Goodbye Canada

We had a great time in Canada - so many good memories and nice people we met.

Special thanks to Fred for having us stay at his house in Montreal - what a champion.

But, There's a few things about Canada that I found annoying, so... out with it:

1. Cheese.

I mentioned it before, I know, but the Cheese in Canada is terrible. The saving grace was being in Montreal where the French Canadians (and especially those in Montreal's Little Italy) have good cheese.

2. Pennies.

Really, I don't care. Round it up or down to a dime for all I care. They waste time and space. And they're dirty too.

3. Prices Plus Tax.

Why can't prices be listed with tax included? Sure some people might want to compare the price in Vancouver to Calgary.... they can figure it out... I'm not going all the way to another Province to get groceries. It's impossible to get cash out to pay for anything because you don't know how much it will be. Gggrrrrrr.

4. Paying to receive phone calls.

This is ridiculous. I'm sure not all phone plans have this, but come on!!! The guy making the call is paying for it! Why do I have to pay as well?!?

5. Bank Fees.

Just too expensive. What can I say?


Apart from those things, Canada is an amazing country, with lovely people. I highly recommend it and look forward to going there again some time (except for the above-mentioned).

Bonjour from Montreal

We arrived in Montreal, safe and sound.

Our lovely host Fred, picked us up from the airport and drove us back to his house, where he has generously accommodated our stay. Later that night we went and watched Fred play indoor hockey... possibly the first Australian audience at a suburban Montreal weekday-evening league. Nice.

So far, Montreal is a lovely city, and we've been treated to great weather.

We're also really impressed that there are good things here, like cheese and bakeries - with real bread and croissants. Yum!

Off to see more tomorrow after a day of rest and errands today....

Our last days in Vancouver

When we returned from Vancouver, we decided to stay in the cheapest place we could find, which was a hostel/lodge in Chinatown.

I'm a big fan of Chinatown, for things like the $3 breakfast we scored the next morning - for both of us. But, the accommodation was lousy. The bed was the most uncomfortable thing I have ever slept on. A bouncy spring thing with lumps all over the mattress where the springs were just about to poke through. 

We met a nice guy from Brisbane on the bus back from Seattle, and had organised to meet up with him for a beer later, which was great to share travelling and snowboarding stories. We all ended up staying in a nicer backpackers right in the downtown area for our last two nights.

We also got the chance to go and have dinner and drinks with a local who I'd met in Australia several years before. This was also really nice, as the locals always take you to great places that are off the tourist trail... not by far, but far enough. We went to a lovely bar called "Stellas" which sported the largest variety of Belgian beer I have ever seen. Most of it was really good beer, the rest of it was simply outstanding. Unfortunately, we didn't quite have the time nor budget nor capacity to drink every beer on the menu, so that's going to have to be something to finish on another visit to Vancouver.

On our last day, Will, our housemate from Whistler, came down to meet us for lunch. He kindly brought my leather jacket which I had left on the back of our bedroom door when we moved out. Clever. It was great to catch up with Will and explore Yaletown (another under-explored part of Vancouver for us).

We also managed to pack in a trip to Granville Island, destination: the brewery. The walk across the bridge is about 10 minutes long, but there's no stairs off the bridge, so you have to walk another 10 minutes along the side of the elevated road before it finally meets the ground, and then walk 10 minutes back to the Island. Clearly a set of stairs would be really useful.

Granville Island itself is an awesome little hive of activity, with a neat brewery (unfortunately the brewery tour was fully booked, but we still tasted different kinds of beers), awesome markets, street entertainment, shops, and a whole artistic area that we didn't explore in anywhere near enough detail.

Following the advice of the helpful chap at the hostel counter, we decided to get the cheap bus to the airport, costing $3.75 each instead of $13 on the airport shuttle. I'd recommend this option if anyone's going to Vancouver Airport from the city, EXCEPT if you are doing it in peak hour with 3 big luggage bags and lots of carry on luggage and winter jackets (which weren't really all that necessary, since Spring has well and truly arrived).

Nonetheless, we made it to the airport, and made our farewells to Vancouver.

Later, Matt

A trip to Seattle

Shailee and I had a nice couple of days in Seattle after our time in Whistler.

Here's a tip if travelling by bus from Vancouver to Seattle: go to the toilet before going through US customs. They don't provide any, and you'll get in big trouble if you even ask to use a toilet. Coming back to Canada is no problems - clearly a more advanced civilisation, they have duty free shopping, toilets, automatic doors, and even smiles at the border. :)

Once in Seattle, we kept getting confused about what to call the Seattle Space Needle.... was it "Space Needle" or "Sky Tower", or .... "Spy Needle". :) So we just laughed to ourselves and called it the "Spy Needle" the rest of the time.

The Pike Place markets are fascinating, with lots of interesting trinkets, great seafood, and the first ever Starbucks shop. We did go there, as cheesy as it is, and I even drank the "Pike Place" special roast, which tasted to me only slightly less bland than the terrible Starbucks "House" blend. It's just a really ordinary, tasteless coffee.... but I guess that's the way the Americans like it. And obviously they love it, there's a Starbucks on virtually every city block in downtown Seattle.

We found a ticket box that sells same day discount tickets for concerts and theatres in town, and we bought tickets to see "Puppetry of the Penis" ! What a laugh. The audience was predominantly female (surprise surprise), although it is pretty much bloke humour.

Seattle is also filled with many homeless people, and there's an amazing number of people who walk around the streets having serious conversations with themselves. Or maybe we're crazy because we can't see the invisible people they're arguing with....?

That aside, we enjoyed our two days there, and were very happy to be back in Vancouver.

More later, Matt

Broken Bindings

Today was one of the last days on the mountain for Rachel (our housemate), before leaving Whistler for Hawaii and continuing her adventures. I took her out to the Symphony area of Whistler, and on quite a few runs that she hadn't been on, including the Saddle - a nice fast blue run, which makes a wide straight rolling speedway from near the top of Whistler to the bottom of the Peak Chair.

Nic (another housemate) and I made some serious speed down the Saddle, stopping about half way to check on Rachel, who was following behind at a much more conservative speed - no problems.

So Nic and I take off again at pretty good speed and accelerating. Just then I notice a whole group of skiers, carving from left to right like crazy who came in on the side of the run. Nic flew right past one guy, and I slowed down a little to see what he was going to do. Turn right, so, I went left, and accelerated down the hill. Then just as I was passing him, he turns hard left and hits me from the side. I see him coming at me and try to turn away, but I didn't manage to avoid the collision.

Travelling quite some speed, I completely stacked it, flipping over about 10 times, snapping both bindings clean off my board. Lucky for me, I was wearing my helmet, and got up with only a tiny bruise on my knee. The other guy wasn't wearing a helmet and looked a bit cross-eyed when he got up, saying "Sorry, mate. I didn't see you there. Got a bit of a blind spot on these goggles."

Turns out he was part of an advanced ski school, training to be a ski instructor. Clown.

I walked, carrying my broken bindings down to the Peak Chair, where the Liftys got on the radio and sent a Skidoo (motorbike on skis) to come get me, and I rode down the gondola to the village. Where I just managed to get home in time to go to work.

Shailee, being ever so helpful, took my board and broken bindings back to the shop where I bought them, and - to cut a long story short - replaced the broken parts. Which means now I have even more cool mismatched "frankenstein" bindings. :)

Just in time for us to leave for Calgary the next morning to see Jodie and Mike and go snowboarding in Banff/Lake Louise.

Later, Matt

Sore head

We celebrated our housemate, Graham's birthday by:

• Snowboarding all day, followed by
• Dinner and drinks, with
• Karaoke,
• Matt getting his fancy new red Helly Hansen jacket stolen,
• Shailee getting her boots all messed up,
• Rachel putting her boots on the wrong feet,
• Matt cutting his forehead on the edge of his snowboard,
• and much, much, more.

All in all, a fun night, despite the frustrations, with many enjoyable stories to be told and re-told afterwards.

Sick means tissues...

I'm feeling a bit better now, after being in bed for basically 3 days straight... but just to gross you all out, this is how many tissues i went through last night!
Yukky yuk yuk