It is Australia Day, so a public holiday, and therefore an occasion, we felt, to hop in the car and have a bit of an away-day break in sunny Canberra. After all, there is an excellent exhibition of some stunning artwork on at the National Gallery right now. And, besides, the country’s capital city has lots of other attractions worth a visit at any time.

So that’s what we did. The ‘Masterpieces from Paris’ exhibition was indeed worth the trip: Van Goghs, Pissaros, Picassos, Seurats and more, of stunning quality -and most unlikely to be viewable in the one space again (unless you’re a Parisian, of course, in which case it’s nothing special, I guess).

The National Portrait Gallery next door is currently hosting an Australian of the Year exhibition, in which portraits of past winners are viewable en masse. That was good fun, too.

For evening dinner, we went to the Jewel of India restaurant in the Melbourne Building, right in the heart of the city. It is quite new, apparently -and quite possibly the best Indian restaurant in the known Universe. I love Indian food and would say I am something of a connoisseur in regards to working out the difference between the so-so and the better-than-adequate… but, quite simply, the Jewel of India is the best Indian food I’ve ever eaten in Australia. Their website is a little rough around the edges, but their decor was clean, smart and comfortable. Their service was friendly and efficient without ever threatening to be in your face. Their prices were reasonable. The ambience was quiet and comfortable (no ghastly Bollywood tape tracks to annoy in the background, for example). Threir prices were extremely reasonable. And their food was simply wonderful. Thoroughly recommended, in short.

Not so the hotel we stayed in. It takes something a bit special to reduce me to the sort of language I’m about to use, but Rydges Lakeside is an utter shithole and I strongly advise that no-one in their right mind should ever even think about staying there. It’s not so much the bed sheets with oil stains on them. Or the random screws sticking out from the walls. Or the air conditioning temperature control that dangles loosely on the wall. Or the crack in the wall near the bedroom. Or the bathroom tap that drips incessantly. All of those could be forgiven and overlooked, I suspect, if one were feeling slightly charitable.

But an air conditioning unit that manages, when on full blast at the lowest possible temperature setting, to puff out slightly less air than an asthmatic ant with emphysema and reduce the room temperature by not one jot in consequence is -in an Australian summer- completely unforgivable.

I write these words at 1.40 AM as a result: the room is so warm that sleep is out of the question and I’m seriously contemplating nipping down to the car and letting its air conditioning do the job instead. A kip on the back seat there would be preferable to this insufferable inferno, basically.

I haven’t, of course, formally complained: for one thing, TOH seems able to snore daintily through the worst of it and thus causing a fuss would cause me even more grief later on, back home! Besides, the English don’t complain: we just blog about it afterwards.

It nevertheless remains the case that in all my 46 years of Earthly existence and the countless hotels I’ve stayed in on both sides of the globe and either hemisphere, I’ve never had the misfortune to stay in a worse hotel. Not once, ever. So, stay away from Rydges Lakeside in Canberra is all I’ll say by way of conclusion. In the immortal words of Elizabeth Taylor at the start of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf: What A Dump!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 12:45 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.