Road tripping in Quebec, part deux

We had debated the best way to get to Quebec city. None of the routes immediately screamed at us that they were particularly picturesque, but determined to see the best of the area, we chose the route that took us along the banks of the St Lawrence, through the pretty, vintage French settlements. I don't know why this route doesn't get better press. It winds its way along, occasionally throwing spectacular panoramas of the river and it's opposite banks, at you. We stopped a few times on the way there, and then again on the way back too, so much did we enjoy it.

When we got in to Quebec it was very dark, and fairly late, so rather than go exploring, we enjoyed a cup of tea and watched some good ol' Canadian tv and went to bed.

First on our list that day was not the old city or the St Lawrence; as important as these were, we had more pressing issues. The time had come to introduced Lucy and Ben to Tim Horton's! What a great Canadian tradition! I feel like maybe being able to competently order fast food and understand the esoteric standard questions you are being asked, is the mark of some one who is no longer fresh to a country. Lucy and Ben definitely represented better what I looked like when I first got here and was confronted with a Timmy's menu, which is, a little overwhelmed, or a little baffled to say the least... In not entirely sure that the experience quite matched the build up, but there again, they haven't got addicted to it yet, all it would take is a little time. ;-)

Anyways, the sweet of Tim Horton's donuts was quickly matched by the bitter of the parking ticket that we achieved while getting them... Much as we had looked out for parking signs, we had not seen it hidden behind both a big machine and a tree - quel surprise! In fact, if it had been anywhere except Quebec I might have argued that there sign was unreasonably obscured, but I am unable to start an effective argument in French, and unwilling to argue with a French person in English - it seems rude, so that was that. Most expensive breakfast ever. C'est la vie...

Moving on from our breakfast debacle in a remarkably chipper mood, we went to find the citadel and the old town. The citadel was,  surprisingly, actually build by the British. It's quite enormous and does really look like a citadel, Civilisation V stylee, in a star of hugenormous ditches, fortified with quite the stone walls. Inside there's a working military camp to this day.

Not sure why we were cheering, maybe for past British victories... or maybe for puffins... who knows?! (outside the citadel entrance)

For me, the special part of the citadel was on the outside though. We had decided not to pay for, out wait for, the tour that takes you inside and instead went for a walk along the top, which leads to an unsurpassably magnificent urban view. The citadel is on the top of a cliff with the St Lawrence to one side and the old town rolling down the other side of the hill. And so we sat on the hill side for a bit taking in the 20 something degree sun, along with the south banks of the St Lawrence, the autumnal  Laurentian hills in the backdrop and set off by the turrets of the Fairmont hotel in the foreground. :-)

Just chillin'

If you claim nothing else for Quebec, you'd still have to allow that Quebec City is simply  beautiful. I've been told in the past that perhaps Europeans such as myself wouldn't appreciate Quebec as much as the average Canadian because we've already seen European stuff - it's normal to us. But I think it's unfair to say that we wouldn't appreciate it as much; classy is still clay no matter how many times you see it, and besides, I think I found setting a town like this *in north america* pretty much as novel as Neil did, it's just not quite what you expect - plus, it had windy (rhymes with rind, not as in breezy) streets and cobbles :-D  

I love Europe's non-linear streets... Weird thing to miss perhaps, but I guess it's something I come across every single day, so fair enough, I think!

I think it's fair to say we were all pretty impressed with Quebec city. After taking the funicular railway up the hill, we mozied around the shops and drank lots of tea and enjoyed the side walk cafe culture that doesn't really exist in the rest of Canada. We went for a wander on the wall of the city for yet more fantastic views and then topped off the day with a self driven tour through the plains of Abraham park, and an impromptu tour of the old city again while trying to negotiate their traffic system!

Another chilled out evening passed in the company of tea and cocktails, supplemented by the hotel's hot tub and swimming pool! Very nice :-) 

The next morning we were due to head back to Montreal for our bus home, but wanted to stop by Montmorency waterfalls first. A warm up for Niagara, if you like! The falls are just 20 minutes from the centre of the city, which is pretty cool, because usually in Canada they are more of a wilderness thing... And they're also pretty enormous - a little taller than Niagara actually - quite a lot less water, admittedly... but very pretty :)

So, i guess this doesn't give you the best perspective, but its fair to say it was pretty big, and the canyon it has carved over the years, drawing back from the St Lawrence, is pretty impressive!

From there we idled our way back to where we came from, with just enough time to get an epic burger at a pretty epic burger bar that Neil had made it his life's mission to go to (and then eat!)

I offer my beautiful face purely for scale...

...and feeling quite ill, we boarded the greyhound back to Ottawa, quite content with our mini-adventure (TM).

Road-tripping in Quebec

It's been too long since I went on a road trip and I think in order to get the best out of Ontario it's definitely best to leave it for a while and go to Quebec...

I was very keen to show Lucy and Ben Montreal, having been there once before and loved it. And I was actually even more excited to show Neil Montreal; despite having lived in Ottawa (just over 2 hours away) for half of his life, somehow he'd never quite made it. So, on Thursday afternoon we rolled into Montreal and set about finding our home for two days. We were experimenting with Airbnb.com which i had only recently come across, when we got together with a group of tree planting friends post-season this year and stay up near Gibson on the sunshine coast, just north-west of Vancouver. Having had an excellent experience there, we thought we'd try it again here. 

OK, so while writing, i went off on a bit of a tangent about airbnb and how it's under threat in NYC- which you can now find on a separate post - here. 

Our first stop in the city - with the exception of a fantastically cheap Chinese buffet lunch, was the old town and port area of the city. Montreal's old town is small but beautifully formed. It seems to be based around a pedestrianised square in front of the town hall and supreme court, with a couple of blocks worth of streets either side.

It's definitely true to say that it has a distinctly European feel to it - especially when you come across hidden little nooks and crannies in the alleys and court yards.

Last time I was in Montreal, one such court yard was the view from my temporary home, smack bang in the middle of the old town. It was a great place to stay - at 17 dollars a night it was one of the cheapest hostels I've stayed in in north america. It was a loft just packed with bunk beds, divided by curtains, but downstairs it just looked like a normal house, so you could feel at home. The owners turned up once in a while to take payment if they saw you, and if not they'd just charge you in retrospect after you left. Super friendly, awesome place to stay, and with a fantastic view and location in the old town that I found my self returned to now. The weird thing about the last time I was in Montreal, is that I'm not entirely sure how I spent all my time there. Don't get me wrong,I had a fantastic time, but I seemed not to have done much that there was to do. This time we would set that right. So for the rest of the after noon we mingled through the intriguing art and fur shops that are plentiful in the old town. Found a couple of stuffed polar bears for sale - only, like, 20000 dollars, or 30000, if you like...

After that, we started to wander slowly in the direction of the Bell stadium, which is where the NHL team, the Montreal Canadians, plays. I figure that if you want to experience Canadian culture then both a hockey game, and also Tim Horton's for breakfast someday, are both requisite. I had, myself , also never gotten around to going to an NHL game, which seemed like a bit of a travesty. 

That night it was the Ottawa senators vs the Montreal Canadians. Obviously, we were rooting for the Sens. It started out well, but after the first period stated going rapidly down hill... The playing aside though, it was an awesome experience and totally different to seeing it on TV. I guess it was also quite a depart departure from the Giants game I went to in Vancouver too. Firstly, because there's a crowd of close to 20000 people there - mainly rooting for our opposition too! That's pretty cool being in a common cause with so many people (and getting everyone to sing the national anthem!).

I guess the second difference is that it's televised. Some how it had never occurred to me that when you have an ad break in a hockey game, that the game much stop in reality, as well as on TV. So, more frequently than you would expect, every thing just stops and they tidy up the ice a little bit. The result is that an hour and half's worth of game lasts almost an extra hour. Crazy north Americans... Despite this extra stoppage, there was actually way less entertainment between periods in this game than the giants game I went to, perhaps because they know that you're gonna spend quite so much time queuing to get a ridiculously expensive, weird tasting beer. C'est la vie. At the end of the game we were keen to head to bed, having had a long day already, but crowned our evening with some really run of the mill, gooey poutine, in true Quebec style.

The next day we decided to hear out to the botanic gardens. Having done some research, we had collectible decided that this was the main thing to see and do in Montreal. Now I'm pretty sure the last time I was there, I looked into this, thinking out was a good idea, but quickly discounted it after looking at the astounding summer ticket price - somewhere up around 30 bucks. That said, I'm glad we bothered this time. In also glad we went early - by midday there were queues stretching for quite some distance in to the car park. I have never seen such a ridiculously popular garden before - especially one that charges you quite so much to have a look. I figure it truly must be doing something right.  

In fact, it turns out that they do every thing right - well they do bushes and trees very right in any case. And the bushes get special mention. When we went they had an exhibition on called 'mosaics of culture' which is a moving international competition, where counties compete to make living sculptures on the theme of nature. The result is basically the best topiary you've ever seen. Pictures follow.

(Just a small selection - you can see more on my Picasa web albums - here)

Besides the fantastic bushes, the Chinese and Japanese gardens were also of note. We actually saw them twice because at the same time an exhibition lighting up the gardens was running in the evenings, so we returned later that night to see them in all their night time glory. One we'd got there, we almost didn't bother, so popular, again, was the exhibit that the queue for the Chinese garden stretched for quite a distance across the gardens as a whole, with waits of over 30 minutes, at the shortest. They're clearly doing something right...

The next morning we had planned to meet some friends for lunch, and on our way took in the view off mont royal, spectacular as ever, even if i couldn't work out how to get back to the view point I had previously been to up there.

For lunch, Montreal smoked poutine, for the boys at a local Jewish deli, and a good catch up with some tree planting friends. 

Our last stop before leaving Montreal was or third attempt to go and see the Notre Dame basilica. We'd been thwarted on previous occasions by weddings and actual church services - dammit... But Lucy was very keen and I'm glad we got there in the end. It looks pretty much like most churches on the outside, but the interior decor is fantastic, and completely different from the European style too. Super colourful and ornate. We also listen to a fascinating explanation of how key the church was to the origins and expansion of Montreal and the region reaching up to Quebec too. 

By that point it was getting kind of late and we still had a fair drive to go to get to our digs in Quebec city that night. We drive out of Montreal in rush hour traffic, so it took a little while longer than expected, but once we were on to the scenic highway by the river, it was a beautiful drive of scenic villages and views of the river, where we occasionally stopped for pictures, and to stretch our legs, until it got dark when we went onto the highway proper.

Me thinks it's about time I got back to that 'holiday' bit of my working-holiday visa...

Hello long missed (but decidedly not forgotten) blog readers!

I fear I may have been a little remiss this summer year with my blogging efforts. On the up side, the time i spent not quite blogging, was spent being a lumber jack and working on my (now) (almost) fantastic Canadian accent. And while this isn't quite the truth, it's better than telling you that I spent a little too much time (*cough*150 hours*cough*... ehhem....) ruling my own empire on Civilisation V.

Suffice to say, it's high time that i got back to some blogging of the travel variety, seeing as how i am technically doing that thing, and I would do well to remember that (it's a lot more fun that way!) Prompted by the the visit of Ben and Lucy (uni friends from the UK), I have been all over the place in the last two weeks, and I now have many adventures to share.

As a slight pre-amble to such adventures, it is probably fair to say that i spent a good bit of the summer having a pretty good holiday too. Yet again in Penticton, post planting, there was less call for us to help out in the shop this year due to the relocation of the Ironman Canada Triathlon, and as such, I mainly mountain biked, golfed, water skiied and wake boarded, shot at melons and ate good food and wine. Ah. It's a hard life; thanks once again go out to Neil's Dad and Lisa for putting us up and being so fantastically generous!

Right. Summer. Done.

So, to more recent events. Lucy and Ben arrived into a chilly Ottawa evening in late september, and immediately started to remind me why I like travelling. I had previously said to Neil, maybe when he was gently ribbing me for my Englishness sometime, that when Ben and Lucy arrived he would reaslised just exactly how acclimatised (or integrated, maybe) I have become. Despite their status as weary travellers, it was entertaining to hear about how strange it is to drive on the 'wrong' side of the road (and just how BIG and STRAIGHT the roads themselves are themselves), how much space there is, how big the houses are, and how weird the mixture of old and new buildings together is (indeed, the notion that 100 years is REALLY old). I guess i revel in that kind of stuff, i like seeing different stuff and learning why it's different and how people do things, and I hope we managed to share some of that with Ben and Lucy over the next couple of weeks!

First stop, Ottawa. So i realise that I have infact been in Ottawa for a year, but I never really 'did' it properly as a tourist stop, and as such, was a little baffled as to what there might be to see until i started looking it up. It turns out that there were a few cool things and places that I missed the first time round, although, as i had previously said to Lucy and Ben (B&L, hence forth, for my fingers sake) there still was definitely not enough to entertain you for two weeks of touristness. We happily entertained ourselves with the parliament buildings, where i attempted to provide tour commentary from my trusty leaflet i found, but was left somewhat lacking in credibility after i mistook as statue of queen victoria for a statue of (male) Prime Minister Laurier (or one of them...) *sigh* Oh well. I tried. I was only one statue out... Incidently, if in doubt, if it's a statue in Canada, it's probably Victoria. Shes everywhere... you can't escape...
Next up, we went for tea in Byward market where we discovered maple tea, which is very nice indeed. This was the third tea shop we'd visited by that point, having been to the two in Westboro the day before. We have our priorities, us English. The day came to a close with a wonder around the art gallery and gardens and then home-made pizza followed by hot tub. Mm...

Our remaining day was spent visiting the Museum of Civilisation, which I blogged about earlier in the year. It's still worth a second visit, there being so much to take in the first time that I had already forgotten most of it! I figured that this might be a prudent visit to lay the ground for the rest of the vacation, if nothing else; when i first came to Canada, I knew practically nothing about Canadian history, and Canada makes so much more sense as a country and landscape when you know some of the history - particularly the older cities like Montreal and Quebec, which were conveniently next on our list.

But it's late, and that is for a new post some other day... soon... promise... :D

There will also be pictures to come (once they are uploaded onto the interwebity thing).

3k day!

After a slightly frustrating start to the season, with lots of faffing and weird specs, everything settled down a bit. We've had some really good land over the last couple of weeks and have been ma ma making up for lost time.

Last shift we ended up working a one day shift on some really easy land, so we decided as a crew to go for big numbers and personal bests. Since I'd made a three thousand tree day my goal for the season, this seemed like a good opportunity to give it a go. This was quite the under taking for me since my previous best was 2165, and on another day I might have planted 2450 poor so if we'd worked a full day, still more than five hundred short. We went out and had pretty good conditions all day. By 2.30pm I was at 2100ish, and I knew I could do it if I pushed. We switched land for my last bag up and a half which totally screed with my timing. With 30 minutes to go I was 200 trees short, but with one last push I got them in, only a couple of minutes late. 10 hours, 3000 trees. :-)  ( or 5 trees a minute every single minute of the day, not accounting for breaks, rating or badging up ). Suffice to say I was a little shattered that night...

It's sooooo hot...

So, after a night in pg, we grabbed planting gear for the season and headed to quesnel. Quesnel is a sweet town. And our motel is pretty fantastic, although a bit far out of town. No pictures so far but I'll try to take a few sometime.

So far, the season has been dominated by the weather. The first day of training it just rained all day, which was a little unfortunate since most of it involves being outside, looking at the trucks and going over emergency procedures. But from then on, it has been nothing but boiling hot. Our first couple of days on the block were pretty brutal. It was around 25 degrees plus every day and staying hydrated is hard. In the average season you have a couple of weeks to get in shape before the heat his you, but no such luck this year. Still, beats it raining I suppose! Curiously enough, our camp supervisor, was out checking snow levels in pg yesterday in the 27 degree heat! It was snowing last week! Crazy.

Anyways, I guess that's it for the season so far! I'll try to keep this vaguely up to date, since I have my tablet! I hear its sunny back home for the holiday too, hope you all enjoyed!

Super, Natural British Columbia!

Yet again suffering from Post-Traumatic-Visa-Syndrome for the second time in two years, I did finally get my visa this year, just in the nick of time to actually start the planting season on time. Yay! So tomorrow, super ridiculously early, I'm headed out to Prince George to plant another 100,000 trees! (Wow, it sounds like hard work when you put it like that...) .

As with any planting season, we have a broad outline of plans right now, but they're to be taken with a pinch of salt since they will change! Provisionally though, after meeting in Prince George, we are breaking with tradition and heading south for a couple of weeks in Quesnel. This is just as well right now, cos PG is currently freezing cold and the blocks there still covered in snow... Quesnel on the other hand is due to be 20*c on arrival :D After a couple of weeks there, we're headed back Prince George way for a bush camp somewhere thereabouts (in bush camp, no news is good news as always!) and then, finally, we're headed back to Chetwynd, where we spent much of last season. All in all, should be a good summer! *fingers crossed*


In other news, if you go down to the post, "Ottawa, coldest capital..." I finally got around to putting in the picture of the Ottawa River and parliament buildings completely frozen cover, compared to the summer shot that was already up :D I'm also going to add a post of Winterlude pictures that i missed first time. 

So we're gone to the sugarbush, eh?

How does maple syrup with pancakes sound?

Following in a long line of Canadians past, last weekend saw my rite of passage into the world of maple-syrup-eating peoples. Admittedly a little late in the season, we headed out of Ottawa in search of a sugarbush - the hallowed ground where Canada milks (taps) her maple trees for sweet sweet nectar. (Well, except that as it turns out, maple trees don't give you sweet nectar, but more about that later).

I'd tap that!

We drove to Fulton's Sugarbush, 30 minutes from Ottawa near the actually rather pretty village of Pakenham. First stop, breakfast. the question is, pancakes, or pancakes? So i had pancakes, and maple beans, and then drowned them both in the on-tap maple syrup. Mmm. Like i said, maple syrup with a side of pancakes.

At the Mapleope Crossing... 

Now buzzing we went off to explore the woods, which is what the term sugarbush kind of really refers to. Traditionally the maple was tapped into buckets which were then hauled all the way back to the camp to be boiled.

Voila...

Ok, so that's mainly frozen, dodgy-looking water, but you get the idea...

Then somebody was let loose with plastic piping and they wired up the forest like a giant cats cradle, or perhaps a limbo world championships.

Anyways, it's kind of cool - you can see the little blobs of future-maple-syrup blobbing their way down the maple tubes.

Eventually all of the maple makes it back to the camp and it poured into huuuuge vats where they boil it and boil it and boil it, and then maple thieves create a national crisis when they steal it - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19440465 - who knew that one keeps "strategic" maple syrup ("The federation also keeps nearly 13m litres in syrup in three warehouses to stabilise global supply and prices.")... huh. Or, they don't steal it and I eat it.

The end.

Winterlude

When it gets really cold and dark in Ottawa, the city holds a festival to cheer people up. I seem to have forgotten about this when i wrote my account of Ottawa over the winter, perhaps because I hadn't uploaded the photos at the time. Winterlude's main attraction, apart from skating on the canal, is the ice sculpture competition that goes on ,with artists arriving both locally and internationally to compete. Our photos were taken on Neil's phone, so they're not the best, and it's a small selection, but it gives you some idea of how awesome they were. There was also a polar bear on stilts. Cool. 

Ottawa; coldest capital city on earth (according only to Canadians... (but it is still pretty cold...))

Soooo, Ottawa.

Last time I left you, i'd just got into Ottawa, dazed and confused, after 5 days of cross country travel. After a good night's sleep, I was once again prepared to meet the world of Ottawa head-on. So I went for a walk. Boo-yeah!

After a long lie-in, Neil showed me around the neighbourhood, which is really quite nice. The place that I'm staying is called Westboro Village, and clearly, at some point, was a village. It has its own trendy high street, complete with hipster bars and nice breakfast places, but  is also conveniently located for the transit way, getting you into the centre of Ottawa in about 10 minutes. I don't actually have many pictures of the area, so you'll have to take my word for it, but it is probably in the running for nicest neighbourhood in Ottawa.

As for my house, well my place that I live in at any rate, you can scroll down to see it in the Halloween pictures, and just imagine that it looks more normal the rest of the year round. It's a lot bigger than it looks. And it is something of an unusual arrangement, in that me and Neil are living together, but while he's still a student he's living with his mum and her partner, so it's actually her house, but it seems to work out alright for all involved.

Anyways, my couple of weeks were mainly preoccupied with getting a job. Any job really, I hate that feeling of pouring my hard earned savings into an abyss... After a couple of weeks of walking every busy street in Ottawa and visiting every shopping centre I could find, I had becoming considerably more knowledgeable about Ottawa and considerably more disheartened with the whole working thing. I was starting to wish I'd just accepted a Starbucks job that I'd got offered in the first few days, but it was waaaaays away across town and totally wouldn't have been worth it for the minimum wage they offer. Still, it's pretty boring not working, much as the grass is always greener if you are at work! About a week later, starting to wonder where else to apply, I got a call from Tommy and Lefebvre, a big ski shop that i'd wondered into a couple of weeks before hand where I'd chatted with the manager for a bit and handed in my resume and application. I was more than a little surprised when they said they wanted to hire me, since they didn't even invite me for an interview. In retrospect however, I'm not sure what more they might have usefully asked me in an interview that we didn't casually chat about that day that I went in on a whim. I guess this is just a great lesson in life as to how first impressions really do count!

The job wasn't going to start for another couple of weeks, but by then i'd decided I could more or less relax, so I joined a gym, and started exploring bits of Ottawa that didn't have potenial-for-job-businesses in them.

I went for a cycle to Gatineau, the connected French town across the river, and discovered an awesome beach/sculpture parky thing. It's pretty impressive, and apparently it just keeps getting bigger. 

Every single stone you can see here is free balanced with no aid, and the artist started putting these up in 1986 and has continued to sdd to them every summer since.

And I saw the lovely view from the french side up to the ottawa Parliament buildings, which was very pretty. 

What's really cool is that we went back across there a few weeks ago and now the entire river is frozen over – which I would pretty much have refused to believe unless i'd seen it. I'm not sure I'd want to walk on it, but, it supports the snow, so there much be something there...NEW!!!! Picture to compare !!!

Later on in the month me and Neil got bikes out and when for an autumn-leafy bike ride into Gatineau park itself. 

The park is absolutely enormous and is a pretty tremendous resouce for ottawans, since it has hiking, cycling, mountain biking, skiing, cross-country skiing and snow shoeing. 

And other things besides I imagine – canoeing maybe, there are a lot of paddling shops around here... And it's only 10-15 minutes drive from the city too. 

Or a 20 minute cycle from where I live. The rest of October went on, primarily, with me playing too much Civilization 4 - which I had resolutely not downloaded until I already had a job, spending looooads of time at the gym, and getting steadily frustrated that my work hadn't started yet.

As the end of October approaches, distractions come in the way they they only can in North American – Halloween. I live in the right house for Halloween. Literally an entire storage cupboard, and a little bit more besides, is set aside for Halloween decorations.

And in a guest starring role... Echo the cat! Our 5th housemate...

And so we set about decorating:

Sooo, just a small graveyard in the front garden...

And then it was time to get creative, with not one...

or two...

but, three...

...pumpkins (carved, but of course, with special pumpkin carving equipment – just any old knife won't do...)

Annnnd so, then work started up with aplomb, and my birthday came and went and Neil took me out for a very fantabulous dinner. Other than that, I spent my time reading and hearing all about the new skis and ski boots this season, very definitely getting expensive ideas of my own

And then, lo and behold, it was Christmas all of a sudden. Neil's family in Penticton were pretty keen for us to come out for Christmas, but having only got the job a couple of months earlier, and Christmas being the busiest two weeks of the year, this wasn't going to happen. Instead, we opted for a quiet, but well formed, Christmas at home. I think, and I hope Neil feels the same, that we managed to have a perfectly well-balanced week between two different sets of traditions. 

So having got ourselves an enooormous $20 tree and decorated it beautifully...

...Neil and his mum spent Xmas eve making perogies, as you do, so that we could feast on them that evening, and then again fried for breakfast. Very tasty, though not the best light food to combine with a full roast dinner.... but we did it anyways.

Full roast dinner with yorkie puds and sprouts – christmas on a plate :) mmm. We even had chestnuts and an open fire (but didn't quite get around to roasting one on the other).

We defintiely had to fill the time in between starchy fatty foods with some sort of activity, so we went for a walk down to the rapidly freezing river in the snow, and then came back and knocked icicles off the roof to sword fight with. Obviously. 

Step 1: Source your icicles... Icicles are ripe when they are loooong and spikey

Step 2: Find your icicle hunting implement, preferably doubling your own height, and duck when a successful strike is made..

...but don't duck too much, you've got to catch it...

...that way you can eat it...

Step 3: defeat your worthy opponent, complete with light saber noises...

 At some point we also opened our presents. We'd come to the arrangement that instead of big presents, we would make each other a stocking and fill it with goodies. And so we did.

And the stocking I got was quite fantastic. Purple and fluffy with penguins. 

What more can a girl ask for, really?

And so another couple of weeks pass, and Neil headed out to Penticton for New Year and a week later I joined him for our Christmas holiday. His parents very kindly let us use their apartment up Apex Mountain, about 30 minutes away and so ensued a week of the most fantastic powder skiing that I have had in a long time! 

Sooooo much fun – especially since we got to try a whole range of fantastic powder skis for the occasion. 

It was a bit chilly at times...

We also did second Christmas dinner down at the house and exchanged presents yet again. And all in all had an amaaaazing week.

Since New Year activities have very much had to be ice and snow related, there being nothing else in the province of Ontario at this time of year.

This was our front garden at Christmas:

So we've skiied locally (which is to say, we've spent a lot of time sat on chair lifts and occasionally slid down a slope – I suppose it's not a fair comparison when last year I was in the alps... but still). On the up side, as a perk of my job, not only is local skiing basically free, but I've also been able to educate myself on a huge range of skis existent this year and also coming out next year. For the Volkl demo, we bared -32*c plus wind chill. Suffice to say we didn't last very long. However, they do have some amaaaazing skis. Especially next years new ones. But maybe I'm biased, since I bought myself some awesome Volkl Kenja skis a little earlier in the year before trying them... But i'm pleased to report that they handle fantastically well in pretty much all conditions. Other skis I tried and by and large liked, were Nordica, Salomon, Blizzard, Dynastar and Rossignal – so if any of you are buying skis any time soon – let me know and I'll push you in the right direction!!!

Besides skiing, what else have I been doing?? Cross-country skiing!

Yeah! Of course when you're not skiing you should be cross country skiing! So I only tried this once this year, but would totally love to do more! It was really fun, and ridiculously hard work, but without really seeming like it at the time – the best kind of exercise. I was feeling that for about a week afterwards. Beyond that, it was a nice way of getting outside in the cold weather – like a much more enjoyable way of going for a hike in the snow. That said, despite my downhill skiing experience, I have to say, going down hill on them is more than slightly terrifying. This was perhaps in part that we had hired skis with no edge (or otherwise) grip, but there doesn't seem to be any way of stopping, so you just have to hope for the best really until it goes flat again... 

Having survived another terrifying cliff (gentle slope?) of a downhill...

 Maybe I wasn't doing it right...

And what else? Skating! So, by January, the whole of the Rideau Canal, in Central Ottawa, is frozen, and lots of food stands and entertainments set up home there for a couple of months attracting skaters of all ages and abilities. We went out on the canal quite a few times this year, sometimes on the weekend with friends and sometimes just after work as a bit of exercise. 

All stood in the middle of a lake right there, believe it or not... In fact, in the middle of the largest continuous skating area in the world!

 And also once or twice down to our local park, where, as in local parks all over the city, there is a flooded pitch made into a rink, smooth as anything. 

In the local park, kids playing hockey in the background - don't think it gets more Canadian than this...

Fantastic. Unfortunately, in the last couple of weeks it's warmed up you would now be swimming not skating, and while the first signs of spring are starting to appear, this perhaps isn't appealing quite just yet...

Sooo, I think apart from icicle duelling, this is most of the ice and snow-related activities covered. More recently we also fitted in weekend trips to the Museum of Civilization (finally! I can't believe I didn't go all winter - partly cos it's a great museum, and partly cos i feel it's my duty as an anthropology-er), and then, more recently, to the National Gallery, which is a pretty fantastic building, but, more notably, currently has a room filled 10 ft deep with black balloons that you can wander around in, getting lost, and bringing all the balloons out with you, much to the security guards' chargrin.That's my kind of art. It left you with a curious buzz for the rest of the day, and was definitely best done last, as you were now utterly unsettled and rendered completely unable to actually appreciate 'serious' art...

By mid-March everything's warming up a bit – it's only -5 or 0*c, not -15 or 20... and it's noticble, particularly at work, that basically winter is pretty much over in peoples heads – time to start spring activities. And thus it was that I finished work just as the bikes and tennis racquets were coming out of hibernation, to head back home for a couple of weeks, only to find a foot of fresh snow on the ground as I left Montreal airport for home.

Only to add insult to injury, it was also snowing when I got to Cambridge?! It's practically April?!?!? Weird weather... 

Chilly graduates in the snow!?

Real cheese... mmm...

I reckon that just about wraps up my winter blogging, all in one fail swoop. All that remains to been seen now is what I do next year. Now in principle I have this all planned out, namely, more of the same. Just right now, however, I am still on tenterhooks waiting to hear about my visa, which in principle i'm entitled to, and which I have conditional acceptance for.... buut in reality, it's taking a rather a long time to get confirmed, and other people in a similar position to me have been refused, basically because immigration don't seem to be familiar with their own rules. So we'll just have to wait and see. Not quite sure what I'll do if I don't get back into Canada, but I'm sure I'll figure out something. Otherwise, come May I shall be back in the wilds of Prince George, happily repopulating the trees of the earth and avoiding the locals. Watch this space!