Well, you'll never believe this but we actually made it out of the hotel in time to have breakfast today. We went for some bagels with cream cheese and then got on a bus for midtown. We discovered that the bus we took everyday to get to midtown actually had quite a few well known sights on it's route so we thought we might as well just stay on the bus and have a look at those sights. First stop was the New York public library, as seen in "The Day after Tomorrow" and unfortunately for us, it seemed to be [View Full Entry]

---

---

So we are definitely still on Calgary time at the moment because we just don't seem to be able to get out of the hotel at a decent time. Seeing as we have become kind of addicted to these salad bars out here, we went for a quick salad lunch at one of the local cafes. The weather had slightly improved today. It was still cloudy but it didn't look like it was going to rain any time soon so we decided to head all the way downtown for the first time and go and have a look at the WTC [View Full Entry]

---

---

We woke up pretty late again, same as yesterday. We may still be operating on Calgary time, not New York time yet! It was raining again which was a bit of a nightmare. We got out of the hotel by midday and went straight for lunch at one of the most famous bagel houses in New York- H&H Bagels, which was featured in the film "You've got mail". We weren't that impressed really. It literally does just sell bagels and nothing else. They don't even have any fillings to put on the bagels either. We got on a bus down to [View Full Entry]

---

---

Seeing as we have so much time in New York, we just decided to spend the day walking around and taking in a few of the sights if we happened upon any of them. The day was spoilt a bit by the incessant rain and the fact that we only had one umbrella but all the same, the first day in New York was still nice. We had lunch at a local place near our hotel on Broadway and then walked a short way further before deciding to get a week ticket for the local transport. Manhattan is a really big [View Full Entry]

---

---

So, we were supposed to be quite excited about going to New York now because I had wanted to go for so long before we even started the trip and the day had finally arrived. However, the Customs guy at Calgary airport saw to it that we didn't feel like that for long. Tom dropped us off at the airport where we went to get checked in. Of course, as can be expected with us by now, we went to the wrong desk. Flights to USA have their own section so we got taken there by one of the airport staff. [View Full Entry]

---

---

We arrived in Brooks early evening yesterday and went for a quick bite to eat before popping in to visit Nikki’s mum. We stayed there for quite a while chatting before leaving Sven’s parents with her (they were meant to be sleeping there) and heading out to Nikki’s house. She wasn’t in when we arrived so we stayed up chatting to Kirk, Nikki’s husband and waiting for Nikki to get home from work. When she did get back around midnight, we ended up staying up another couple of hours chatting and then got into bed around 2 in the morning. The [View Full Entry]

---

---

We arrived back in Calgary a day early so we had a nice day to relax and organise a hire car for the rest of the time here before we had to drop off the RV this morning. On the way there, we picked up the hire car with one small hitch- the tire had a big gash in it so we had to go back and get a new one. But apart from that everything ran smoothly. The rest of the day was free to do whatever we wanted so we decided to take Sven’s parents to the shopping centre [View Full Entry]

---

---

So today we decided to make the most of the fact that we were staying in the wine growing region of Canada by going wine-tasting. It’s a good thing that Sven’s dad doesn’t drink wine so he can drive us drunkards around. It’s not like in most countries here where you have to be part of a tour group to get into the vineyards. You can just drive up and taste their wine, for free. Perfect. We drove up to the first place and tasted about 4 wines. We bought one bottle there before heading on to the next place and [View Full Entry]

---

---

We spent the morning around Vancouver today opting to go and see the Capilano suspension bridge. It is a fairly famous suspension bridge hanging over a deep valley with a river at the bottom. Quite scary if you are afraid of heights I guess. Sven’s mum is afraid of heights but we told her she had to go over this time. Apparently, last time they were there she refused to go over. It really wasn’t so bad and you weren’t allowed to rock it too badly or anything. There were guards sitting in small towers at each end ready to jump [View Full Entry]

---

---

Vancouver was on the agenda for today. We went to the local shopping centre to pick up some groceries and found that it didn’t even open until midday so seeing as we didn’t want to hang around for that long, we just headed off into town. We grabbed a bus into town and did pretty much split up right away to go our separate ways. Sven and I did the usual wandering around, just having a look at the town and stopping for a drink before we had to meet Sven’s parents again. We had a quick lunch and then went [View Full Entry]

---

---