On the road again...

Woke up at 6am this morning after an interesting night’s sleep… the thing about Shannon's room is that there are a lot of bars and things close by, which meant that until about 4am there were drunk people shouting at each other down on the street. Rather frustrating, had time for breakfast though and ate granola and yoghurt as I woke up… good waking up food is granola - lots of chewing involved… the taxi that took me to the bus terminal – weaving its way thru the dark shiny monoliths of a sleeping city – was fast. As it turned out, the bus that I thought I was meant to take at 6.45, was really leaving at 7.30 and wasn’t even a greyhound… *shrugs* from what I can see, this bus is better anyway.

Everyone is sleeping, and I might do the same for a while, but firstly, just a couple more observations on Canadia… one thing is that they have milk in bags. Plastic bags. Never seen it before… interesting… the other thing is that drivers in and around Toronto – from what I’ve seen, really like using their horn… and for no apparent reason. I mean, I can understand that they’re frustrated that they’re Canadian… but I mean… live with it, eh? But seriously, they beep at each other for things that are ridiculous and unavoidable… and they even beep at pedestrians walking across at the lights – nice… here we are walking around outside in ridiculously cold weather, and they’re sitting nice and toasty in their SUV’s… lovely… real nice.

More Later, Sleepy…

Montreal… everything is in French!

A quick note from Montreal

Just thougth i'd write a quick note to let peole know i'm alive. My laptop doesnt like the wireless internet at the hostel, but rest assured i will give a more detailed account at the next opportunity.

Ciao...

Aftermath...

Okay, first… there are several things you don’t want to happen the morning after you’ve had a big night, the first is that you really don’t want to wake up to someone screaming – which is good, cause that didn’t happen. The next worse thing that I can possibly think of is to wake up to someone whistling the 12 days of Christmas – badly – for easily half an hour. I swear there were about 4 months of Christmas instead of just the 12 days. The next worse thing when you’re feeling fairly sick is unidentified cooking smells… Then the lights come on, and then the TV. Then people decide that once you’re up that they don’t want to watch it and they turn it off again. And leave the room.

Awesome.

Then next bad thing that can happen is finding that you’ve injured your self in ways that you aren’t quite clear on… My knees are extremely sore, and I really don’t know why… I’m assuming that I must have fell over on the ice… anyway…

The night was good fun, great to hear the noise of boisterous loud drunken Aussies having fun. We got approached by a group of guys that are part of the local Australian rules footy team, they asked us to play… but they don’t start until like April, so by the time the season starts *shrugs* I guess I might be back at some point… don’t know. Although if I do come back in the summer, Shannon would be gone, so there’d be no real reason to come back to Toronto, as nice a place as it is.

Was cool too, bumped into the couple that I’d sat next to on the plane, had a chat to them for a little while, but it was a little bit uncomfortable, so I left…

And now I just feel hung-over… but I’ll live…

Australia Day Musings;

Sitting in Shannon’s apartment looking out the window, listening to chasing cars by the snow patrol… I can’t normally write blog entries while listening to music, its distracting… but I felt the need to write… so here I am. One advantage of touch typing is that I can actually sit and look out the window as I type, not having to look at the screen, letting my mind wander and ponder the words of this song… looking at a city that’s virtually learned to live thru the cold… again, it was minus 15 as I walked here this morning and its so cold that my gloves don’t work and my fingers ache… and the breath coming thru my scarf wrapped around my face freezes on the outside. Then when you get inside it feels like your fingers are in vices as they de frost… its an odd feeling… reminds me of scraping the ice out of the old freezer at home and then putting my hands in the sink with hot water in it.

So its Australia day pre party, and I’m really looking forward to it, still deciding which T-shirt to wear.. the one that says “Fcuk down under” or the one that says “No Fcuking worries” I think it’ll be the latter… its nice to try to fool people (of course I have worries – who doesn’t?). I’ve done my bit so far and had some vegemite on toast… drinking beer will be later!

Here’s an observation for you, and a warning if you are ever planning on coming up here, forget driving on the other side of the road, this is much more important… people walk past each other on the right too… its keep right all the way here… trying to walk past someone on the left gets you funny looks… I feel like I need a T-shirt saying “Sorry – I’m Australian; We hang to the left…”

Another observation – snow does 2 interesting things that I’ve seen… sometime it goes up. Which is quite cool… Also the temperature actually goes up when it starts snowing. So its lucky its snowing now and I don’t have my long johns on cause I had to wash them… but its not so cold now, so its okay… only other thing about snow is that it stings when it gets you in the eye…

I’m just doing a final load of laundry before I go on Sunday on my little trip. Thinking of going down the street to see if I can find a nice outfit for “Going Out” all of my stuff is pretty casual, I do have a couple of shirts, but all I really have is jeans, and *shrugs* I don’t know why I need to tell you this… so I’ll shut up now.

I’ll tell you more tomorrow when I’ve recovered from tonight…



Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation. - Kin Hubbard

Considering... ?

It’s -15C outside… I have to walk to Shannon’s place at some point this morning to have a shower, then I wanted to go into town. But its minus fifteen degrees out there… that’s just not sensible. You have to think that whoever settled Canada must have got here after a particularly mild winter and had made enough headway by the following winter that there was no turning back. You just don’t build cities where it gets this friggin cold, this be hibernating weather…

Yesterday I woke up at my current standard time of nearly midday. Which corresponds directly to 2 things, the first that my current standard time that I'm going to bed is somewhere between 2 and 3am, and the second being that I have no particular reason to get up any earlier most days. Today however I am up at 10am. A much more reasonable hour, and having said that, if it was Sunday, I would have already missed my bus. I’m going to have to set an alarm… someone remind me… anyway, all the plans are looking good, and I only have one gripe to voice, and that is directed at the greyhound bus company – both US and Canadian sides of the border… it seems that there is no easy way to buy a bus ticket that takes you across the border. All other tickets can be purchased either on line or in person at another bust terminal, but if you want, for example, to purchase a ticket from Montreal, to Boston, as I do, there are some limitations. Well, really, there’s only the one limitation, and that is that you can’t buy it from anywhere but the Montreal Bus terminal. Which unfortunately forgoes the chance of getting the cheaper fare and saving myself $25. On top of that, when I tried to buy the ticket at the Toronto bus terminal, all they said is “no, we can’t do that here” further information was not forthcoming as to HOW or WHERE I could actually buy the ticket, calling the greyhound company directly to try to buy the ticket over the phone, I found out that apparently the US side of the company can’t process international credit cards. Which I find odd, having bought all my tickets that way so far… but “Maybe the Canadians can help you”. Maybe not…

On other news… ah… yeah… well… um… the latest album by “The Shins” is pretty good… I like it anyway… that’s about it… been pretty quiet…

I need a shower

Leaving Me Tour My Own Devices…

So I’ve finally decided to throw myself off the deep end and dip my toe into the world of the Hostel. Now, I’ve seen the movie… I’m hoping its NOTHING like that… Torture and hacking off of limbs isn’t really my cup of tea. Cheers anyway, no, really, its alright, I had something before I left… but it promises to be a lot of fun, no doubt I will keep you informed along the way, and probably before then too, but *shrugs* it just popped into my head that I probably should see more of the area so my plans are as follows:

I leave on the 28th of January for Montreal, on the Greyhound, 3 nights there, then to Boston for another 3 nights, 4 nights in NYC – time to see the sights and also catch an Ice hockey game between the NY Rangers and the Detroit Redwings. That should be a Hoot. Especially when I don’t care who wins or looses. Always a good thing for me to not be TOO involved in the game – unless I’m painting my face that is… then its okay. After that I’m heading to Washington for another 3 night stay, and then up to Philadelphia for 1 night before stopping (fortuitously enough; just before valentines day) in Ithaca for a bit… again, not sure how long, or what the plans are there, but it will be good to see Amber again… of course… Then depending… I might head down to Florida for a week and meet up with my friend down there, see Disney world or land or whatever the one is that’s this side of the continent… I have to see "the keys" apparently too… may involve hiring a car *rolls eyes* its going to be an expensive month… you only live once...

So today was spent lounging around doing very little until I decided on my trip, then it was spent booking hostels online, checking bus timetables, and planning my day tomorrow. I need to buy my bus tickets from the depot itself, then I want to get a little tripod for my camera… taking photos at night time is turning out to be more than the built in image stabilizer can handle… I also need to work out what I’m going to take… I need to pack warm but light… *Shrugs* will check out the travel stores and see if anything jumps out at me... as things tend to at that kind of shop... oh well...




Never go out to meet trouble. If you will just sit still, nine cases out of ten someone will intercept it before it reaches you. - Calvin Coolidge

Oh yeah...

Forgot to mention that I got accepted into uni... So, I've deferred until '08 and will spend the next year deciding whether or not I go to school in Adelaide, or if I can find something in the UK. Will wait and see!


"I wanna hang a map of the world in my house. Then I'm gonna put pins into all the locations that I've traveled to. But first, I'm gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won't fall down." - Mitch Hedberg

A Brewery Tour, a Movie and Aussies on Ice

Yesterday was a good day… it started late, when I woke up around 11.30 (coincidentally about the same time as I’ve woken up today) and we sat around the house until about 2. Chatting to Amber and Mum at different times. Then Shannon and I went back to his place… not sure what we did, but we left there at about 4 heading in the general direction of where Shannon thought he had heard the brewery might be. Roughly.

So we took a street car (tram) most of the way and disembarked at the furthest part of the loop and started walking. Funny enough, we turned a corner and bumped into the travel shop that Shannon needed to find to change his ticket. We had time, so we went in and after they decided they didn’t know what they were doing and took Shannon’s number, we JUST had time to get to the brewery for the tour.

The tour was good. First thing they did was give us a beer, that was actually also the second thing they did, which no one complained about. The tour itself was shortish, but good, having seen other brewery tours I guess I knew most of the technical side of how beer is made – not to mention that we went thru the process in the bar course I did. So what I found the most interesting was the history of the building itself, which was an old train yard, and in the early 90s the neighboring exhibition center wanted more parking space – the city wouldn’t let them knock down the building and put up a multi-storey car park, so they pulled the building down, dug down 14 stories for car parking, and then put the building back together on top. Crazy. Anyway, after the tour, we got another beer, and a 6pack of their beer to go. Each. As we were walking down the street Shannon slipped and fell on his beer, which broke… but from there we found some more ice and slipped around deliberately. That was hilarious… great fun…

After that we went and saw the movie The Good Shepherd. Really good… then we went to a bar and met a couple of Sarah’s friends… but I had a bit of a headache. No actually, it was a really bad headache… but it was a fun night. And as we left it started snowing lightly, which was really pretty. But needless to say I slept well last night…

Today I have to do laundry.

Niagara Falls And A Biscuit

So… I’ve partaken in my first real touristy adventure so far in that I’ve visited a renowned tourist attraction. Niagara Falls is, as most of you would know pretty much on the border between the US and Canadia, so on Saturday on the way up to Toronto, Amber and I decided that it would be cool to go and have a squiz.

We left at about 10 am from Ithaca and arrived at about 1ish at Niagara, as we were hungry and Amber knew that I had been wanting to try an American biscuit, we stopped at a restaurant chain called Bob Horton’s (I think that’s what its called) which Amber informed me has awesome biscuits, and she hadn’t been to in ages cause they don’t have them in Jersey. ANYWAY, there we stopped, and got our breakfast/lunch. Amber ordered a biscuit and something called Grits; which turned out to look like couscous or rice pudding, and taste like porridge… and I ordered a biscuit meal (consisting of a biscuit with eggs and a white gravy and a massive side of “home fries”) AND because they looked good, I was hungry, and I didn’t know the size of the meals, I also ordered a tasty looking pancake with apples and cream cheese filling… *coughs* both of my meals were HUGE… The Biscuit turned out to be something like a savory scone (that’s the best description I have of it) smothered in scrambled eggs and a whitish gravy/sauce that is beyond description (mostly because it had very little flavor). Home fries for those of you wondering – are like potato chips except cut into squares a couple of centimeters across, and then fried I guess… REAL healthy. Then the pancakes came out and they were a good 20cm across, 2 of them with cream, apples, caramel, and this vanilla cream cheese between them… I nearly couldn’t finish. But I did, much to Amber’s surprise.

From the diner we asked directions to the Falls, because strangely enough as you drive into Niagara there are very few signs or directions on how to get there. I guess when you’re a town with such a famous attraction; you don’t ONLY want to be known for that one thing…? After all, they have massive casinos and hotels too… and a thriving ghetto community (according to the girl at the restaurant who apologized for the fact that we’d have to drive thru it on the way to the falls – which we thought was quite funny)

We parked maybe 30 minutes walk from the Falls and trudged thru the reasonably fresh snow and ice to the falls, when we got there I went to get my camera out and realized that I’d left my memory card in the laptop when I was last transferring photos across. So we made do with Amber’s camera and got a couple of decent photos. But then we saw that there was a free car park right at the falls, so we decided to go get the car and drive back and take some photos with my big camera. Amber being Amber was more than accommodating and sympathetic to me for forgetting my memory card… but we won’t dwell on how great she is…

Anyway, since we’ve been in Toronto, we’ve been to the art gallery to see an exhibition of photos by Ansel Adams and some other guy that I can’t pronounce or spell his name. That was very interesting, some great photos, a lot of photos that were very familiar and have obviously been around for a very long time. And that is about it… On Amber’s last night in town, we went out to dinner at a restaurant called the Keg, which was a massive, beautiful mansion which served possibly the best meal I have eaten in ages, amazing. Great service, awesome wine, fantastic steak and mouth watering deserts… was a really nice night.

Since then… I’ve wandered around Toronto a bit… its VERY cold at the moment; the last few days have been around the -14 to -6C range… which Is interesting. It’s a strange feeling being so cold that your face is actually aching. I think I’m wearing nearly everything I brought with me clothes wise…

Talk to you all later.




If someone wants a sheep, then that means that they exist
-Antoine De Saint-Exupery

My second coffee and some snow…

I’m sitting in a little place called Collegetown bagels; I’ve just had my first not plain bagel – a pesto bagel covered in pizza topping. Great… my first coffee was a cappuccino, which was mostly foam, and what wasn’t foam was bad coffee… I’m hoping that my second coffee – a vanilla latte/cappuccino… (They got it wrong) will be better… I’ve also got a maple glazed donut. Just for something different… I’m currently sitting, facing the window at counter on a stool… watching light snow drift thru the air like heavy dandruff. It’s just starting to settle on the pavement, not much, but enough to see where it’s been… mmm… the second coffee is slightly vanilla flavored bad coffee… *shrugs* oh well… you can’t win them all… the donut is good. Now the sun is out, and I’m contemplating what I can do for the rest of the day…

New York, New York, New Years...

We left for new York city at about 3.30 on a bus that was mostly full… we all had to sit separately, and my seating partner was a massive black man who didn’t want to share and was spread out fairly well over the whole of both seats. So I sat right on the front edge of my seat and talked to Amber until we got to Newark airport and a few of the seats freed up so we got to sit together for the last 20 minutes of the trip… Coming into New York City was interesting; I don’t think maybe, it was just the fact that it was dusk and overcast… I don’t know… but it didn’t’ look really as big as I’d imagined it. Perspective is everything I guess. But we got in and the first thing that hit me as we squeezed thru the thronging masses was – strangely enough – how many people were there. And how many people actually spent money on stupid looking 2007 flashing glasses…

The forecast was rain, and it was pretty cold, but not too bad… we found a place to eat which was really nice, went upstairs and ordered a really nice bottle of Australian red wine, I had my second American steak… which as Amber has always told me, was very nice… I don’t know if it was THAT much better than how they do them in Australia, but it was bloody good. Then we headed downstairs and had a couple of drinks at the bar, which was quite nice…

Moving on we found a smallish bar a little way up the street that was interesting, we sat down and they had like really old books surrounding us, so we all grabbed a couple of books and had a look at them for a bit as we drank our assorted alcohols… after that we walked maybe 100 meters up the road and saw a sign that said “house of brews” we went up and it said that they have over 80 beers in stock, which for us was enough to go inside. As we walked thru the door we had just seen the sigh that said they have coopers pale, and we were all cheering, literally, the whole of the bar turned to look… we were like, ah, it’s okay, they have coopers *grin* .when I told the waitress that we were from the city that coopers is from, she said we weren’t allowed to have that then and we had to try something else. We were too drunk at that point to argue too much… well, not really that drunk, but… you know… she was hot… that was at about 10.30pm, and we had like a booth thing, and a big TV to watch the ball drop, so we decided to stay. It turned out to be a great little bar, and I would definitely say so far that its my favorite place so far in New York… to be fair, its out of 3; so… we’ll see next time if I find something else… we had an interesting guy come join us at one point… he was a pianist from Kentucky… first time in New York, very chatty, and he’d been drinking for the last 2 days or so… but, yeah, great guy, lots to say… lots of hand shaking and asking the same questions over and over… and he asked Sarah if she wanted to go home with him… but over all, he was harmless and quite funny…

The countdown was fun… we had hats. Of course Shannon and I, being our fathers sons, have big heads, so they didn’t fit very well. But they were there. We had noise makers too… but yeah, more stuff happened, but nothing so interesting that I can be bothered writing about… we left the bar at about 3.45am, at a guess… it was raining… we wandered relatively aimlessly for a while until someone suggested that we find the Rockefeller centre, which we walked past several times before realizing that they had turned the lights off of the big tree that everyone had been looking for… so then, still damp and frustrated by the blusteryness of the wind and the smallness of the umbrella handle, we walked in search of something open to eat in or have a coffee at… unfortunately we walked into the first place that was open. It was terrible, from the food, to the service to the looks we got when amber asked if she could pay by travelers cheque… rude, dirty and nasty… so that left me with a bad taste in my mouth, literally and figuratively… and we left for the bus terminal and had to wait about 2 hours before the bus was due to get in… Shannon and Sarah joined the many people trying to get some sleep on the hard tile floor, and I think I fell asleep several times while I was standing up… eventually I sat down when the bone aching weariness was too much to bear, and within about 3 minutes of my eyes closing a couple of police men walked thru telling everyone to stand up and kicking (gently of course) those that were too asleep to wake up straight away. I was up and on my feet at the first sound of a voice of authority, although it may have been 5 minutes before I actually realized that I was standing up and had taken stock of my surroundings…

The bus trip back was better… we all slept… then we got home and we all slept some more, we in at about 10.30, woke up at about 7, and then went back to sleep until about 10 the next morning… its amazing how much sleep you need to catch up on one night without any…

Right now, I am sitting in a mall in Ithaca NY, the first place I’ve found that I’ve been able to get internet so far on my trip, apart from a park bench outside the Toronto university library… about a week has passed, its been fun but relatively uneventful… if anything exciting happens, I’ll be sure to let you know… next weekend we’re planning on heading up to Toronto for the weekend… *shrugs* that’s all for now…

It’s about 5 or 6C outside, and it’s meant to snow, so I might head out into it and see what happens…

Bus Trips, Beer Pong, and Driving on the Wrong side of the road...

So, this is written a week after the fact, so I may or may not remember everything that’s happened over that time… I have taken some notes so… we shall see…

The Bus trip from Toronto to Rochester was interesting… the first bus driver was rude, but when we swapped busses in Buffalo the bus driver was fantastic, really nice, made jokes about his Aussies, and asked where our crocodile pants and knives were… but then had his ear chewed off for the ENTIRE trip by an American lady with an extremely annoying nasal droning voice, who talked about her family, her job, etc, the whole way there. The bus driver was amazingly patient; I on the other hand made use of my noise canceling head phones…

Our last night in Rochester we went to a party hosted by one of Sarah’s friends, we took a bottle of cheap champagne each, which made it a lot of fun…. When we were ready for another drink though, we were told that we couldn’t… so, eventually we made our way back to Sarah’s place, picking up a half carton of beer on the way, and I had my first game of beer-pong… THAT was fun… *grins*

So, I’ve now hired and driven a car in the US… and apart from turning the windscreen wipers on instead of indicating a fair bit… I think I did fairly well… I didn’t crash, and I got everyone from Rochester NY to Allentown PA safe and sound. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Driving on the other side of the car is interesting… working out that the majority of the car is on the right hand side of me instead of the left was probably the hardest part, turning and making sure that I didn’t take out my passenger side… a little bit disconcerting, but all good… We got to the airport and waited a little while while amber found the right entrance and stopped circling… and then drove the 40 minutes or so back to her place…

Amber’s parents are Great, and her sister was nice too… very teenager, but very much like her sister… who, of course, is great also... Amber’s parents did everything to make us feel comfortable and at home… Their house is gorgeous… and the power only went off once…

We did a lot of sleeping and eating, watched a few movies, and generally relaxed… so that was good…

Time for a new heading…