The City part of my great Canadian/US road trip.
Thanksgiving
I celebrated my first Canadian Thanksgiving on the weekend 9/10/11th October in Stoney Plain just outside of Edmonton. On Saturday we went into Edmonton and did some shopping and errands- yes, we went to West Edmonton Mall, the largest mall in the northern hemisphere on a saturday, on thanksgiving long weekend, probably the busiest time of year after Christmas. Sunday we went to church and dinner with Becky's extended family. Kind of like Christmas without the presents, Thanksgiving dinner involves Turkey, stuffing, pumpkin, ham, salads, pumpkin and pumpkin pie for desert! Sunday we had another dinner at another Frontier family's place as well as a hay ride of their family's farm- as awesome way to spend my last day in Alberta for a while.
The journey begins....
I flew from Edmonton to Toronto early on Tuesday morning (12th), and Ros and Adrien picked me up from the airport. Amadeus (thats the car....) was still being having a bit of TLC, so they caught a train and 2 buses to come get me. To get back to where they (and now me) were staying, we caught a bus and subway to Union Station in downtown Toronto, walked through the city a bit, past the CN tower (getting funny looks for walking through the city with my backpack...) and then caught another train out to Burlington, south-ish of Toronto.
Wednesday we rode bikes into the nearest town, Waterdown and to Grindstone Falls, with awesome fall colours. Thursday we picked up the car, packed him up, and rolled out to Montreal.
A brief interlude here for Part 1 of car stories.....
Ros and Mars borrowed the car from Ronny, the site manager at Camp, and I am driving it back. They drove it through the States to Toronto, and had some troubles with it on the way over. Amadeus ended up needing a new engine, or I would have to buy a new one or rent something to do my trip. The new engine was the cheaper
option, and so that was done in the beginning of the October.
The Land of the French
Because the province of Quebec is primarily French speaking, the rest of Canada is bilingual when it come to signs, government stuff and
packaging. It strikes me as odd, and probably a little bit arrogant then, when all of those things in Quebec are only in French! This makes things a bit difficult when nobody that you are travelling with speaks any French what so ever! Oh well, just adds to the adventure. However, we discovered that most people speak fairly passable, or good, english and the french words for key things are fairly easy to figure out.
With Montreal
came rain. A tight schedule this week means that we really only had one full day in Montreal, and it rained ALL day Friday. Ever the fearless campers we set off to explore the city in the rain. We walked into the downtown area from our hostel and attempted to do a Lonely Planet walking tour. Sadly, we had to admit defeat by the weather and went to hide in a coffee shop to warm up and have lunch. We watched the people go by and saw several umbrellas be destroyed in the wild weather! After lunch we braved the
weather again, and went to the Notre Dame cathedral. It was incredible! Pretty much all of the interior is made of wood, but is all painted, so detailed and beautiful! Thankfully Saturday dawned overcast, but not rainy. We took advantage of this and went to Mount Royal, which is in the centre of the city, with great views. Again, beautiful fall colours, along with a huge group of joggers, cyclists and cross country skiers in training. We also went back into the downtown area and saw the sights that we missed the day before. Montreal seems very European and has these really cute houses with flights of stairs from the second floor down to the foot path! Saturday afternoon we moved on to Quebec City. Saturday night is Hockey night so we watched a game in the hostel. On Sunday morning we found an english speaking church, and walked around the old part of the city, highlights being the Citadel and the Battlefields Park where the English defeated the French.
The alter of Notre Dame.
The Land of the States United
Monday we crossed the boarder into the States into Vermont. This was pretty easy, I just had to pay $6 for a little green piece of paper in my Passport that lets me go in and out as many times as I like for 3 months. We drove through Vermont, with amazing fall colours all around, and into New Hampshire. Ronny had told us about a camp that he and his family worked at a few years ago, and that we would probably be able to stay there. We got in contact with them and they were ha
ppy to have us stay! We went for a walk on the trails at the camp- 4 Aussies scuffing their way through fallen leaves! We were planning to pitch our tents, but we ended up rolling out our mats in the reception area because it was cold. The staff started work at 8, so we packed up and left soon after 8 for Boston. In Boston we followed the Freedom Trail, which takes you to all the historical places in the city that played a roll in the beginning of the American Revolution. We camped that night in a RV park south of the city- where everybody thought we were crazy for sleeping in tents!
New York was next and we stayed across the river in Jersey City- much cheaper! Again we camped in an RV park- where the people thought we were crazy. We got there on Wednesday afternoon, and went into the city in the evening to see Chris- who is my second cousin.
He said we was busy, but agreed to meet us for something to eat. Our bus into the city was running late, due to traffic- no surprise really in NYC, so we ended up having only about half an hour to see him. Busyness I guess is relative- to us it would mean I could give you a couple of hours, but I guess to someone who lives, studies and works in NYC, busy really is busy!
After meeting Chris, we walked down the road to Time Square. A Wednesday night and it was still extremely busy- I’d hate to be there on a weekend! We even saw a bride and groom on the way there!
Thursday we spent in the ‘Midtown area’, went to the top of the Empire State Building- (you can see all of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island, although it wasn’t a very clear day), Grand Central Station, walked down 5th Avenue past all the fancy shops, the Rockafella Centre and some of Central Park. On Friday we went to the ‘Downtown’ area, the world trade centre site, caught the free ferry across to Staten Island to get a good view of the Statue of Liberty (and back again, not really much to see on the island, just a suburb). You have to book way in advance to be able to go up the statue, and the free ferry gives just as good a view of her as the tourist ferry does! We then went to Wall Street and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge late in the afternoon, saw the sunset behind Manhattan, and took some photos of the city at night! The world trade centre site was really interesting, the area is still a big construction site. On the place where the twin towers stood, they are building 2 big pools/water features to serve as memorials and a museum kind of in between them. They are also building 1 world trade centre building. The whole thing is scheduled to be ready for the 10 yr anniversary next year. We visited a preview to the museum, with a couple of videos, lots of pictures etc. We also went to St Paul’s cathedral which is where volunteers provided food and beds etc for the rescue workers/clean up people for 9 months after it happened. The church is now more of a museum rather than a church. Quite moving stuff.
After 5 months in Nordegg, a week in big cities is definitely enough!! Can't wait for the next part of the trip which involves heading west through the States, and a possible 15 national parks!
We drove back to Canada on Saturday and stayed with the Dokters in Waterdown, just near Burlington. Ros and Mars lived with their daughter, Jen, in perth, whose Mars’s brother just got engaged to. I took Ros and Adrien to the airport on Monday night for their flight back home to Perth.
Part 2 of the car stories.....
Amadeus was leaking oil and overheating. So, back to the place that did the work in the first place to get them to fix it. Thankfully, Ronny is a real blessing and grew up in this area, so he knows people! A friend of his and his cousin have both in involved with fixing the car for us.
Check out the route here!
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