Hutchies Beer Adventures plus Guest 08

Flew to Toronto last week where we stayed with Dave, one of Mooses mates (thanks!).

toronto was nice, but as cold as this photo suggests.
Did the typical touristy things - CN Tower - great views, the St Lawrence Market, and downtown Toronto. Taking a special tour of the hockey hall of fame. many great sights and interesting hockey facts. had some great interactive games where you could be the goalie or take shots on net with a virtual goalie. fi fluked two goals and beat everyone in the building!!! i managed one goal, she let everyone know about it!

Also had some good food and drink - Toronto is similar to Melbourne - full of culture, theatre and good places to eat - has a really upbeat atmosphere. (But it snows at night!). 2 great spots were recommended to us by other travellers. C'est what - an amazing underground beer haven in toronto.

And Jamie Kennedy's kitchen. A sensational tapas restaraunt with excellent food and wine pairings.

Bussed it to London to meet up with Maryliz and Al Quigley, who have been the most amazing hosts, providing wonderful homecooked meals, great wine and a really comfy bed.

We also stayed at their beautiful lakeside cottage and played boardgames, sat in front of the open fire, or went for walks exploring the snowed over beach.


this is the view out on the lake - lake huron. sensational! the brown is frozen sand washed up on frozen breakers.
sunset at the lake

We have had a really lovely relaxing week. Ready now to gear up and see the Niagara falls on a day tour, then we are flying to London England!! Our Europe adventure is about to begin!

We flew to Calgary last week and met up with Jeff and Gill, who kindly let us stay with them while in Calgary, and took us to see Johnsons Canyon. This was a beautiful (slippery) walk to a frozen waterfall - stunning and blue!

We have hired a car to travel the area - with our "tour guides" jeff and gill helping plan our itinerary. Thanks!

Spent a couple of days down in Fernie - Canada's best kept secret mountain of brilliant powder dumps! Here we spent Nick's b'day, snowboarding by day, hot tubs at night - that's the life! Loved it there.

We then drove to Lake Louise, via some natural hot springs little known about by tourists, called Lussier Hot Springs. Well worth the drive off the main highway, quite bizarre getting into bathers in subzero temperatures, to sit in sulphury stinky 40 degree water!

Lake Louise was FREEZING!! The coldest I've been! Obviously it wasn't the stunning blue lake you see on all the Canada travel posters - as it was frozen (something I only figured out when we got there...). So we walked around it, and over it, and could have ice skated on it if we wanted(but I have discovered I have a huge fear of slipping over on ice, coz it HURTS!). Also had a very cold picnic lunch in the snow. The scenery there was amazing.

Next we drove the Icefields Parkway up to Jasper through the Columbia Icefields. Probably better enjoyed in summer as all the lakes and waterfalls were frozen, and many of the hikes and services along the way closed for the season. Despite this, it's one of the most amazing drives due to the endless rocky mountains and glaciers, and the views at Peyto Lake, the Athabasca glacier, and falls, were brilliant.

We hiked a little around Jasper, saw some wildlife - sapsuckers, red squirrels, big horn sheep, mule deer. The views from the island on pyramid lake, and from the top of Old Fort Point overlooking Jasper, were breathtaking.

On the way back to Calgary we stopped in Banff to check out this famous ski town (the mountains in this area hadn't had much fresh snow so we didn't bother snowboarding). A very beautiful town with a great bakery!

Now we are back in Calgary, we are going to go out and try the famous alberta steak or maybe bison, then to the ice hockey again tonight. We fly to Toronto tomorrow for a couple of weeks to explore Niagara falls, and up to Montreal.

last few days have been hectic and freezing!

went to chilliwhack and the fraser river to catch us some sturgeon (MASSIVE fish!) on an 8hour charter. was about 2 degrees outside, we had to leave at 530am to get to this place, and best of all NO food supplied and NO TOILET! could it get any better? luckily these promised fish were massive, and it was pretty fun to catch them... had nick and westy working up a sweat on a 6 footer (no joke) and i caught myself a cheeky little 4 footer.

Whistler
went to whistler/blackcomb with sara and westy on sunday, checked out the town. its beautiful - everyhing you imagine an alpine village to look like but bigger! they even have a starbucks! we went to the tube park - sooo fun! like a waterslide but not....

stayed overnight with mooses mate brian who then showed nick the slopes today - apparently a double black diamond run! they went from nearly the peak, all the way to the base which was nearly 13km long run! meanwhile i practiced picking myself up from falling frequently, as i tried to learn to snowboard on the kiddy runs. after two days startin to get the hang of it - but wasn't much fun the first day!

next stop calgary and banff after a few more days in downtown vacouver as guests of the west family. good times!!

Well, we arrived into Vancouver yesterday, after 26 odd hours of transit from melbourne to auckland to vancouver. watched beowulf, enchanted, sydney white, juno and ratattouie. sydney white and ratattouie are the only ones i'd recommend. we forced ourselves to stay up til about 9pm and then slept for about 13hrs.
Thursday we took the skytrain to town and caught the world's smalles ferry to granville island, where we checked out the granville island market which was really good, had heaps of good produce and food, much nicer than the vic market, no pushing, everyone gives way. crossing roads is really weird, pedestrians have right of way, in canada drivers dont like the half cross that we do in OZ. they stop and let you finish crossing, and at all intersections without crossing lights they will stop and let you cross. anyway from the market we walked to the major shopping district to get Fi some ski gear. after a major unscheduled detour (we walked about 2km the wrong way - i blame Fi) we found some nice stuff and headed home.
Sara and Westy met us at home then we headed into the city to watch the hockey. it was a sensational game, heaps of entertainment, svancouver scored 37 sec into the game (shorthanded) score was 6 -2, vancouver won, keeping their playoff chances alive, and there was a heap of fighting in the last 2 mins and a shite load of penaltys were given out, about 80 mins at a guess.

Beer is pretty pricey here, $22 for a 12 pack at the bottle shop and $8 a schooner at the hockey. checked out the granville island brewery which was pretty good. winner of the 2007 best brewery in BC. winter ale is good.
Got to get some sleep, some big days ahead of us.