I fear I may have been a little remiss this
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).
