So it is time to do a wrap up again, as the days are yet again slipping by. It is amazing how much time speeds up once you are in motion again. For a while there, time slowed right down in Vancouver, and it felt like we were going to be in that little flat for ever... So, here goes an attempt at brevity: Feb 6 We spent this particular day wandering about trying to do as much cultural stuff within walking distance from our hostel as we could handle. First up was the Department of Education, pretty much across the [View Full Entry]

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We decided we still had a little more space left in our brains for some more ruins and history, so we caught a bus out to Teotihuacan, about an hour and a half out of the city and home to the worlds third largest pyramid. Mexico also has the worlds second largest pyramid, which I did not realise before coming here... It was an absolutely amazing walk through history. I could easily imagine it as a bustling city, which, in its peak covered over 20 square kilometers. It was the Capital of Mexico´s largest pre-hispanic empire. Apparently the City plan was [View Full Entry]

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Jono and I woke with a little more energy, having had a good sleep. Man, that makes a difference. Sleep. I love it! We went for a walk a few kilometers from our hostel to Tlateloco and the plaza de las tres cultculturas. The name refers to the merging of three cultures (pre hispanic, spanish, and contemporary mexico). It was nice to hike out of the hustle and chaos of the city centre. I felt remarkably peaceful while strolling around contemplating history, enjoying the horn-whistle-traffic-chaos free ambiance and breathing in the scent of Jacaranda. But the history of this place is [View Full Entry]

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Tim and Barb dropped us off at the airport and we had dinner with them. So much nicer to be dropped off to(or picked up from) an airport by friends or family than by random strangers. Just a quick note about Vancouver airport, even though in the scheme of things it pales in significance to other things I have to write about (as I am writing this about a week later) but I have never been in a nicer airport. If airports at all reflect the area that they are in, then Vancouver's does a pretty good first/last impression. What other [View Full Entry]

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I thought that the post before this one would be the final Vancouver post, but I have to squeeze in one more, for a few reasons: the snow, the ice hockey and high definition makeup. First up, I totally forgot to mention that we went to the Ice Hockey with Tim and Barb, Brian and Barb, Heather and Brett. We went to see the Giants, which is the second league team, but if you don’t know too much about hockey, these guys are equally, or even more entertaining to watch as the Canucks would be. (The Canucks is Vancouver’s first league [View Full Entry]

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So, it is now under a week to go until we fly to Santiago, with a two-week stop over in Mexico. I can’t quite believe it. We still have not totally packed up our flat yet and there’s something about having all your belongings around you, that makes you feel like a permanent fixture in a place. I think once we have packed up everything into backpacks and duffel bags, and cleaned any trace of ourselves from the walls, floors and ceilings, it might start to feel more real. Maybe it won’t feel real until we are actually on the plane. [View Full Entry]

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I have done it again, and left it too late to update the blog. I didn’t keep a diary, and dates and a lot of details have escaped through the sieve of my mind. So, I am bunching the rest of our Oregon holiday into this one entry. Three Capes Loop: Cape Mears State Park, Cape Lookout State Park, Cape Kiwanda State Park When we woke up in Pacific City, we went back to the Pelican pub brewery where we had dinner and were blown away with the views that were just a curtain of black when we had had dinner. [View Full Entry]

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I love arriving at new places in the dark and discovering them in the morning. We did not have high expectations of seaside, as it was merely the first place we came to and we needed to stop driving. But it was a really cute low-key seaside village. Maybe the main street was slightly prettied up for the tourists, but if so, it was done sensitively enough. No Shopping mall ugliness or gold coast style high rise development. Just little coastal shacks and old bagged brick hotels whose peeling walls had seen years of salt and rain and wind. We woke [View Full Entry]

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We said goodbye to Jane, Paul, Aislinn and Attikus in style at the Columbia River Gorge . This was pretty cool, as we had seen the source of the river - The Columbia ice fields (in the Rockies) - with Marilyn and Richard, and we would see it enter the ocean in Astoria, where we were headed. After goodbyes and coffee, Jono and I hit the road to the coast. As soon as we were out of the city we noticed a growing accumulation of snow on either side of the road, and in no time at all we were driving [View Full Entry]

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We had a WHITE CHRISTMAS after all! So exciting! It was Christmas like it is in all the movies, and like it would have been for my Dad when he was a little kid in Scotland. Jane and Paul had some friends over and cooked a big lamb roast and a nut roast for those non-meat eaters (whoever they might be), and it was all fun and games. It was great seeing Attikus open all his presents. I haven’t had a Christmas with little kids for as long as I can remember, and it is definitely a day for little kids. [View Full Entry]

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