Canada

Toronto, Canada

The bus here was fantastic! We went via the great lakes to Toronto, and it was some of the most amazing scenery in Canada. It`s hard to comprehend that such a huge expanse of water is only a lake. And if that isn`t enough reason for us to have spent 4500km already on the bus...we also get to meet some really interesting people. Mr Ted and his friend were escorted to the bus leaving Thunder Bay by the police.

Toronto has been a really cool city, with a really strong cafe culture and a level of constant energy. People do move faster here, but they also party more than the Vancouverites. Sorry guys, that`s just how it seems. I`ll admit it, I fell in love with Toronto. The moment we got of the bus, and tried to find our hostel, we got caught up in the throng of people going to watch the Much Music awards, recorded live at stages set up in the street in the heart of the city. People were everywhere, but even at the best of times, Avril and Hilary aren`t my top priority, so we kept hauling our packs and eventually found our hostel. Incidentally, if anyone is going to Toronto, head to the Canadiana backpackers, it really is as good as the ratings say.

So what did we do in Toronto, we kicked it up the CN tower, and stood on the glass floor. Yes, I`ll admit, it gave me the heebie jeebies. Glass, under your feet at that height, just doesn`t seem smart. But it was fun, and thats what really counts.

Steam Whistle Brewery

But my FAVOURITE thing we did in Toronto, was visit the Steam Whistle Brewery and have a few beers and a guided tour. And I`m now going to change careers, and become Sarah the brewmaster. HEll yes. Teh tour was fun, and really interesting and all about beer. What more do you need in life, thats right, nothing.

We also had the good fortune to catch up with my friend Monique, who I met in South America, and we had a few lagers and laughs. Hard to believe that it had been over 6 months since I last saw her. Time has passed so quickly.

On the last day in Toronto we headed down to Niagara Falls, which was pretty cool, but to be honest, not a patch on Iguazu Falls in Argentina. But, still a great day trip.

Although the funniest thing happened at the greyhound Toronto transit station, an Australian girl was sitting behind Tom and I..and was having a hillarious conversation with a Canadian girl. Aside from the fact that she had done almost EXACTLY the same thing I have done since I left home, she was a bit ditzy. She asked the Canadian girl what she was reading, and she's gone 'a book about kidneys'. Then Aussie was like 'those kidneys eh? My friend has three'. Tom and I were nearly rolling around the floor. I still get the giggles thinking about it.

written by

no_fosters_thanks on June 20, 2007 from Toronto, Canada

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Montreal, Canada

The view from Mont Royal

That is as much french as I can muster. What we intended to be a two night stay in Montreal, became three…and then five. We completely lucked out with our hostel, which I would have to say is one of my favourite hostels I’ve been too, and I really wish we had been there while it was packed full. My usual ability to find hostels in random places…yet again confirmed, this time our hostel was in the middle of the Village, that being the gay village. Which was good, as Tom felt right at home. For a change I wasn’t in the middle of all the strip clubs, but that’s due to Montreal spreading them around, there isn’t a red light district per se, the naked chicks are dispersed around the city.

Still gorgeous Montreal

Montreal itself is a beautiful city, by the waterfront is many original buildings, and it has a real European charm. It’s awesome that the province of Quebec has managed to thrive so well within Canada, it’s like a separate world. Fall asleep for two hours from Ottawa, and all of a sudden it really is like a slice of france. There is a real food and wine culture there, but even some things are totally different to the rest of Canada, like to provision of alcohol. It’s everywhere in Quebec, and about half the price of what we would pay in Vancouver. Even at a BC Liquor store. So I think the rest of this little story is obvious, a hostel with a rooftop terrace….and some stellar backpackers (not us, Cheryl and Graham – who happen to be some of the funniest brits I’ve met in my life. When we were all rolling drunk they invited us to their homecoming party in London…which we’re intending on turning up to, so hopefully they were serious!)

Violence against pool noodles, quebec says "every sunday"

Something we did find, was walking through Mont Royal park, was the weekly drumming circle (which was huge), and the medieval pool noodle fight. People in armour, with pool noodle fashioned into swords, axes, one enterprising young man even had a bow and padded arrows. And then they rush into battle, and die. Then do it again. And again. Queer.

In Montreal, by and large all we did is walk around the city, having a gander at the waterfront, walked up Mont Royal to get a full view over the city. Actually, it was a little embarrassing to arrive in Montreal to find out the rather large fact that Montreal is actually on an island. Something major we managed to miss. Whoops.

After 5 days though, it’s was time to keep moving, towards our next French-canadian destination with a rather large hangover, Quebec City.

written by

no_fosters_thanks on June 22, 2007 from Montreal, Canada

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Quebec, Canada

Tom-pom

After being wowed in Montreal with the architecture, Quebec city knocked my socks off. The old city itself has been fantastically maintained, with the original city walls intact, rambling cobbled lanes and houses and hotels older than anything in Australia. The first thing we did upon arrival, was to find the city walls, and walk all the way around them! Old Quebec is actually quite small, with the walls only being 4.5kms. Great wall of china it is not, but it IS the closest fortified city to Mexico City. And believe me, that’s a long way. Anyone who has gone greyhound in North America will agree.

We have spent three nights in Quebec city, having to change hostels after the first night. The hostel we originally booked into was nice, clean and cheap, but it also had no locks on any of the doors, no lockers in the room, and sadly, no security whatsoever. We made the change to the nearby HI, which although has lots of older people and school groups…also had a bar! We met some more top people there, and hopefully will be catching up with some of them in New York City.

To be honest, there are plenty of museums and tours, restaurants and carriage rides to do in Quebec, but we spent all our time walking and just enjoying the random sculptures and taking it all in, and Tom taking 300 photos a day. You can’t even explain what a contrast to the rest of Canada it is. And to be honest our French is appalling, and even trying to buy bread is a big ordeal. More than it should be. But in saying that, some French people we were talking with, said the difference between French-french and Canadian-french is massive, and even they struggled. Not that we can speak French-french either, but hey, I’ll take any reason right now.

After a great three days walking all around Quebec, we have decided to move on, but had the slight dilemma that everywhere in Canada doesn’t seem to have beds available tonight, so we thought, stuff it, lets head to Boston! So the next stop will be the hometown of Harvard University, and the Samuel Adams brewery. And considering my impending career change to brewmaster, we’ll be forced to do tours of both. (market and production you see).

written by

no_fosters_thanks on June 29, 2007 from Quebec, Canada

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Boston, United States

Amazing statehouse

When it came time to leave beautiful Quebec City, we struck upon the small problem that EVERYWHERE IN CANADA WAS BOOKED OUT FOR THE WEEKEND, and consequently we had no-where to go…but down south. incidentally, spending Canada day in Quebec, no-one even seemed to notice it occurred. St Jean Baptiste day though….big nationalist party!
So to till time, we just bussed around Canada for the day, heading down to Ottawa with the intention of leaving our bags at the station and checking out the town for the evening. But when we arrived, we discovered we really were not fussed, so just sat in the canteen for a few hours and played cards. We managed to get ourselves on the bus to Boston (why not, with a couple of days to kill, lets check it out eh?) and gosh, was that a bus trip.
Now americans, just to preface this, I don’t mind Americans, in fact I like quite a few of them. (and in the case of joyce absolutely adore). HOWEVER, this was the bus trip from hell…the moment we crossed into the States.
Firstly, getting Sarah to do a border crossing at 2am…I’m hardly at my sharpest. So the first indication I’m a terrorist, I kept telling that my date to fly out of New York, was three days previously. Apparently, the difference between the 6th of June and 6th of July, is quite big. Whatever. Plus I have a massive bag, so I must be hiding weapons of mass destruction…in my sleeping mat. Having to do a full bag search was not what I was interested in at 2am. In fact when the guard told me to open my bag, I believe I answered with “fine, but if you want it open, you have to help me close it again”. Which he had too…as after my bag search I was unable to jam it all back it. I had messily shoved (I mean packed) with precision and skill, and you can’t just open it up and expect it to close itself.
God knows why, but he didn’t say anything to my washing bag, which had a very large quantity of white powder in a zip-locked bag with no markings…he must have just known it was washing powder.
Then, to add insult to injury, he charged me USD$6 for a three month tourist visa…even though I already have a year long visa! What is with that country? I can only stay for three months at a time, have to leave and re-enter EVEN THOUGH I PAID STUPID AMOUNTS OF MONEY TO BE ALLOWED THERE FOR A YEAR.

So, as you can see, America and I got off on the wrong foot. And then we changed to the greyhound. Please refer to Tom’s blog for a description of that awful bus. Ikes.

However, Boston surprised me. The public transport, cheap and easy to use, the people friendly, the city, pretty and also walkable, which is very unusual. We had two nights booked in Boston, and we jammed a fair bit into those days. Firstly, we headed out to the Samuel Adams Brewery, for our free brewery tour. Not amazingly keen on all of their beers, but it’s the closest they have to boutique beer, and I’ll admit the Summer ale is really quite tasty. That was a good tour, except for the young guy who overfilled his beer, and proceeded to slurp it off the table. That was our cue to depart.

Boston Heritage weekend celebrations...right

Later that day we headed down to the local park, which was full of community gardens. That was one of the real highlights, these gorgeous little gardens, complete with tables and chairs, and it was obvious people took real pride in their gardens. It was really lovely to see that in the middle of the city.

The other big thing we did was headed out to Harvard. So yes mum, I went to Harvard. Hehehehe. The campus there is massive and every building covered in Ivy. Funnily enough where that ‘Ivy League’ stuff all comes from. I didn’t realise but it was the first University in the US. My favourite though, for sure the number of bookstores. Oh, an absolute dream.

But the best thing about Boston, we met some fantastic people. From the guy in the pizza shop to our fellow dorm-mates, we had a ball. Our roomies was a couple from Alabama, two musicians and they were great fun to hang out with, and we got together with more people, and played cards until 2am in the morning one night. Great time. But, all good things come to an end, and it was time to go to NYC!

written by

no_fosters_thanks on June 30, 2007 from Boston, United States

from the travel blog: Canada

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New York, United States

NY Stock Exchange

New York is BIG. When Central park is a couple of km’s long, and takes up a teeenie part of Manhattan island, you know there is going to be plenty of walking involved. Honestly, we were in NYC for a crazy four days, and were always out and about, so I’ll give you some of the highlights.

Statue of Liberty

Statue of Liberty – Smaller than I thought. Always looks big on the small screen, but it really just has a massive base. Still worth having a look at, and if you were still able to go up into the statue to the viewing deck (closed post Sept 11) it would be amazing.

Times Square

Times Square – Standing in the middle of Times Square is one of the quintessential New York things, and broadway, wow, crazy busy. Would have been awesome to have gone to see a show there, but I’m still hoping to go and see the Lion King at West End in London. The most fun thing about Times Square is for sure the huge Toys’r’us. This place is so big it has a ferris wheel in the middle of the store. Pretty exciting. They also had a BIG animated T-Rex, I actually found it a big scary. But also HELL COOL! Other highlights, definitely going into the two storey Barbie Fun house. If I had more money, Oktoberfest Barbie would have been coming home with me! Although, with the recent changes to Barbie, she looks like a bit of a slapper. Getting Tom in the Barbie fun house was by far the most hilarious experience, and apparently trying to take a picture…not cool. So for fear of a celebrity style Camera smashing, sorry readers, no visuals of Tom and Barbie☹

Central Park

Central Park was really interesting, it’s so big, and really gorgeous. Walking through there having a hot dog, really good fun. We were lucky our hostel was only a few blocks from the park, so we got to spend a fair amount of time walking around. I didn’t realise but there are actually quite a few sporting facilities in the park, including a mini beach volleyball area. Just a massive sandbox.

Painting at the New York Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art – This was my favourite thing we did in New York, and the best money spent. The Met is so huge, we spent nearly five hours walking around, and covered not even a third of the collection. We picked a few exhibits we were really interested in, and tried to focus on them. But the strangest thing is, you are allowed to take photos in the museum, as long as you don’t use a flash. Which I found a surreal experience, and a little gutting as I had left my camera at the hostel that day! Well excited to see “The death of Socrates”, and my two favourite exhibits were the Modern, and Medieval Armoury. Some of the work in the Modern section were fantastic, and then you had blue canvas. A blue canvas. The Andy Warhols were great to see, and there was some modern portraits that were cool.
But the Armoury was huge, showing full body armour from around the world, and also full horse armour. It was really amazing to see the whole sets that people used to wear into battle. Although, I feel sorry for the poor horses having to carry the whole shebang.

a travel blog by no_fosters_thanks

Those kidneys eh

Toronto, Canada

Bonjour!

Montreal, Canada

A bit of old world charm

Quebec, Canada

The birthplace of Cheers…the bar

Boston, United States

New York, New York

New York, United States