Last day

Our flight departs in 12 hours, so the countdown is about to begin. All that's needed is one final pack of the suitcases, including a 3rd that has been added so we can fit in all the stuff we bought! :P

Yesterday we went and saw Shrek the Third. It wasn't exactly "fantastic" or anything, but it wasn't bad. Probably around on par with the first couple.

Last night we did one final trip to Costco, basically to pick up some more alcohol to take home :P
I bought one of these bottles of Belvedere vodka - it doesn't look it, but those are 1.75l bottles! :D

As we left we picked up dinner from - of course - Costco. They sell a couple of takeaway items, including 18" pizzas for only $10.


We land at 6am Brisbane time, so I'm hoping I can sleep on the plane tonight, otherwise Friday will be really tough. The flight leaves LAX at 11:20, and the last few nights I've been dead tired by then (my body still seems to be on Eastern time, 3 hours ahead of LA), so I'm half confident I'll sleep.

Today all we want to do (other than pack) is go to the supermarket for a couple of things, including more Ben & Jerry's Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream ice cream. Pity we can't take some home with us :(

I've uploaded the last of the photos, and didn't realise I hadn't linked to the last few yet, so here's everything else I haven't posted links to.

Mont Royal looking over Montreal:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/MontRoyal

Ottawa:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/Ottawa

Toronto:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/Toronto

Niagara Falls:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/Niagara Falls

Chicago:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/Chicago

So until we get home, that's all, folks!

Resting in Los Angeles

We're back in LA again for a few days of nothing much until we fly out on Wednesday night.

Chicago was nice, if a little rushed.

The weather was against us on Saturday. We had planned on going up the Sears Tower, but it was in the clouds and they were telling everyone that visibility was "Zero". So we had a quick change of plans and headed to an architectural boat tour that we were planning on doing Sunday morning. Despite the weather, they were almost completely booked out, but we got tickets for the 1:30 tour, which left us about an hour or so to pass. The tour was better than we thought, and gives a thorough background of almost every building on the Chicago skyline. It drizzled a little during the tour, but not enough to actually make anything wet.

We'd bought tickets to the White Sox game that night, but were a little concerned about the weather. The website said nothing about the possibilities of the game being cancelled, so we hopped on the subway and headed to the game. We were in the process of finding the Will Call window to pick up the tickets when they announced that it was cancelled! :(

So we headed back towards the hotel, but in the end went to Pizzeria Uno for a (second) Chicago-style pizza :) We'd been to Pizzeria Due (same place, just on the next block) the night before and loved it that much that we wanted to go again. Unfortunately a lot of other people had the same idea - there were many people waiting there with White Sox gear on. In the end we waited over an hour in light rain just to get a table. Yes, the pizzas are that good! :D

Yesterday the inclement weather had passed and we woke to brilliant blue skies. So after grabbing breakfast we headed straight to the Sears Tower. It took almost an hour to get to the Skydeck - again, a lot of other people had the same idea as us. The view was incredible and we could see almost all the way to the horizon. It was very busy, though, so we didn't stay overly long, plus we were getting close to running late getting to the airport. We caught the subway back to the airport, but not without another encounter with one of Chicago's many homeless people.

The flight back was uneventful, other than being too short - Em and I were both engrossed in tv shows on the flight and missed the end of them when we landed :(

So all the real sightseeing portion of our trip is now behind us, and we've got a few quiet days ahead of us. All we really want to do before we leave is a little bit more shopping, and maybe go see Shrek The Third.

So I'll probably not have much else to say on here, baring another brush with fame or something :)

Or I guess if I upload the last of the photos...

Back in the US of A

Sorry for the lack of updates lately - we had some fairly average internet in the hotel in Toronto (it'd connect but barely anything loaded), and then no internet at Niagara Falls.

We crossed the border at Niagara this morning, dropped the hire car off at Buffalo airport, and then flew to Chicago. We're now in the hotel room in Chicago, overlooking the river and Wacker Drive. :D

I might try and get some photos up tonight and talk a little about the last few days. I'll see how things go - it's almost 7pm already and we've barely seen any of the city yet so we might go for a wander to find dinner.

So watch for more updates in the next few hours. :)

Ottawa

We've been in Ottawa for a little over a day now. It's more like what I expected Canada to be - a bit hilly, clean, and VERY green.

The Tulip Festival is on at the moment, so there's tulips everywhere. Plus, today is Victoria Day, so the parks and tourist spots were extra busy with people enjoying the sun on their day off. We ended up at Parliament House just before midday, and came across about 2 dozen soldiers and 4 big artillery guns just beside the Centre Block. After asking at the information tent we found they were doing a 21 gun salute at midday for Victoria Day, so we hung around to watch that. They weren't quite as loud as I thought they would be (considering they shoot maybe 5" shells!) but they were still loud enough to echo around the city and leave pretty much every single young child in tears.

We couldn't do a guided tour of Parliament, so we just wandered around the grounds for a while and admired the view before continuing on through the city. It's such a lovely city to look at that we spent most of the afternoon just admiring the views. We went into the mint, but as with Parliament we couldn't do a tour, so we just checked out the gift shop and a couple of little exhibits they have.

It's going to be a shame to leave tomorrow. I'm sure Toronto couldn't be as nice as Ottawa is. It's a bit of a drive to Toronto - at least 4 hours, probably closer to 5 - so we're not going to be able to hang around too long tomorrow before heading off.

Montreal

Today we caught the Metro towards the centre of Montreal, and then followed the underground tunnels through part of the city. It really is an underground city - shopping malls 2 and 3 floors high, all underground. There's buildings above it all, but it seems they're gradually building more underneath it all. It wasn't so necessary today in the 20C sunny weather we had, but it does mean you don't have to dodge traffic all the time.

When we did surface we wondered where all the people were - it was like a ghost town. We finally managed to find some when we got to Basilica Notre Dame. After checking it out, we wandered through Old Montreal and then sort of stumbled across the waterfront. This was where all the people were! It seemed like everyone had come out to enjoy the sun and warmer weather, be it on foot, on rollerblades, bikes of various shapes and sizes, or just sunbaking on the grass.

Then we saw a guy go flying by on a Segway! He had a shirt on that suggested there was a rental place for them somewhere, so we immediately went on search to find it....

And find it we did :)

Here's the result:


They are amazingly simple to ride. To go forward or backwards you basically have to think about moving, and voila! Em and I are totally hooked, and if they didn't cost $8000 Australian, we'd be totally sold on them.

After we gave the Segways back (and came to terms with having to move our legs to move again) we walked back to the nearest Metro station and headed over to Ile St Helene (St Helen's Island) to check out the Biosphere. It is impressively huge. I don't know if the photos will do it justice - it's 62 metres high, so probably 10 or 12 floors tall.

Here's all the photos from the day:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/Montreal

Tonight for dinner we just had to try Montreal's specialty, Poutine. It's french fries and cheese curds covered in hot gravy. As a friend of a friend described it "it's 0% healthy and 100% fat". It was quite filling, and neither Em nor myself managed to finish it off.

This is what it looked like:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/Poutine

It's quite strange here being so far north. It's after 9pm and there's still a little bit of light left in the sky. Not much, mind you, but more than there'd ever be at this time of night in Brisbane. It's making it hard to get to bed at a decent hour when the sun doesn't actually set till about 8pm.

Tomorrow we're going to drive up Mont Royal and have one final look at the city before we head on to Ottawa. It's only a little over 2 hours drive, so it will be our shortest leg of the trip so far.

Bienvenue au Canada!

We've made it across the border to Canada! :D

Crossing the border was much simpler than I thought, so the trip today was mostly uneventful, other than when we came across a deer standing in the middle of the interstate.

The last few days were pretty good. On Wednesday we went to walk the Freedom Trail, but ended up on a guided tour. It was well worth the $12 each. We only saw about half the trail, but instead we had a guide (dressed completely in clothes of the time as you'll see in the photo) who was awesome! He told many stories about the trail and the events that happened along it, but was very entertaining in the process.

After the trail tour, we ended up at an "Authentic Replica" of the Cheers bar for lunch, then walked back to the hotel. We were only back 5 minutes when a decent sized storm arrived. Since then it's been quite cold here - the lowest was 4C this morning, and the highest has been about 15C I think. It's not cold to the locals (we've seen people in shorts!) but to us Queenslanders it might as well be snowing! :P

Yesterday we picked up the next hire car and drove to Salem. It's a picturesque little town with a lot of references to the witch trials of the 1600's. We checked out the Salem Witch Museum before heading towards Canada.

We stopped in Burlington, Vermont, last night just to break the trip up and have a quiet night for a change. Burlington is the hom of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, so of course we had to sample that this morning before we left town :)

We haven't seen much of Montreal yet. We went for a short walk this afternoon to find somewhere for dinner, but decided to have a night in to plan the next few days.

I uploaded photos last night from the last few days. They are...

The Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Downtown Manhattan:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/DowntownNewYork


Sunset from the top of the Empire State Building:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/EmpireStateBuilding

Boston including the Freedom Trail:
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/Boston

I don't think I've taken any photos since. So for now we're all up to date, but that will change as of tomorrow! :)

Boston

We made it safe and sound to Boston, after struggling to stay awake on the train here. The Amtrak trains are so quite and smooth and the seats are so huge that it's not hard to get comfy enough to catch up on some much-needed sleep.

We got into Boston a little after 3pm, picked up a small guide book at the train terminal, and got a cab to the hotel. We asked the cabby what our chances would be of getting tickets to the Red Sox game tonight. He said we'd likely have no chance at all, so we decided we'd find a sports bar somewhere to watch the game instead. When we got to the hotel though, I jumped on the wireless and checked the site and found 2 tickets! So about an hour after getting into town we were on our way to Fenway Park!

Here's the photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/aaron77/BostonRedSox

I also got a little bit of video, which was perfectly timed for (I think) Ortiz to hit a double:


Unfortunately, Boston went down 7-2 to the Detroit Tigers, so it wasn't quite the night it might have been. I think I have some bad luck for sporting teams - last trip I went to see the Carolina Hurricanes while they were on a 9-game winning streak and they got flogged 9-0! :(

So if I come to your town, don't let me go watch your sporting team!

Tomorrow I think we're going to walk the Freedom Trail around the city. We only really have tomorrow here, and I think that will be the best way to see the city.

At least my legs had a nice rest today from all this walking!