Ok so I’m writing this at the airport waiting for our flight.....2.5hrs to go. So by the time I upload this we would have arrived in Edinburgh.
Ok so we arrived in Quebec by train and there was about a hour and a half line up to get a taxi....bugger. Then I had a bit of a crafty idea, pick up the free taxi phone and book one that came around to the other side of the train station. We were on our way to our hotel in 10mins.....much better. Well our hotel was a little bit different to all of our other “commercial hotels”, it was more like a huge old French house, like a B&B but without the breakfast.
Day 17
Well when woke up it was off exploring the old town of Quebec. It was a lovely day walking around the old town, we went down to the lower town and strolled through little art galleries, we stopped at a historic house and walked through it. There were some ladies there making lace........no I’m not a huge fan of the stuff but I can tell you now I really do appreciate all the hard work that goes into it. We also saw the first building built in Quebec in 1608 and it is amazing that it is still standing and in good condition. After walking around the lower town in temps of -12 we decided to catch the funicular back up to the upper town (what a view you get from it). Later that night we decided to go tobogganing at the Chateau Frontenac. Now this is old school tobogganing with the wooden sled and ice tracks. It was sooooo cool and the temp was about -16. So we had 4 of us on the sled with a combined weigh of about 350kg (the boys took up most of it) on a sled that flies down an ice track. We hammered down the track and I reckon would have easily reached the “top speed” (according to them) on 70km/h, ok put it this way we ran out of track and ended up pulling up half way up a pile of snow.
Day 18 – New Years Eve
Another day of sleeping in but I guess that is why they invented brunch.....ok maybe lunch. Well we played around in the snow today and didn’t really do that much. We decided to talk a walk up through the New town that night as the celebrations weren’t starting till 11pm. So on the way back we discovered that the square was absolutely packed! And they weren’t letting anyone else into the square. We were going noooo how can this be. Enter our scheming little minds. If we can’t go though one way we’ll try another. Well we didn’t have to try very hard as they had both side entrances closed off but the back street was open so we flowed in with a few hundred people. We ended up losing Phil and Meaghann but met back up with them after the fireworks. It was such a cold wait as we were just standing there for an hour and a bit in -18 weather. And then about 10 mins before the snow started it started to snow it was just perfect! The snow was amazing and we ended up singing a French song (ok so we just had to yell out Quebec! In a song), we had some lovely locals explaining what was going on to us and wondering why we would leave the heat to go there. The fireworks at the end were awesome! Later we found out that there were 50,000 people packed into the square, now that is a lot of French Canadians and a few Aussies.
Day 19 – New Years Day
Another day of travelling only this time we have all of our bags in a camry or maybe that should be Cramry. Ok so we had a bit of a scary trip. When Phil was driving the roads weren’t too bad. But when I got behind the wheel there was a stretch of road (luckily the girls were asleep) where there was high wind and it was snowing........slippery and it takes so much concentration just to drive in the snow. But we arrive in lovely Mont Tremblant safely. So we checked-in to our hotel but we should have gone to another hotel called Les Johannsen.
Day 20
Well today we were up early and enjoying our free breakfast. Straight after lunch we hit the slopes. Katherine and I started on the easiest run to get back into it which also happens to be the longest run at 4km. It didn’t take us long and we had found our ski legs again (although my thighs were killing by the end of the first run). We decided to do a blue run on our third run of the day. Now for anyone who has skied in Australia a Canadian blue run is roughly equivalent to a black run from my experience. So we were quite chuffed about that. We ended up doing mostly blue runs for the rest of the day. We took Phil down the long green run in the afternoon as it was his first time sking and he did really well. Katherine and I did some skiing on the other side of the other side of the mountain as well. Which was quite daunting as we explored, as we sort of got use to the blue runs and we thought we were on our way to one and the mountain just keep on disappearing getting steeper and steeper until finally we stopped. Well we figured we can’t really climb back up the hill and the quickest way off the BLACK run was just to do it. So we did. That’s right we did our first Canadian BLACK RUN!!!!! The rest of the day we chose to stick to blue runs and we were getting pretty good by the end of the day and we were absolutely flying down the mountain carving our way down. For the record I only fell over twice once after I stopped (go figure) and the other was getting off the ski lift where my skis got tangled with someone else’s skis.
Day 21
Well we were on the move again this time to Montreal we were staying with friends of Phils. Ok so we are driving along the busy streets of Montreal where every second street is one-way so it was even confusing for the GPS. We finally found where we were staying only problem, street parking only. If that’s not bad enough every time we found a spot we couldn’t park there because they where ploughing the streets that night. Enter my scheming mind. There just happened to be a piano store round the corner to where we were staying. So I went into the store an spoke to the guy in my best French I knew asking him if we spoke English. He did (1st problem overcome). I then asked him “Mate I need a favour off you” which he responded with “Sorry but I can’t make you a Vegemite sandwich”. So we spoke a bit longer and he let us park the car there overnight for $10 and it was locked up overnight so we could leave most of our bags in the car. This was great but as we learned later it is a bit hard to wash your hair when the shampoo is frozen!
Day 22
On the move again to our final destination....New York City! So we are going to New York but our plane lands in New Jersey the next state over. We arrived, next how the hell do we get there. Enter a rather suspicious guy just hanging around. He turned out to be a limo driver and offered to drive us to our hotel for a small fee of $80 (we figured that it would have costed us that much to get a shuttle bus @ $20pp). He had a big car but not big enough. He had to ocky strap the boot with a really dodgy strap. Everyone had bags on their laps and I had my guitar in the front with me. We were all a bit nervous a we are bouncing along the road and the boot is bouncing along with us. I guess he was a bit nervous too cause he got out at a set of lights and checked that all the bags were there. We arrived safely and so did all of our baggage. We went out that night and walked around a bit. We walked over to build-a-bear where we stuffed our new travel bear Barry Johansen. Also known as Big Ass Barry as none of the shorts will fit him as his ass is too big. We walked down to Times Square had dinner and went back to our hotel for the night.
Day 23
Now to you the words Century 21 might mean real estate but in NY it means SHOPPING BARGINS! So we went downtown to Century 21 which is near the WTC site and shopped and shopped. We then went up to Macys which just happened to be having a One Day Sale and we got some great bargins. I got a new leather jacket which was reduced from $550 (which I would never pay) down to $250 and it is a great jacket. Phil and Meaghan went back out to Newark airport that day as Meaghann accidently left her purse on the plane but thank God it had been found and handed in. We went out for dinner at Applebees and then home again.
Day 24
Late rise means late night. We didn’t really do much during the day as most of it had already gone. We just went down and had a look around Times Square, went to M&M world and Toys’R’Us to name a few. We had to get ready for the 6pm showing of Mary Poppins. That’s right we were off to the theatre. It was great to see such a huge production and massive sets and Mary flying through the air over the audience. After the show we went to Bubba-Gump for dinner and then a nice leisurely stroll back to the hotel where we went to sleep about 2:30am.
Day 25
Well today we went up to Central Park and to the Museum of Natural History where “Night at the Museum” was filmed. It was awesome and we quickly ran around it for 3hrs. The dinosaurs were the best I thought and they have a huge range of animals. Did you know that there is a Indian Lion? Anyway after that we went down to SoHo and had lunch at a little pizza joint which just happened to have won pizza of the year and it certainly deserved it. We then shopped a bit around there and then back up to the hotel to drop off the bags and get ready for the theatre. This time we were seeing Rent. The total other end of the spectrum from Mary Poppins. But it was fantastic and I would highly recommend seeing both of the productions. Rent only had one set and a very small cast of about 12, but boy could they sing. They were very very talented actors and it showed. Well after that we saw a guy busking on the streets with just empty buckets as drums and he was awesome. There were also break-dancers and other people playing saxophones and trumpets.
We got to bed really late that night as we had all of this stuff to pack
Day 26/27 – We spend the night on the plane and there is a 5hour time difference
Ok so we were up pretty early as we had to be checked out @ 10. It seems that for all of our stays we have been trying to get our monies worth and staying at our hotels until the last minute to check out. Well we weren’t leaving NY until 2:30pm so our final sight-seeing and we swore that we wouldn’t buy anything. Well that didn’t last long. On our first stop to Nintendo world Phil got a new DS Lite. Our second stop was build-a-bear where Meaghann bought some new clothes for her bear Harry. Then off to the new Apple store at Central Park were they purchased some speakers for their iPod. Next we went next door to F.A.O. Swartz where they have the have the big piano from the movie BIG. I couldn’t resist and played the Flintstones on it. It was so much fun. We then went past a Lindt shop where I bought some chocolates. We then went back to the hotel and basically had a huge 4WD to drive us to the airport which did fit all of our bags in. I then bought a micro remote control helicopter and Katherine got some duty free.
Well we are now in London and our flight has just been called so I will sign off. I apologies if I have mentioned the word awesome too many times but come on this has been an AWESOME TRIP!!!!!
So from Phil, Meaghann, Katherine, Harry, Barry and I, I bid thee farewell from our Round the World trip for now and I will update you soon on how Edinburgh is going and the job finding and all.
Cheers,
Dan
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