Flying High
Today was one of the highlights of this trip: helicopter flight over Niagara Falls! We left early, picked up our rental car and drove from Toronto to Niagara Falls. For those who don’t know, it’s actually a township, not just the falls. The falls were great, but they weren’t as large as I was expecting – probably because the footpath was level with the top of the falls. A bit sad that it was cloudy and raining on and off, but the helicopter ride definitely cheered me up!
We drove out to the airport, bought our tickets and waited for the helicopter to come back from its current flight and take us up in the air! I’ve never been in a helicopter before and it was very exciting! We flew down over the river and over the falls. The pilot flew slower when I had the view of the falls so I could take a few extra photos and some video. As we were heading back to the airport I started feeling motion sick and thought I was going to throw up. Thank goodness I didn’t, it would’ve been soo embarrassing!
We drove back to Niagara Falls City and had lunch at the Applebees and then went for a stroll along the path overlooking the falls. The Canadian side of the Falls was largely obscured by mist, which was annoying but the American side was generally mist free, even though it wasn’t as impressive. We had a look around the local tourist shops and then decided it was time to head back to our hotel in Toronto.
Grabbed some Thai for dinner – delicious! Tonight we’ve been checking our flight details for tomorrow, repacking our bags and living the life of luxury, love it!
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Rain periods and continuous cloud cover
With a forecast of rain periods and constant cloud cover we knew that there was no point in going to Niagara Fall today. We chose to do another hop-on hop-off bus around the city instead. The first place we jumped off the bus was at Casa Loma. Named the ‘Toronto Castle’, it has many features that match other castles around the world. The opulence of the inside furnishings and outside scapes seems outrageous considering the grinding poverty that would’ve surrounded the ‘castle’ when it was first built. Even today it would be considered extravagant. We wandered around the Casa Loma for 2 hours and then hopped back on the bus to continue the tour.
At the famous St Lawrence Food and Wine Markets we jumped off and had a tiki-tour around the delicious food stalls. Once we were finished exploring the area we walked down to the Distillery District. The whole area that used to be the Distillery has been converted into numerous cafes, museums and retail shops. We were a bit cut though because we just missed these mad Christmas markets in that area by a few days.
We enjoyed the comforts of a heated cafe as we drank our hot chocolate and coffees and nibbled on our scrumptious slices. As time slipped away from us, we put all our layers back on and went back out into the rain to wait for the bus. Instead of going straight back to the hotel after the tour ended, we sussed out a local mall and did some light shopping and grabbed some snacks and breakfast items for tomorrow.
Chilled, had some pizza and watched some corny Christmas movies tonight with the parents. Helicopter flight over Niagara Falls tomorrow – can I get a hell yeah?
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Christmas themed Canadian house
This will be a short blog: I’m dead tired!
Today’s plan was to do a walk around tour of Old Montreal and go to Notre Dame. The only issue with this plan is that on Monday, everything is closed! It’s like the Aussie ‘Sunday’ where a lot of places are closed. So bizarre. So that cancelled the museum Mum wanted to see off the list and we hit up (the fake) Notre Dame (as the real one is in France) and then we went to this massive ‘underground’ mall instead. It was massive! I wish we could’ve shopped properly but we still have 2 internal flights so can’t really add too much to our bags.
We had an afternoon rest before going out to dinner to the house of our new friends from the train yesterday, Richard and Cynthia. Their house was unbelievable! It was the typical American/ Canadian Christmas decorated house. They had 4 different Christmas trees, all of them decorated, countless snow globes and a wide variety of toy soldiers. They also had 2 of the cutest black Labradors ever! Lucy and Maddy were soo cuddly and soft – made me miss Schubie and Chilli. They won my heart through the juicy, mouth watering steak that Richard cooked (2nd steak on this trip!).
They dropped us back at our hotel so we didn’t have to catch the metro, which was very nice of them. It’s midnight here now and I’m wrecked so yeahh 
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Another city
Despite another night of party animals on our floor, I had a reasonable sleep in considering everything. We had a late breakfast, packed up our stuff, checked out (picked up our complimentary ‘picnic lunch’ as an apology for all the troubles we had in their hotel) and headed to the train station. Mum went exploring at the Christmas markets around the station and Dad and I chilled with the luggage.
The train station is massive! The outside of it looks like an old church and the inside had the strangest variety of shops from a dentist to a steak house!
After 3 hours of travelling on the train, reading and chatting with M&D’s (Mum and Dad) new found friends (who invited us for dinner tomorrow night), we arrived in Montreal. It looks just like any other city. We managed to find the taxi rank and an antisocial taxi driver that took us to our Comfort Hotel. He was one of the few people we’ve encountered who wasn’t friendly or even vaguely amicable.
After settling into our room we discovered that the carpet was wet and we had to swap all our gear over to a new room – very annoying. Been chilling tonight and planning for tomorrow activities. Mum’s been flicking through countless Christmas movies on the TV: they’re all the same, corny to the max!
- Palace Station
Cruising around town
After a long night of tossing and turning and not getting much sleep because of the party animals on our floor, we had some words with reception and we were changed to another room that wasn’t on the designated ‘party floor’. It is definitely much quieter on this floor.
Once again, we hired a car today so we could move more effectively around town. Once we programmed our GPS for Montmorency Falls, we were off! At first, we only found the smaller section of the falls and the bottom of the gondola (which was unhelpfully closed!) but eventually we found our way to the top of the Falls and the town that is near it. It was a cold walk across ice covered paths, but the view over the falls of the river and the city was lovely. On part of the walkway there was a section of approximately 20 metres of wall covered in icicles. It was a sight to behold. Mum and Dad even used some of them to have an icicle sword fight. Can’t take them anywhere!
After the Falls we drove to d’il L’orleans, which is a charming little French farming community on its own island. It was fascinating to notice that most of the houses and barns where predominantly white and red. It seems that most sections of land had their own little ‘stall’ set up to sell their fruits/ vegies on the side of the road. It wasn’t really set up for tourists, but we still enjoyed it.
We didn’t really know about anything else of interest in Quebec so we searched through the GPS’ ‘points of interest’ and found L’observetoire de Quebec, which offers a 360 degree view of the city. It was basically a large hotel building with the top floor used as the observation area. Dirty windows made it a pain to take photos through, but what can you do?
Although it doesn’t sound like we had done much up to this point, we were pretty stuffed and decided to suss out the local mall – which is one of the biggest in northern America (so our taxi driver told us). Laurier Quebec certainly felt like the biggest and we didn’t even enter the other parts. I bought a lovely and warm knitted white scarf, Mum bought some warm leggings and Dad suffered silently – well mostly. We grabbed some dinner from the food court and then we headed back to the hotel. Had a relaxing afternoon and night in preparation for more travelling tomorrow to Montreal by VIA Rail- woo hoo!
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Shake a tail feather
I’m very disappointed in the Hilton Hotel. I thought it would be better quality but the bath is stained, the towels are scratchy and the glass on the windows is dirty and gross – can’t even get a nice picture of the lovely view through it. Maybe my standards are too high…
Following breakfast in bed, a foot tour around Old Town Quebec was first on our list of activities for today. It’s great to be in such a central location Downtown because we don’t have to walk overly far to explore the interesting parts of the city. We began by sussing out Parliament House (which wasn’t having a tour for another 30 minutes so we said we’d come back later) and went to the Plains of Abraham, which is the massive Citadel, but they didn’t have an English tour till 1.30pm so we pressed on. We wandered around the Old Town, checking out tourist shops, admiring churches, post offices and any building that had lovely architecture. We rode the funicular cable car down to the riverside and had a stroll around town. We stopped in for a ‘beaver tail’ as it started to snow lightly. A beaver tail is a long flattened donut with delicious toppings. We had a chocolate banana and a cheesecake beaver tail – mouth watering!
Finishing our finger-licking treat, we continued along the cobble stoned roads, occasionally exploring stores that held potentially interesting products. We realised that if we were going to make it back for the English tour at the Citadel we better shake a tail feather! We shook our tail feathers and made our way back to the Citadel across town, bought tickets for the tour and waited in the overly heated room in our millions of layers. When the tour started and we went outside, it was incredibly windy and cold, especially when we were just standing there listening to the guide talk in French and then English (talking double the time to say the same thing, while we froze from not moving in the strong winds!). She took us into two museums within the Citadel and guided us around the inner walls. Great views of the city and the river from the top of the walls.
Upon finishing the tour we headed to the supermarket to get some breakfasts and lunches for the next few days (since we have a fridge in our room and its waayyy cheaper than eater at the hotel). We hauled our goodies up to the room, made some lunch and generally bludged around. Skyped some family this afternoon and around dinner time I sent Mum and Dad out to hunt down some food. They bought me back a yummy burger and fries- they can stay.
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Pick up your game Australia
With only half a day available for touristing, we got a rental car and headed up to Lake Louise. What an amazing area. The lake itself with the mountains in the background is just breathtaking; definitely will have to come back in the summer to see it in all its glory. The scenery all through Canada has been amazing; Australia needs to bring up its game! The Fairmont Hotel, which is right on the lake, is outrageous. Not only is it an ‘upper class’ hotel, but it also has around 100 shops, including clothes, jewellery, food and camera accessories, etc, within the building. Talk about luxurious travelling. Even your dogs are allowed to be in the hotel. After being out in -16 degrees for a while we decided it was time to head back into Canmore, Banff’s neighbour, and check out the Ammolite (fossilised shell) factory. Wasn’t overly impressive for me but Mum loved it, despite the ludicrous prices.
Upon re-entering Banff we went to the Banff Park Museum. Once again, Mum loved it. Our bus from Banff to Calgary was at 3.30pm so we did some shopping around tourist shops to kill time. When the bus arrived we packed our stuff in, hopped on and drove to Calgary. We are staying at an airport hotel which gave us free drinks and appetizers – YUM! There are two hot tubs on the roof, surrounded by snow overlooking the city. I love how most hotels in Canada seem to have hot tubs on their roofs- it’s the way to live. Pick up your game Australia!
We are repacking our suitcases, hand luggage, etc in preparation for our flight in the morning to Quebec via Ottawa. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow but it will all be worth it when we get to Quebec, the 2nd largest French speaking city in the world.
Note: Photos are now up, YAY!
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Who let the dogs out?
Everybody who has ever watched an American film about dog sledding, or mushing, will know that on TV, ‘mush’ is the word used to tell the dogs to ‘go’. However, after our experience of mushing today I have found this to be untrue. The two most important words for dog sledding are ‘hike’ for ‘go’ and ‘whoa’ for stop. The instructor also told us that if you didn’t encourage your dogs well enough with many enthusiastic ‘good doggies/ good job’ then they would slow down and perhaps even stop completely. He warned us that the dogs have a sense of humour and if you weren’t careful enough they would take advantage of your inexperience. Needless to say, all the ‘drivers’ were following the rules and paying close attention to their surroundings so the dogs wouldn’t single them out for some ‘doggie fun and mischief’.
Although it wasn’t as fast as I was expecting, it was still a lot of fun sitting cocooned within the sled whilst Mum or Dad steered our sled and the team of dogs. I was worried to begin with, but we survived and didn’t crash when they were driving so I was happy.
The dogs were soooo cute! I might even say they were cuter than Schubie! Sadly to say however, that they wouldn’t survive in an Australian climate…. thus confirming my thought to move to Canada!
This was our main activity today and when we arrived back at the hotel we hit the hot tub to soak away the cold and our aching muscles from skiing yesterday. I have to say, I’ve got a pretty impressive bruise on my thigh from skiing, with others developing on my shins and calf muscles. It’s strange because I have no idea where I got the thigh bruise from but it’s certainly the darkest and the sorest out of all of them.
Ps: sorry, no photos again. The internet at this hotel is terrible and I have been fighting it all night! Will have to post pictures once we are in a better area.
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Can you ski better than a 3 year old?
I have to say that this morning when I was woken up early I didn’t mind. I know I know, shocking news, but it’s true. I’ve been looking forward to today since we first began planning our trip. We went to Mount Norquay today for our day of ski-tastic excitement. It was very awkward putting on snow boots because of my many layers of clothing to keep warm but never the less, they were forced on, ski’s were measured against my height and poles were chosen for our adventures of the day. After we geared up, we dumped our stuff in the lockers and we headed to the easiest slope on the mountain – the Bunny Slope. As most of you will know, before this trip I’ve only ever seen snow once in NZ, and been snowboarding for one day- most of the day spent on my bottom. Saying this, you should all understand that I’ve never skied and I was very worried when Dad started teaching me how to ski. With each run of the slope (if I could even call it that) I got a bit better, only falling over once when I went to the far side that had iced over and I couldn’t turn properly. Dad got bored with the easy slope and he went to the chair lift section – show-off!
Lunch beckoned to us and we took a break around 12.30 ish. After relaxing in the cafeteria for lunch we hauled ourselves back out into the cold and did a few runs of the bunny hill to warm up and then I followed Mum to the chair lift in trepidation. I didn’t want to do that run, it was a massive slope and it was my first day skiing EVER. Despite my fear and hesitation about going up the chairlift, I went with the parents on the ski lift. I felt that I was going to fall out of it! As we drew nearer and nearer to the chair lift drop zone I started freaking out. How the hell was I supposed to get off this stupid chair lift and onto the snow without face planting? Thankfully, I managed to coordinate myself enough that I didn’t fall on my face or my bottom and I breathed a sigh of relief. Mum wasn’t so lucky. She waited too long to get off the chair and ended up stacking it. Luckily, Mum wasn’t too banged up.
As I looked down the steep slope I thought to myself: surely this is a bad idea, I’m going to die. Once again, despite my reservations, I followed Dad’s instructions and tried to snowplough (or pizza as they call it here) down the steep hill. I’ve never done anything so terrifying! I was going nice and slow, managing to avoid other skiers, until I starting going up this mini hill that had a drop at the end. I couldn’t make my feet turn the other way and the fence that said “Closed” loomed closer and closer. Fortunately, after failing to turn into a safer area I deliberately stacked it to prevent myself from falling off a closed high ski jump. It’s definitely the closest I’ve ever come to being fatally injured. The ‘fence’ that was on the edge of the jump was made up of 5 skinny bits of wood that wouldn’t have held anything or anyone back if they ran into it. Whose ridiculous idea was that anyway?! It just reinforced my feeling about the steep mountain: I didn’t want to be on it at all! If you read my blog yesterday you will remember that I had a sore shoulder. When I fell to avoid going over the closed jump, I landed on my sore shoulder. Needless to say, I was angry, irritated and sore.
After this heart racing experience, I surely wasn’t looking forward to skiing down the rest of the slope but obviously, there was no other way to get down. Stupid lift that only takes people up and refuses to take them back down! I manned up and tried again to snowplough successfully down the steepest part of the slope. Not to my surprise, I managed to face plant on the side of the field, where I sunk down into the soft shifting snow. That was it, I’d had enough! I punched the snow in anger, threw my poles and started taking off my skis. I walked down the rest of the slope with my skis and poles over my shoulder. To make matters worse, there were heaps of little kids skiing down the hill without issue, some as young as 3. The benefits of growing up near a ski slope I guess.
I spent the rest of the day hanging with Mum in the lodge and taking some photos around the mountain. Finally back in the hotel and looking forward to a nice relaxing hour in the hot tub.
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Bow chicka wow wow
And so the pattern continues of early mornings, long drives and uncomfortable sleeping locations. After loading our bags into the bus at 7am we picked up two other Aussies from a hotel down the road and started our 4 ½ hour trip down the snow covered highway to Banff. Stopped at a random frozen waterfall for a quick snap and then we continued down the endless span of white road. Since we left so early we hadn’t had time for breakfast, so I was very pleased when we stopped for something to nibble at the Lake Louise Township. Back on the road after Mum and Dad threw some snowballs at each other and only approximately 30 minutes from Banff.
Arrived at our hotel, dumped our bags and our laundry and went to check out the shops as our room wasn’t ready yet. Picked up some groceries for lunch and dinner, wandered around town and then headed back to the hotel to see if the laundry was done and our room was ready. It wasn’t, so we chilled in the lounge and planned the next few days. The rest of our stay in Banff is going to be action packed with a full day skiing tomorrow, dog sledding on Tuesday and an epic day at Lake Louise on Wednesday.
After settling into our room we headed back out to the Gondola at Sulphur Mountain. It was pretty misty and foggy so the visibility wasn’t high, but the snow covered trees were still lovely. Took the gondola back down to the base of the mountain and walked a few hundred metres to the Hot Springs. Totally packed with a people, luckily the hot spring was a large pool and big enough for everyone. I have to say, never in my life have I ever seen so many naked women! It’s like nobody gets dressed in private cubicles anymore. I think I was the only one who actually used the private areas to get changed.
We caught the local bus back into town and roamed around the shops for a while. For most of tonight I just relaxed and read my book while Mum and Dad checked out a local Christmas service. I washed my hair tonight and managed to pull a muscle in my shoulder 
. What great timing with a full day of skiing tomorrow!
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Winter Wonderland
What a great day in the snow! Whistler was amazing, I want to move there and work in the ski resort! There’s heaps of Aussie’s working and living on the mountain and in Whistler Creek (the town about 5 minutes from the mountain), they say it’s mad to work there and ski for free.
We took a tour bus up to Whistler from Vancouver and saw some sights on the way. First, we went to Shannon Falls, which is the 3rd highest waterfall in BC, and snapped a few pictures. Then made our way to the aboriginal area called Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre and grabbed a hot coffee before continuing onto a bald eagle sightseeing area. Got some mad photos at the Bald Eagle stop over, convinced me even more to move to a winter climate: the scenery is just breath taking- totally smashes Australia. Wish I had my other lens for today though, couldn’t shoot any close ups of snow, animals or buildings.
We arrived at the Whistler Mountain and did a Peak to Peak tour that went up Whistler Mountain and across to Blackcomb Mountain and back. The view was spectacular! I wish the gondola wasn’t all scratched on the glass- it totally ruined my photos.
We explored the top of each mountain, climbed up a hill and stopped following Dad’s footsteps when we watched him fall thigh deep in a soft snow around the base of a tree. It was a fabulous day just enjoying the winter wonderland, meeting interesting staff and locals and photographing all the amazing scenic vistas.
We went back down to the base of the mountain and went to a bar to sit in the warmth and sip mulled wine – DELICIOUS! We had 30 minutes to kill before we had to meet our bus driver so we grabbed some noodles from the grocery store for dinner and then wandered around the picturesque town. Defiantly going to apply for heaps of jobs here despite the crappy pay!
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