laur.ie

You may remember a little while back in the middle of the holiday we took the longest free ferry in the world; very nice!

Yesterday on our boat trip, we saw the shortest ferry in the world! With a grand total journey time of: wait for it…

32 seconds.

It even tried to pull out infront of us, but we whizzed past it. That’ll show em!

It just goes from the Toronto waterfront to the island, a very important, but short journey!

In other news, free Wifi at the airport for the win.. we’re here a little early. 2 hours early

Another very nice sleep, the beds here are excellent. Thanks Holiday Inn Express! Today the girls had shopping on the brain, er, i mean plan, so we went down the huugge Eaton Centre shopping “mall” and explored for a while… three hours went very quickly, we’d only been in a few shops on the first of the three floors and it was time for lunch.

We went to Hard Rock Cafe for lunch which was great; I got the feeling it wasn’t as exciting as it normally is when it’s night and all the lights are going but they played some good music and there were video screens everywhere, as well as a cool variety of memoribillia to look at.
You knew I wasn’t just going to leave it at that! The Food! Well it was my last meal in Canada so I felt I had to make the most of it! We had a combo for starter, with all the best things (Onion rings, chicken, potato skins etc) for us to share. Main: A burger, of course, and an excellent one, 10oz with cheese and bacon, yum! And then even though I shouldn’t, a delicious hot chocolate fudge brownie sunday for dessert.

Now, unfortunatly, I have to now have to diet for about 3 years to make up for it all but never mind, it was worth it!

Lots more wandering around shopping, (of which I bought nothing! It was the girls splashing out!) the four of us that are coming home are now sitting in the hotel lobby waiting for our taxi to take us to the airport where we will fly home. It will be extremly weird being back in the UK, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to understand anyone in the UK!

It’s been raining alllll day, really mankey, it was a good job we had planned to be inside a shopping mall day! And now sitting here in the lobby it’s thundering and lightning!

Thank you Canada, for an amazing trip. We definately packed in as much variety as we could… A guy in Roots started chatting with us and was very impressed. He’d also been to Winchester! He was rather excited, although most of the people are always excited and friendly!

That’s Toronto pronounced “toronno” of course! Another sorta-sleep in until 9am and we were off (eventually) on our way to the CN tower. We have no car here; there’s no point, so it was a nice wander down towards the lake.

Up the tower (I’m used to this bit by now!) another amazing view out over Toronto. The city is huge, with so many great things to see, and you could see over to the island with a little mini airport runway and you could see the planes coming in and out. They had another glass floor section which was good, as well as an outside for a different view plus cold wind!

We embarked on a hunt for food after wandering around the streets some more and stopped off at a random no-name pizza/fast food place… The pizza looked good so we tried it out. The bill for 5 of us came to ~$20! A tenner for a huge slice of piece of pizza, 3 potato wedges (free?!) and a can of “pop” for 5 of us, pretty good. It was nice pizza too!

It was very hot and sunny; I’m a bit red today but pleased to be getting slightly more brown. We walked along the front of the lake-front past the shops and interesting things like a police station… for the lake! lots of cool police boats.

A lot of people were offering tours of the islands, and we picked a random one that looked quite good, but we were unsure of what to expect when we saw the small yellow boat playing loud music… but it was definately the right choice! We had an amusing and playful “tour guide”; a (probably) teenage girl who stood at the front as we drifted along the front. “We can’t go particularly fast here”, she said, “because when we get going we make such a huge wave people get really annoyed”! “also we like to wave at other boats because you know, it’s friendly and keeps a good thing going between us… because a lot of the smaller speedboats get particularly annoyed when we go a lot faster than them!”
So we looked at all the interesting buildings and learnt some Toronto history… and then took off! Well it was the fastest I’ve been on a small boat anyway, reaching a peak of 34.6mph (recorded by Aid’s GPS, hurrah!) with a lot of spray and the girl was right; the wave was pretty big! It was a great view away from the waterfront, and a good tour of the islands; we stopped to see a part of the island that was “birds only”, and there were hundreds! going everywhere. We learnt more and then pressed on. It was basically like going to a muesem, learning for 5 minutes and then going to a rock concert or something (they blasted us with loud music during the bits where she didn’t speak!). It was well worth the money, it was a good trip.

Our aim for the evening was to meet up with Aid’s cousin, who he hadn’t seen since his christening, so quite a long time! This involved a fun trip on public transport! We got on a tram towards union station, and then to the subway, a very familiar experience to the tube except their trains are huge, quieter, and beautifully cooled. It was good to do that whilst being here, it was nice to see what their public transport is like.

Tomorrow evening is time to come home, which is very sad but I feel I’ve had an amazing range of stuff here in Canada, and I’m definately glad I came. It’s fantastic to see what life is like a long long way away from home, and see their way of life.

Time for bed for the last time in Canada, tomorrow we’re off shopping at the MASSIVE Eaton Center, food, then airport.

The beds were niceee. We got a lay in because we’re away from the parents, one floor below infact. I think I slept until at least 9! Woo!

Today we had until 4ish to explore Niagara, so some people went round the back of the falls, some people went on the Maid of the Mist, and some of us… Stayed in the dry. That would be Rosie and I then…

We met up and went to Denny’s for breakfast. An amazing place I had yet to experience; the finest breakfast around. Well, at this point it was more brunch than breakfast but they have the same thing all day every day. People had copius amounts of pancakes, english muffins, grits (which was amusing to watch Aid try) and so so much more food! I myself had the American breakfast: 3 fried eggs, 2 pieces of toast, two sausages, bacon, hash browns (which are much different from crappy hash browns; they don’t compact it back into a square!) and an amazing cocktail (orange, pineapple and a dash of sprite) which was delicious! Yes I realise this is a lot to write about some brunch, but you know me and it was great

Some of the group wanted to go the Imax to see the falls via screen, wheras Rosie, Aid and I opted for visiting America, and the American side of the falls.

You exit through a unsupervised, quiet indescript turnstile. 50 cents get you through that. You then walk across the bridge over the water just after it has come down from the falls, which is well worth the 50 cents just to get the view; it was stunning, and much closer to the falls. Over the other side, the strict but friendly US officials inspect you, make you fill out a visa form, take your fingerprints a picture of you, and then charge you $6 (US only of course) each for the priviledge of the treatment

I was pretty excited to be in the US, (And New York state!) even if it was only Niagara, but it was a lot nicer on the American side; they set back the tacky tourist area further back from the falls, so what you go to is a very nice park with trees and a small paved path.. and you can stand right next to the falls. The views are amazing, and you’re so close at one point we got very wet! There’s so much spray! The pictures say it better than I could with words, and as usual you can see them on Aidan’s page here. It was certainly worth going over for, and now I can say I’ve been to America, woo!

We rush off as we’re on a tight schedule of getting to Toronto to drop off the cars and get to the hotel, and we want to stop off at the quiant “Niagara-on-the-lake” which is a lovely little old fashioned place, with great little shops; I found a tshirt shop with some gooduns, (and of course the amazing Canadian exchange rate means £10 a shirt), a Cows shop, and a resturant for tea (and lots more we didn’t get to see of course).

Rushing off, we had a hour and a half drive back to downtown Toronto to get to our hotel, a Holiday Inn Express smack back in the middle of the other highrises; we’re on floor 9 and the views out of the windows are pretty impressive! We can see the CN Tower, with its pretty pulsating blue and red lights, and all the other pretty lights throughout the city.

It dawned on me we only have a couple more nights left; it’s crept up really quickly and unexpectedly, with each day going so fast, yet it feels like I’ve been away for ever. I’ll be very sad to leave this amazing place, but extremly glad I’ve now seen it. Good night! The weather is unfortuntely not forcast to be great for the next few days, with thunderstorms and the chance of rain, but it will be brilliant nonetheless.

Phew, what a day. Up at 6:15am, quick showers and packing and rushing off to the airport to drop off the beast (the car!) and get checked in.

At the airport, we finished off anything not able to be taken on the plane; this consisted of 3 litres of water, a beer, and Rolo cheesecake. I had half of the cheesecake and a litre of water and promptly felt rather ill (it was 8:30am!) but that didn’t last long luckily!

The plane was much smaller than the last one, 3 seats, then aisle, then 3. Rosie and I sat by the window and then someone on the end. The plane was actually a lot nicer than the long flight! With screens in every headrest with ondemand tv, movies, music etc. so that kept me nice and entertained; an episode of The Simpsons and then I watched “21″, which I’d fancied seeing but never got round to it, so I was nice and entertained. So much so that when I was rudely interrupted with 20 minutes to go with an announcement “We are now starting our descent to Toronto” I was quite surprised! Unfortunately I didn’t have any water to drink so my ears gave me hell, and I actually missed the last 15 minutes of the film so I have no idea how it ended. D’oh.

At the airport, we picked up our car which we have for a day to drive to Niagara and back in; after queuing for about 12 hours (slight exeggeration perhaps) we picked up a rather nice black Chrysler 300 which was very familiar just not nearly as big! The journey to Niagara was a 120km drive, bit of traffic at first but pretty quick in the end.

As we approached the hotel we saw down the hill to the falls; pretty amazing, after checking in we wandered straight down towards the falls in search of food (I hadn’t eaten since the cheesecake, eugh) and the spray and the water going everywhere is amazing. It’s very humid and hot though!

We walked up towards the tourist area of the town, and my god! It’s like a mini Vegas. Flashing lights, huge noise, people everywhere! It’s crazy. We tried to go to the Hard Rock Cafe and unfortunately there was an hour wait, so we gave up with that (this was at 9pm!) and settled for a nice little italian place, which had pretty good food.

Back at the hotel and a very late sleep; it’s 0:40 local time, but of course feels like 10:40 so not very tired!

With our last day in Calgary we decided to go and visit the Calgary olympic park, which was the home of the 1988 Winter Olympics.

The site mainly consists of a large hill; after all, you need somewhere to ski down! Although today the sun is blazing and it’s very hot, so no snow around! They give you headphones and a device for an audio tour but we quickly learnt it was a bit rubbish, poor reception, and the battery dead after 2 minute so we just concentrated on what was actaully around.

Starting off in the hall of fame, lots of information about the olympics and what they do, complete with fun additions (like an arcade skiing game which we all failed miserably on, and a chance to hold the actual olympic torch from 1988) and having never really paid attention to the olympics before myself, I found it pretty interesting.

Next up we went up a chair lift, which was horrible (naturally since I have a fear or falling! but I survived) up to the top of the hill, where we had fantastic views of Calgary (again!). Next, up the largest of the 3 ski towers where the atheletes launched themselves down a stupidly large hill (madness I tell you!) 10 years ago, which is now home to a zip wire where unfortunate victims (I mean lucky people!) pay $50 for the priviledge of being scared crapless. We avoided that! Pretty amazing though, the hill.

Across the hill to the bobsleigh run, which to our amusement is completly unprotected. Feel free to wander down the entire course if you fancy! Athough I just went a little way to look down and then gave up. it looks pretty fun actually, although when you remember they go insanely fast perhaps not.

Back down the chair lift (ahhh!) to the resturant (I won’t tell you what I had) and then off to the gift shop! My highlight of the day, since I was very excited to be purchasing a Quatchi! He’s so cute and fluffy My new favourite friend.

Next, off to a huge huge shopping center to experience some Canadian shopping, and Rosie needed a new suitcase… The old one is fine, she just needs ANOTHER one because she’s bought so many new clothes (and plans to buy more!) *rolls eyes*.

We headed back earlyish, and then just headed out to Safeway to pick up a light tea; we need to be up at 6am tomorrow, to catch our flight to Toronto! So we will be attempting an early night, not sure if I’ll manage that so I’ll probably be very tired tomorrow! But excited about the prospect of being in Toronto tomorrow.

I will point out first of all that today we took over 1500 photos! Poor Aid is now sitting there trying to pick out a few for the photo diary!

Today we decided to be proper tourists and have a nice relaxing day wandering around Calgray Zoo. It was absolutely manic in the car park; it was only small and today is a public holiday so there were people everywhere. The zoo itself wasn’t too bad luckily but it was pretty hectic in some places.

They have some excellent animals here, some I didn’t even know existed. It was pretty cool seeing everything so close up. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a zoo, and it was great fun!

My highlight: MOOSE! Of course. A very cute moose that wandered up towards us when we arrived and had a little swim around, it was very cool. So that’s 1 in the wild and two at the zoo in total so far. Excellent result!

Other good points: Bears, flamingos (!! these were really cool!), elephants and baby elephant (so cute!), and others I don’t remember already.

The range was good though, with different sections for different animals from different countries, a very interesting selection of animals that you wouldn’t normally see.

It was about 4pm by the time we had looked around (almost) everything, we headed to the Calgary tower for the amazing views from 550ft up over the entire of calgary. The town, the highrises, the mountains, the c-train going across the city, it was amazing. And it has a very cool section that lets you see right down, which is fun, including a picture taken of me that looks like I’m hovering in mid air it was quiet odd to not be rotating though, after being in the BT tower earlier this year!

We wandered around the pedestranised area of downtown, but unfortunately because of the holiday mostly everything was closed by the time we got there, but it was still interesting.

Off towards the hotel we looked for places for tea; our hotel is just off Macleod Trail and the entire side of the road is littered with millions and millions of resturants; we picked “Tony Roma’s” (famous for ribs, apparently, although none of us had any! They looked fantastic though). Some nice potato skins, and yet another burger later (I swear I’m going to pick something else tomorrow. Seriously. Maybe some liposuction.) it was a tasty meal, not a bad choice out of all of the 1000 available

Back to the hotel for some leg relaxation; my legs felt like they were going to fall off by this afternoon, having not completly recovered from yesterday!

Another mountain climb today; The Nihahi Ridge Trail, ~1000 feet of going up, and up and up. The views were simply amazing though, and it was really good to be doing some good exercise. I managed to do quite a long stretch without stopping, which was really hard work but it felt good to reach the open meadow and be burning some of the burgers I’ve eaten! (well, maybe just a little bit of a burger but hey). We stopped off on the way back at a few places; for example, Elbow Falls, which was great considering my fascination with water. I could’ve sat and watched the water flow all day.

Time again for some washing; and then off to Earls for some tea (guess what I had!) and some rather delicious chocolate sticky toffee pudding.

And then back to the hotel for sitting down and sleep, we have very sore legs!

Awake bright and early, we packed up and I headed to Subway. Well, it was the only change I had and I was suprisingly hungry for 10am, so Subway Melt it was, which was surprisingly delicious considering the time in the morning.

Off we trecked and straight away we were back into the middle of nowhere. First stop: The worlds biggest truck, which was pretty large! I couldn’t really understand how they could’ve purchased the worlds biggest dumper truck and then just stop using it and stick it in the middle of a park but hey I guess they thought that through

There were some amazing views along the way, lots more mountains and trees, a huge landslide that completely covered a place called Frank, and lots of nice and exciting wildlife, notably a large bear wandering its way across the road in front of us.

Along the way we stopped off at “Bar U” a proper old ranch in the middle of nowhere. We started off with a nice walk around the site, and were met by a friendly man who drives a horse-drawn cart around the site who happened to be letting the horses have a drink. He offered us a tour and we couldn’t refuse! Around the site we went seeing all the old barns and buildings that have been restored and lovingly looked after; the place still seemed to actually operate as a ranch but it was hard to tell! Whilst I’m not a big horse fan this tiny kitten came from nowhere which was unbelievably cute, so tiny and VERY friendly, he got passed around and ended up cuddling up and falling asleep on B’s lap! He even miewed in protest when we finally thought we would move on! After a tour of a few more buildings, we went and sat round a fire, where a funny man handed up cups of tea and coffee and told stories of how it was in the “old times” but also chatted about Canada in general, we didn’t think he was going to let us leave but he was very interesting!

On the way towards Calgary, more wonderful views of huge huge lakes, creeks, and snow topped mountains. We took the scenic route, and it was slightly bizarre suddenly landing on the trans canada highway and 30 minutes later ending up in the city, with the view of the skyscrapers of the downtown in the distance, another pretty impressive view.

After being slightly confused with a changed road layout from what we were expecting (from the TomTom) we managed to end up at the Holiday Inn, a familiar format to the place we started in Vancouver. Rosie and I took a quick wander to the nearby Boston Pizza (EVERYTHING is nearby here!) for a quick takeaway and lounge infront of the TV before sleep

Up early(ish) to venture off on the next leg of our trip, off to Fernie, a small stopover for one night on our way to Calgary.

With the car packed up we embarked on our 300km trip further east towards Fernie, with a fun ferry trip after just a few kms away from our hotel. It’s the longest free ferry in the world, and it had some pretty awesome views. And hey, the price is right?

As much is it’s bizarre being 8 hours behind the UK, it’s even more bizarre when suddenly you drive past a small, plain sign that says “Set your clocks forward 1 hour”… You lose an hour of your life just by driving past a sign, something I’m not really familiar with!

Along the way we have more beautiful views of the mountains, lakes, trees, railways, buildings and the like. We stopped off along the way at the train museum at Cranbrook, which held some interesting old Canadian Pacific Railway trains that have been lovingly restored. The guides were a bit weird but extremly enthusastic and the tour was pretty interesting, what the journey on a train was like back in the early 1900′s.

We arrived at the hotel at what seemed quite early but of course here it’s an hour later, so it was teatime. We popped just next door for some expensive but quite nice food (but still nothing compared to the amazing food and value of the place in Nelson!) and then went on a late night hunt for some bottles of water, which the 7/11 took care of. It’s interesting to see and drive around Canada at night time; it’s a lot different to the day. It definately reminds me of movies set in America, and the whole grid street system is quite novel, although it certainly makes sense!

Time for lounging around the hotel again, diary/blog writing, and much needed sleep! Tomorrow we begin the ~5 hour journey to Calgary, apparently we need an early start! Eek!