Victoria and the fisherman

As this entry is being written, we are sitting in an ocean front beach cottage overlooking the Atlantic sea. We have now reached Halifax and for the past week, we have been renting this little place close to Peggy's Cove outside Halifax. It is absolutely beautiful, even during winter storms in November/December (!) and a perfect way to end our journey across this continent. Three months ago we were looking out over the Pacific ocean, and now we are looking at the Atlantic sea.

Waves!

When we arrived in Halifax we stayed a couple of nights downtown to get ourselves sorted out. Since we will be leaving for Europe from here, there are a few things we needed to arrange before we get on that plane. The most important thing was the car. The 18 year old Toyota Landcruiser has been our home and our transportation for the past three months. It has taken us up north and across the country so we both had a special attachment to this veichle. We had discussed different options which included storing it in Halifax, shipping it back to Vancouver, shipping it to Europe etc. etc. In the end, and after all, we did decide to sell it to spare ourselves the headache of arranging for shipping and/or storage so we spent a few days advertising it online and in the news paper. It turned out to be a very popular car and we ended up selling it to the first guy who came to take a look. A huge relief but it was with certain sadness we saw the Landcruiser go...

The next administrative task on hand was to decide what to do with everything we had brought with us but couldn't take with us across to Europe. We had brought our camping gear also on this part of the trip but ended up not camping a single night, so somehow we needed to ship that gear back to Vancouver. A friend in Vancouver was kind enough to agree to recieving and storing our stuff until we come back, so a trip to the post office and three boxes later we are now down to the things that we will be bringing with us on the plane tomorrow!

The oceanside cottage we found is perfect for the last few days here. We have our own kitchen and the windows overlook St. Margret's Bay and famous Peggy's cove is only 3 kilometers up the road. We found the local fish market and have been feasting on lobster a couple of times! We've also bought some smoked mackerel which was delicious!

The little house we rented outside Peggy's Cove

Lighthouse in Peggy's Cove

Harbour in Peggy's Cove

A couple of day trips have taken us back into Halifax where we visited the Citadel and the Historic Properties. The day we went to the Citadel was the Christmas market with child friendly activities so we ended up in a crowd of families with kids and even saw Santa!!! Robert got told off by an employee for leaning too far over the side of the citadel. We thought that was quite funny; 44 year old gets yelled like a kid doing something bad!

One day we drove out to Mahone Bay and Lunenburg which are cute old communities along the south shore. Mahone Bay also had their annual Christmas market so we got into the holiday spirits by jingle bells and holiday decorations.

Colourful houses in Lunenburg

Robert and the green house

Tomorrow we are off to Iceland for a week and then on to Sweden. Iceland sounds very 'cool' and we are quite excited about the next part of our trip. It feels a little strange that this part of the trip is over but we have lots more to look forward to!]]> Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=10182 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=98695 0 44.65 -63.6

View over the harbour in Quebec city

Le chateau Frontenac

In Quebec city we explored good food and took a look at the main attractions such as the Citadel, the Market at the port. the Chateau Frontenac and we strolled down the cobblestoned streets. As Christmas is only about a month away, the streets and stores are starting to become decorated with lights, christmas trees and festive decorations and it all added to the feeling of winter and holiday.

The old part of Quebec

The citadel in Quebec city

Robert playing at the Citadel

It soon became evident that our focus after all wasn't perhaps the old buildings and the beautiful scenery but on FOOD! We planned our days around where to eat next and we experienced some wonderful french food from onion soup to rabbit! After being on the road for so long, and after having stopped at most Tim Hortons restaurants along the way between Vancouver and Quebec, REAL french onion soup (not Timmy's version!) tasted soooo good!!!

Our plan leaving Quebec city was to drive around the Gaspesie penninsula which follows the south side of the St Lawrence river and wraps around the river mouth down to the Maritime province of New Brunswick. The region was rated on of the 50 places to see in a lifetime by National Geographic, so we jumped on the opportunity to take a look!

Victoria and the sea

As we already had learned, but which became even more evident during this part of the trip is that we are not travelling during tourist season which has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that there is never any problem to find a hotel or motel that has room available and we rarely book ahead unless we are going to a bigger city. The other side of the coin is that while the hotels might have space, it is dependent on if they are OPEN! In the Gaspesie, we experienced, more than anywhere else, that while there were really nice places to stay, cute roadside cafes and restaurants and interesting shops, they are often closed for the season! More than once did we plan on having lunch at a nice little fish restaurant and ended up yet again at... Tim Hortons because everything was closed. Thank goodness for Tim Hortons!!!

On of our stops in the Gaspesie was Gaspe which is a small but year round open (!!!) town right on the Atlantic sea. The town celebrated its 475th anniversary in 2009 since it was 475 years ago that French explorer Jacques Cartier came ashore and 'claimed' the land by putting a big white cross in the ground.

Victoria and a fishing boat

The journey continued from Gaspesie and soon enough we entered into New Brunswick. Perhaps it was the weather, perhaps the time of the year. New Brunnswick might be a lovely place in the summer, but in mid November with pouring rain, it is not! We only spent one night in the small, industrial town of Dalhousie (reminded Victoria about the industrial area of Eskilstuna) before heading off towards Moncton and the Confederation bridge which connects Prince Edward Island with New Brunswick.

We reached the bridge when it was already dark so unfortunately we didn't see much of it. It is 13 kilometer long and is apparently the "world's longest bridge over icy water".
Once on the island we drove to Charlottetown which is the capital and the major city in this island province.

We found a very nice inn and decided to stay a few nights. P.I island is know for its seafood and especially mussels and clams so we planned on getting a taste of that. The town also (to Robert's delight) has a number of pubs and microbreweries. We also realized most of the downtown area has one way streets. We discovered that by driving down the street and Robert was complaining that everytime he came to an intersection he wasn't sure if he had to stop because he couldn't see any stop signs. It turned out that it would be unnecessary to put the stop signs facing the opposite direction on a one way street. It was quite surprising that 1. we didn't get into an accident. 2. nobody (not even the cars we met on the street) honked or yelled at us for being silly west coast drivers driving against traffic on one way streets! Well, lesson learned and nobody was harmed!

The plan is to go for a small drive around the island today before heading off P.E.I and into Nova Scotia. There is a 190 km loop around the island that is recommended in our tour book that goes through the area where the author of famous books about Anne from Green Gables lived. It could be worth a visit!

P.S Photos will come shortly!!!!! Please check back soon.]]> Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=10182 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=97745 0 46.2333333 -63.1333333 Kingston is located slightly southwest of Ottawa just on the border to the U.S. Robert had been here a few years ago and had good memories of the city but for Victoria it was the first time. Kingston did not disappoint as we found the city wonderfully cute, old, historic and beautiful. As Kingston actually used to be the capital of Canada before the capital was moved to alternate betwen Montreal and Toronto and finally queen Victoria decided that the permanent location would be Ottawa, the town has lots of old historic buildings and landmarks. We walked past the house that used to be the residence of Canada's first prime minister sir John A MacDonald and saw many other beautiful buildings, houses and churches. The weather was beautiful which made the town even more appealing!

We stayed two nights at an inn in a really nice old building, walking distance from the city centre. Our first evening, we explored Kingston's pub life and found a great pub which according to Robert served the best beer he has had so far in Canada. That's no insignificant compliment coming from a guy who loves his beer!

The brewery even had their own car in front.

The following day the sun was shining and we went on to see more of Kingston. We strolled down to the harbour where we found an old locomotive in front of which Robert had to pose:

The view of the docks and the water was amazing:

We went inside the big cathedral which had a nice ceiling:

Most museums were closed for the season, but since Robert has a certain interest for the military and Kingston is the home to the Royal Military College of Canada, we drove out to take a look. Completely open to the public, we were able to walk around on the area and the old buildings which were beautiful. We kind of expected somebody to tell us to keep out, but it seemed to be a regular tourist attraction and nobody said a word about the two strangers strolling around. A guy even asked us for directions as if we looked like we knew what we were doing!!!

Robert was happy to find a tank that he could climb up on (yes, there was a sign saying 'no climbing' but that just made it so much more exciting!)

Yes, Kingston definitely made a good impression on us and we both agree that it's probably the nicest city in Ontario we've seen! We will now head towards Quebec city for more historic sightseeing and hopefully some good food!

]]> Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=10182 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=96179 0 45.4166667 -75.7 Readers of our blog probably wonder where we went and if we have been hibernating in Ottawa for the past ten days. Well, that is almost true, but with a twist.

After we left Ottawa we headed to Montreal for three days. Montreal is only about two hours drive from Ottawa. Much closer than we had realized. Both of us have been to Montreal before, so we knew that we wanted to stay in the old part of town where you can walk down the cobblestone streets and feel like you take a step back in time. We decided to 'splurge' a little and stayed at a very nice hotel right by Place d'Armes. In fact, the hotel was even called 'Place d'Armes'.

The second day was grey and rainy so we decided to go to a museum or do some kind of indoor activity. We went to the 'Biodome' which is an exhibition about eco systems of the world. It was pretty interesting and well done with sections on the tropics (complete with monkeys, exotic birds, anacondas and crocodiles), the arctic (penguins and other funny looking birds), the Ontario nature (otters, ducks and other Canadian animals) and Madagascar (LEMURS!!!).

That evening we went for dinner in the Latin Quarters and unfortunately picked a not so great restaurant among hundreds of excellent ones! Oh well, at least the atmosphere was nice and festive. It was October 31 which means Halloween in North America. Various creative and funny costumes were on display on the sidewalk as people were on their way to different Halloween parties.

Unfortunately, our visit to Montreal became very somber when Robert found out that a friend of his had died in an accident in Africa. Even though the following day was beautiful, and we went for a nice walk, we decided to head back to Ottawa the following day as Robert had decided to travel to Tanzania for the funeral and his flight was leaving from Toronto which is closer to Ottawa than to Montreal. We decided that Victoria would stay with her friend Tony who had offered us to come and stay with him next time we visited Ottawa. He probably didn't think we would be back so soon....

Robert flew to Tanzania that Wednesday and Victoria settled back in Ottawa. Robert will write a bit about his trip in a separate entry to the blog. Victoria spent her time reading, exploring more of Ottawa; swimming, running and going for a hike in Gatineau Park.

After Robert's five day trip (3 days of travel, two days of actually being in Tanzania), he returned last night completely dazed and confused, jetlagged and exhausted and we are using today to rest before we will continue our travels tomorrow. The plan is to go to Kingston which is located slightly south of Ottawa and then continue back into Quebec and towards the Maritimes.
]]> Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=10182 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=95727 0 45.4166667 -75.7 We arrived three days ago and our plan was to stay two nights, but we liked it so much we decided to stay an extra night!

Night at Parliament Hill

The experience of Ottawa has far exceeded both our expectations. Perhaps that's because we actually didn't think much about what the city could be like before we arrived here. Yes, it is the capital and yes, we knew that there would be Parliament Hill, government buildings and museums, but beyond that, we simply didn't know much about the city.

To our surprise we find the city very nice. Perhaps it's because it has a very distinct European feel to it and maybe that stirs emotions of familiarity in both of us? Or perhaps it is the blend of old buildings, nice restuarants, the mix of French and English and a very welcoming atmosphere? Or perhaps, and probably most likely, it is a combination of all those things!

When we arrived at our hotel and checked in, Robert left the car at the curb. While we were standing at reception we saw a parking attendant approach our car. Robert leaped out to avoid getting a ticket, but ready to fight if she had already given him one. There is something about Robert and parking tickets that just do not go together. Sure, nobody likes to get a ticket, but Robert for some reason has stronger than usual negative feelings against parking attendants (and law enforcement in general).

The poor parking attendent was a lady and she handed him a ticket when he approached her. Victoria, from observing from the hotel reception could see the smoke coming out of Robert's ears and thought that 'this is definitely not a good start on our stay in Ottawa...' However, something strange happened after that. Robert's body language displayed that he was upset... but suddenly he reached out and gave the lady a hug!!!! Victoria thought that this might be it.. he has gone completely mad over the rage of a ticket... or he is trying to strangle the poor lady.... It turned out that the parking lady had seen him coming out of the hotel but since she had started to issue the ticket she just finished it by entering $0 where the amount of the fine is usually displayed! Thank goodness!!!

After the little 'incident' that ended well, everything else has been very pleasant. Even though it is almost November and rainy and grey, the city has still managed to make a good impression on us. We have wandered down to Byward Market with excellent resturants and enjoyed good food, wine and desserts! Our visit to Parliament Hill was interesting and informative. Victoria got to see the centre of power in the capital for the first time as a fairly recent Canadian citizen and we went on a good and informative tour of the government building. Unfortunately we didn't get to see the House of Commons and watch the question period with the Prime Minister as they were full for the day. Apparently you can get in by writing to your MP, but we didn't know that beforehand, and Victoria was very embarrassed admitting she isn't even sure who her MP is.....

Parliament buildings

The second day we went to the War museum which was excellent and LARGE. After four hours we started to skip sections to finish. It was very well done and the exhibitions were excellent. It was also very empty. Not many tourists at all which we later understood was due to the fact that part of the museum staff was on strike and encouraged the public not to visit the museum and to not to cross the picket line. Somehow we missed that so we'll just claim ignorance...

Victoria got her swimming itch satisfied by being invited by an old swimming friend of hers from British Columbia who now lives (and swims) in Ottawa. An early 6:30am start and 3,000 meters of really hard swimming has satisfied the swimming need for the next few days!

Victoria and the Rideau Canal

FLAT prarie landscape

So in seven days we have passed through five provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and entered into Ontario) and adjusted our clocks from Pacific Standard Time to Mountain Time to Central Time and now in Ontario we will shortly change them again to Eastern Standard Time. Since our last blog entry we have been through Moose Jaw (Victoria had to stop since she has a couple of friends from there), Regina, Winnipeg(will tell you more about this experience in a minute), Kenora and finally Dryden from where this entry is being written.

Regina is the capital of Saskatchewan and I'm sure there are interesting things to look at. However, we drove in to town late at night and as we have learned by now; the road that leads into a city in Canada looks pretty much the same anywhere with fast food resturants, gas stations and standard hotel chains such as the Travelodge, Super 8, Comfort Inn etc. After some driving around we ended up at the Howard-Johnston.

It is probably worth a paragraph or two in this blog to talk about accomodations. After almost two month on the road, we have seen a variety of motels, hotels, inns and B&Bs. The standard, quality and expectations are usually (but not always) correlated to the price you pay and while we are not on a backpackers' budget, we've been trying to be a little thrify if the place is just somewhere to rest our heads before continuing driving the next day. On occasion we have 'splurged' a little when we find a cute town or place but for this driving portion of the trip, our motto is 'clean and cheap'.

The Howard-Johnston in Regina was 'clean and cheap', but also completely and utterly disorganized. The hotel was under renovations which made part of it look like a construction site and the drilling into walls (it felt like our heads) started somewhere around 7am in the morning. But the alarming part was the staff of the hotel. There were two girls working the front desk and Victoria is usually a very patient customer who rarely complains, but after the check-in procedure took almost half an hour and when we asked for directions and the girls couldn't even point out on a city map where the hotel was located, even Victoria had problems hiding her frustration. That incident, plus some smaller ones, made us not feeling too sad to leave Regina. Sadly so, as the city probably has so much more to offer than the experience of incompetent hotel staff.

Next stop for the evening was Winnipeg, Manitoba. The city is large and we ended up in the middle of downtown. Again, trying to be.. hmm... 'frugal', we found a hotel that looked fantastic on the outside, located in a beautiful building from 1914; the Marlbourough. The rate of a hotel room (about half of the Radisson across the street), should have given us a hint though..... The hotel had a pool, gym, restaurant and breakfast was included in the price which sounded great. Still.... the price should have been the clue....
We were woken up several times during the middle of the night by people in the hallway who after getting completely drunk had forgotten which hotel room they belonged to and decided to let the entire hotel know that they were lost. Strange characters were snooping around the hotel property and Victoria felt so uncomfortable she turned around and went back to the room after an attempt to go to the convenience store. The security guy at the hotel wore a bullet proof west and the place was just seedy.

The next morning we decided to skip the free breakfast in fear of what the restaurant would look like. We decided to give Winnipeg another chance by driving to the Forks which we had heard was a nice part of town. The Forks looks a little bit like Granville island in Vancouver with an open market housed in an old warehouse. It was quite charming and nice and we had breakfast there before going for a walk along the river and crossing over to the French part via Provencher Bridge which is an interesting masterpiece of architecture and engineering.

Robert and the bridge

Provencher Bridge

Leaving Winnipeg behind us, we soon entered into Ontario and drove through the town of Kenora which was a nice little place on a lake. Not being able to find Robert a proper pub, we continued to Dryden where we spent the night before heading towards Thunder Bay.
]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.blogabond.com/TripView.aspx?tripID=10182 http://www.blogabond.com/CommentView.aspx?commentID=93476 0 49.7833333 -92.8333333
We are on the road again! In fact, we have been on the road for four days since we left Vancouver on Friday morning last week. We are now heading east throught this enormous country and our end destination in Canada is Halifax on the Atlantic sea side of the continent.

First, just a couple of things about the blog. As you notice we have started a separate mini blog for this portion of the trip. But since you are reading this you must have found it ok! Secondly, we have realized that it is sometimes difficult to find the time, internet connection etc. to do a proper blog update with pictures and everything. Therefore, we've decided that the posts from this part of the trip might have a little less photos and be shorter, but as we want to keep the blog going, we think that just a paragraph about the place we are currently in would be better than nothing at all... Sometimes you'll just see the name of the town as an 'empty' post but it will allow you to follow our trip on the map on top of the page.

Ok, that's enough for 'admin stuff'. Back to the fun stuff!

Well, we are now in Medicine Hat, Alberta and unfortunately there isn't anything that exciting to write about it. We came in late last night and after trying to find 'downtown' for half an hour we ended up at the first motel we had seen when we entered the city.

It is quite a change in scenery from the eastern part of British Columbia. After leaving Vancouver and driving east we picked a slightly different route than the way we had come back through when driving from Golden. This time we went more south through Manning Park and stopped in Grand Forks, Nelson and then drove through Cranbrook to Kimberley. From Kimberley we passed through Fernie and then entered Alberta.

We had been told that Nelson was going to be a great place so we spent a night there. It is a beautiful spot with mountains, the Kootney lake and a quite little town. However, to find a breakfast restaurant that would serve bacon and eggs was a bit of a challenge. There are tons of places that serve vegetarian and vegan food but for an Englishman, that just won't do! We eventually found a really nice place on the way out of town so Robert's day was saved by a heaping serving of bacon!

Ferry ride across Kootney lake

On the B.C. side, the landscape in the Kootneys is spectacular with the Rockies and the Kootney mountains. However, almost as soon as we entered Alberta everything flattened out. Like, REALLY flattened out. More like a pancake!!! Miles and miles of farmlands! Cows and horses everywhere!

Approaching Lethbridge which is the first major city on the Alberta side it was evident that the city has a past history in the coal mining industry. Hills from the by product of mining greets you when you drive in and some kind of huge bridge that looks like a transportation system for coal can be seen in the distance.

We decided not to stop in Lethbridge and therefore drove another two hours to Medicine Hat. Today we will drive through the rest of southern Alberta and into Saskatchewan. Probably another few hours of flat lands. Robert is still driving and keeps singing to stay awake. Victoria is awake because Robert sings.....

Oh, to end this post, we just want to share a few pictures from the last part of the Arctic trip. Robert finally got his goat (not the way he had hoped for) and Victoria got a kiss from a camel....

Robert got the goat! ...at a petting zoo.....

A Canadian camel....

Victoria and the goat