After spending a bit of time in Quebec City we jumped on the VIA Rail destined for Moncton. You just have to love the special discount section of the VIA Rail website because we managed to snag another deal and get a sleeper cabin for the same price as the budget seats. We jumped off the train in Moncton, New Brunswick, a few hours later than scheduled and hopped straight onto the bus destined for Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (PEI). A couple hours later and we were crossing the Northumberland Strait on the seriously long Confederation Bridge that links Prince Edward [View Full Entry]

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Before crossing the border from English-speaking Canada to French Canadian Quebec, we had heard so many stories and opinions about the province of Quebec and the French Canadians that inhabit it. Some people spoke glowingly about beauty of the province and it’s distinct culture, others were tired of the rhetoric about Quebec being different from the rest of Canada and the desire to seek sovereignty and go it alone as an independent state. We went in with an open mind and were instantly enamored by the kindness of the people, the beauty of its cities and the instantly comfortable feeli [View Full Entry]

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We came to Ottawa with a bit of a soft spot for national capitals. After spending so much time in our own nation’s home of politics, we are used to the taunts that are afflicted on such cities - expensive, sterile, full of civil servants, boring. We didn’t find Ottawa to be a cheap city, and there were a lot of government buildings and civil servants around, but boring...No, not all. In 1857, Queen Victoria chose Ottawa as Canada’s capital even though she had never been to Canada. Ottawa lies between Toronto and Montreal, in the province of Ontario, just across [View Full Entry]

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Take me to the April sun in Cuba, oh, oh, oh Take me where the April sun Gunna treat me so right, so right - so right - April Sun in Cuba, Dragon Well, it wasn’t quite April, but after surviving part of a Winnipeg winter and then getting a bit more of the same in Toronto, the best cure we could think of for our chronic Vitamin D deficiency was a couple of weeks in sunny Cuba. The island nation, only 90 miles from the Florida coast, but as you can imagine, it is a world apart. We began in [View Full Entry]

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With a tinge of sadness we left Winnipeg and jumped on Via Rail for a 39 hour rail trip to Toronto. While this might sound ghastly, it was made all the better by being able to be in sleeper class. A bed made for you every night, a shower and three cooked meals a day. All we had to do was read, sleep and the proverbial. And we were the youngest there by around 20 years. Travelling by land doesn’t really get much easier than that. Having said that, apparently the trains are European and not really made for Canadian conditions. [View Full Entry]

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What would possess two Australians to spend an Australian summer in a Winnipeg winter? And there starts the conversation with pretty much everyone we encounter in Winnipeg, a city’s whose weather seems to define it and probably for good reason. Winnipeg is the coldest city in the world (with a population greater than 600,000 people). That’s a record that doesn’t seem to appear on too many of the tourist brochures or ‘Highlights of Winnipeg’ lists. In a strange but somewhat logical paradox, Winnipeg is also one of the sunniest cities in Canada, with an aver [View Full Entry]

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There is something very cool sounding about the name Saskatchewan. This is one of the low profile provinces - sparsely populated, known for its extensive flat prairies on which vast quantities of wheat are grown, a growing oil and gas industry, and increasing mineral extraction, particularly uranium. The province even has a city called Uranium City. On Canadian Thanksgiving, we jumped on the Greyhound from Edmonton to Saskatoon. Ah Saskatoon, the city of bridges and the Paris of the Prairies (as they call it). It is a beautiful small city of around 200,000 people situated around the So [View Full Entry]

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Edmonton doesn’t have a reputation as being the most happening city, and well, that is a fair enough point. We had booked into the hostel for 5 nights and after the second day we were scouring the tourist magazines and the Lonely Planet for things to do over the rest of our time there. The hostel was near Whyte Avenue; a rather funky part of town; and as such has the requisite funky shops, bars and restaurants that two Australian Gen Yers are attracted to. We visited the Alberta Legislature building and took in the free guided tour, in which we [View Full Entry]

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In order to take advantage of some very unseasonal warm weather, we decided to hire a car for a couple of days and check out some of the sites of Southern Alberta Drumheller is about 130km out of Calgary and is almost certainly the Dinosaur capital of world. The town has a bit of an obsession with these prehistoric beings and is home to the Royal Tyrell Museum (one of the world’s largest dinosaur museums), the world’s largest dinosaur and a dinosaur of some form or another can be found on nearly every street corner. We didn’t see a copy of [View Full Entry]

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Okay, so the blog has taken a back seat for a couple months while we were out trying to save the world one day at a time. The world is still here, so it’s safe to say - mission accomplished! It’s been a crazy few months. Catherine took an unexpected holiday back to Melbourne for a couple of weeks to help out with some family errands, so Lok saw fit to do manly things like white water rafting in Fernie. Fernie is possibly the friendliest town in the Canadian Rockies. It’s a slow paced town, at least in the summer months [View Full Entry]

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