Whistler, BC, Canada

I went to Whistler for a weekend with a couple of girls from work and an Australian girl from the hostel. We had a fantastic weekend, Whistler is such a lovely place and I can’t wait to go back! Only two of us went up Blackcomb, I skied and my friend boarded, we had perfect weather for our day on the slopes!

Life is great!

I have been back in Vancouver for 3 weeks now after my little road trip to Naramata-Calgary-Edmonton for Christmas and the time is flying by.

My job is going well and I am being kept busy organizing board events, dinners and travel arrangements, but we do get time to go for lunches and relax a bit! I am still enjoying life at the Samesun Hostel, it is very busy at the moment, lots of people coming through on their way to the various ski hills around BC and Alberta.

I have started a Photography course with Vancouver Photo Workshops, it is a 10 week course on every Wednesday for 3 hours, We are on our second week now and already we have been out on a field trip, we went to Granville Island to do some night photography, which was great fun, but very cold.

I went up Grouse Mountain with a group of friends from the hostel, I think there was about 15 of us in all! We were very luck with the weather (it rains a lot in Vancouver… ) it was a gorgeous sunny winter’s day with completely blue skies, I skied along with a couple of others, but most of the group boarded, we were up there from 11 am till about 7 pm, they have night skiing with flood lit runs so you can ski till 10 pm if you want! It was an amazing day and I plan to go up a lot more over the next couple of months, I am going to take boarding lessons, which means I will spend a lot of time on my butt.

I went to a Vancouver Canucks hockey game, they were playing the LA Kings and unfortunately lost…for the third time that week…! I also went to another Vancouver Giants game, they were playing the Seattle Thunderbirds and they won, again! The Vancouver Canucks play in the NHL (National Hockey League), which is the top league, and the Vancouver Giants play in the WHL (Western Hockey League) the lower league. I found the Giants game to be more entertaining than the Canucks, way more fights and it is in a smaller stadium so you are way closer to the action, everyone was so intense and serious at the Canucks game.

Happy New Year

For Christmas I caught the Greyhound to Penticton to my Aunts and together we drove to Calgary. The roads were terrible, due to heaps of snow and freezing temperatures… both on the Greyhound and driving! We spent a couple of days in Calgary with Toby, Kathryn and Jack, it was great to see them and Jack is getting so BIG.

From Calgary we drove to Edmonton, to spend Christmas with Glen and John. We had a white Christmas and the temperature was about –15. Glen and John threw a dinner party for their friends on Christmas Eve, which was a lot of fun. On Christmas day there was just the four of us, which was nice, Santa came in the morning and then we opened our other presents after that. We had Christmas dinner then played Super Mario on the Nintendo Wii and watched movies, very relaxed.

The drive back to Penticton from Edmonton was a lot better than on the way, the roads were clear for most of the trip! I had a couple of days in Naramata before heading back to Vancouver, we just chilled out, played the Wii and watched movies. I did manage to catch up with the girl I worked with in the Naramata Heritage Inn in the summer, which was good.

I got the bus back to Vancouver for New Years, the hostel has a bar downstairs and they had a party on New Years Eve, which I went to with friends from the hostel, we had a great night, with people dancing on Granville Street!

Vancouver

What a whirlwind of a month!

I am still living in the Samesun Hostel on Granville Street and haven’t made any move to get a place of my own, I am enjoying staying in there, meeting loads of new people from all over the world, (well mainly Australia).

Vancouver got it’s first big snowfall on December 1st and I went up Grouse Mountain for the day with one of the guy’s from the hostel, it was so much fun, it snowed all day, we ice skated on the frozen pond (I dint know it, but I can ice skate)! Santa and Mrs. Claws were there in Santa’s Workshop (no, I didn’t go and visit them, I just took their photo)! There were also two very cute reindeer! We saw carol singers in the lodge and there was an open wood fire beside the ice skating rink! All very Christmassy.

After a couple of short term temporary jobs, one was in a construction firm and one in a layers office, I’ve now got a full-time job till the end of March! I’m working at the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV), the office is on West Broadway and looks over False Creek to Downtown Vancouver, and the view is amazing.

I have been in the job for almost two weeks now and I’m getting to know all the people, this was helped on Friday night by the Office Christmas Party! It was a fun night, with music bingo, party games and dancing, and I won a huge canister of Starbucks coffee in the raffle! I joined a few of the staff who went downtown after the party to pubs and clubs and had a great time.

Vancouver is the only place in Canada that they have Ceroc classes (the dancing I do in Inverness) so I went to a class at the Billy Bishop Hall in Kitsilano, it was great to get back into dancing, but it just wasn’t the same as in Inverness.

My Aunt came into town for a couple of days, we had a great time catching up! We viewed the condos she bought, they are gorgeous! She hopefully takes possession of them early next year, maybe just in time for me to stay in one till I have to go home! We went to a party thrown by her realtor Jacky, at The Sandbar on Granville Island, it’s a seafood restaurant, which was great fun and interesting, as I don’t normally like seafood, but I tried a lot (still avoided the raw fish..) We were supposed to go and see “Moving Out” a show with music by Billy Joel, but the cast trucks got snowed into Edmonton so it was cancelled…

I went to a Vancouver Giants v. Kamloops Blazers hockey game, with a girl from the hostel, it was a great night, and we had beer, hotdogs and bought a Giants foam finder! The Giants won 7-1, it was such a wild game, players being slammed into the side of the skate rink and fights breaking out all the time.

That’s all for now, will keep you posted!

4 Months on the road

I have had such a wonderful time travelling over the past 4 months, I have seen more than I ever expected and I got to see and travel with most of my family along the way, which was great!

I am back in Vancouver now, job and flat hunting! Hopefully it wont take me long to find work and a place to stay!
Will keep you all posted!

Toronto, Ontario

With its population of 2,504,000 Toronto is the biggest city in Canada. I was very apprehensive about going there because of its size, but when I arrived it wasn’t as bad as I thought and I felt quite comfortable walking about on my own.

I went up the CN Tower and I was lucky enough to get a completely clear day and was able to see for miles over the city and Lake Ontario! Toronto regularly suffers from bad smog, which makes it feel like you are walking around in a cloud… you cannot even see the top of the buildings in financial district through the cloud as they are so tall.

I went to the St Lawrence Market and walked round Toronto’s Old Town. I walked along vibrant Younge Street to the Eaton Mall, where I saw Jude Law and Forest Whitaker filming Repossession Mambo.

The weather has been fantastic, sunny almost every day, which isn’t normal for the autumn. I made the most of it and took the ferry over to Ward’s Island, 5 minutes from downtown Toronto, It is a beautiful place, I spent the day walking on the white sand beaches and along the waterside board walks, I accidentally walked onto a nudist beach… and walked off even quicker! You get a fantastic view of Toronto’s skyline from the island.

I took a trip to Niagara Falls for the day, the falls are pretty amazing! They are made up of three sets of waterfalls, on the America side there is the American and Bridal Falls and on the Canadian side there are the Horseshoe Falls, collectively known as Niagara Falls. I went up the Sky Tower and got an amazing view of the river and the falls, it was another clear day so I could see for miles! On the way back to Toronto I visited a little village on the banks of Lake Ontario called Niagara on the Lake, it was a very pretty little place with old style houses and tree lined roads. I stopped at Magnotta Vineyards, Southern Ontario’s 3rd largest winery, for a wine tasting, which was great!

Ottawa, Ontario

Ottawa is Canada’s capital city, chosen in 1857 by Queen Victoria, she chose it over Quebec City, Montreal, Kingston and Toronto because it was basically in the middle and half English, half French speaking.

The hostel I stayed in was once the Ottawa jail house and the site of Canada’s last hanging, I took the tour to find out about it’s history, I saw the cells, some of them were only 3 ft wide by 9 ft long…I also saw the gallows were they hung three people from death row.

I took a boat trip on the Rideau Canal, which was built between 1826 and 1832 and runs 202km from Kingston to Ottawa. I went to Parliament Hill and up the Peace Tower for an amazing view over the city, the clock faces replicate those of Big Ben and it chimes the same tune.

I walked Sparks Street Mall which is Canada’s first pedestrian mall and the Byward Market which has been running since the 1840`s. I visited Rideau Hall, the main residence for Canada’s Governor General.

I visited the RCMP Musical Ride Stables where all the horses are black to emphasize the red tunics, the horses have to be between 16 and 17.2 hands and only have small white areas on their faces or legs. They are mainly thoroughbreds and black Hanoverian broodmares and stallions so crossing them produces a well tempered horse. There is an auction every two years to sell off any horses that are not acceptable to be in the Musical Ride, there is one happening on October 6th 2007.

Mont Tremblant, Quebec

I took a short side trip to Mont Tremblant for a couple of days, the bus trip there went through the Laurentine mountains and all the colours of Autumn were coming out in the trees. I stayed a few minutes away form the pedestrian village of Tremblant and the main ski area in the winter, I took the gondola up what would be the ski hill, which is the highest in the Laurentine mountains, and although it was mostly misty it was an amazing view, it was a very quiet place in contrast to the big cities I have been in.

Montreal, Quebec

The bus trip from Quebec City to Montreal was beautiful as the trees are starting to turn in colour coming into autumn! Montreal is nothing like Quebec City, it is way more modern and cosmopolitan and there is 20 miles of underground shopping malls underneath downtown.

I walked along Rue Sainte-Catherine a few times as it is the main street, it is always so busy and great for people watching from one of the cafes! I visited Old Montreal and the Old Port, which was far less modern and had lots of old buildings and museums.

I walked round Mount Royal Park and saw the Saint Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal, it is one of the worlds most visited shrines, and the basilicas dome is 97 meters high and second only in height to Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

I took the metro to Ile Sainte-Helene and Ile Notre-Dame, this is were EXPO 67 took place and where the F1 Grand Prix of Canada is held every year, the track is open to the public, so I walked round part of it.

I visited City hall, where the French President Generale de Gaulle famously said in 1967, Viva le Quebec Libre, long live free Quebec!

Quebec City, Quebec

Vieux-Quebec is surrounded by a 4.6 km long defensive wall, built to protect the city from attack, the city of Quebec was founded in 1608 by Samuel de Champlan and is celebrating it’s 400th birthday in 2008, because of this the city is having a lot of restoration work carried out at the moment, despite the work, it is still such a pretty place, the streets are really narrow and cobbled and very like France, there are little cafes on the streets and the architecture is amazing!

I walked through Saint-Jean Baptiste and Saint Roch areas and to the Quartier Petit Champlan and Place Royale, you could just walk about for days on end the place is amazing and so beautiful, it’s hard to believe I am still in Canada, I have not seen any where else like it in the country.

I took a boat on the Fleuve Saint Laurent, which gave a fantastic view of the Chateau Frontenac and the Old City! I visited the Citadelle, which has been the second home and work place for the Governor General of Canada since 1872 and she was home when I visited, it is also one of only two citadels` in Canada, the other being in Halifax which I visited a couple of weeks ago.

I took a trip on the Route de la Novelle France, which is possibly the oldest area of New France in Canada! I visited the Shrine of Saint-Ann-de-Beauprie, which was absolutely amazing to see, it celebrates its 350th anniversary in 2008, and it is enormous and so beautifully decorated! On the same trip I visited the Montmorency Falls, which are twice as high as Niagara Falls and Isle d` Orleans, which is a beautiful island just outside of the city.

On my last day in Quebec I went up the Observatoire de la Capitale to get a view of the city from 221 meters up and what an amazing view it was!

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