial has a Vietnam Wall-like list of names of people who died in conflicts in which Australia participated, an eternal flame, and a shrine. The lower levels contain an extremely impressive museum that documents the history of those conflicts. There are interactive displays, old warplanes, helicopters, informative videos and posters, and a very large collection of wartime artifacts from several wars. It’s probably the best museum we’ve visited this trip.

Our second stop is the National Zoo & Aquarium. The zoo houses a large collection including lions, tigers (Bengal & Siberian), a giraffe, a shy koala, emu, kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, wombats, monkeys, bears, and otter among other animals. While it doesn’t have as many Australian animals as Featherdale, the overall size of the collection is much larger and the grounds are more impressive. Valerie signed us up for the Zooventure add-on during which we got to feed meat to a tiger and a lion, throw food to otters, feed a carrot to a giraffe, hold snake, and have a bear lick nutritious paste off our palms. Overall, the National Zoo is probably one of the better zoos I’ve ever visited. (The aquarium was not particularly impressive.)

For dinner, we returned to Dickson for an Australian take on Indian food. While expensive (as everything in Australia is), it was quite delicious.