An early wake up call was followed by a long day of driving. We left Waterton and the province of Alberta and headed into British Columbia, destination Lake Christina. Much reading, crosswords and listening to music was undertaken. We stopped at a few attractions, the first was to check out an enormous truck, I think one of the largest in the world. Second was Frank’s slide, around 100 years ago a landslide crushed a small mining town killing 70 people, it got up to speeds of 120 km’s per hour and some boulders travelled up to 3 kilometres away. After finding a campground, Scott and I had a few games of Bocce Ball, it’s similar to petanque but the balls are heavier and you can play on grass or sand. You are allowed to either roll ... read more

Over the next few days, we combined resting to recharge the batteries with a bit of sightseeing to check out Calgary’s city centre. First of all I should tell you about Tina & Scott’s place - it is super nice. They live in the North West which is an area of the city which is basically brand new; houses are being built like wildfire. Like most of the houses in the area it is two storied but also has a basement which basically makes it three. The basement has a 42 inch TV in it so it should come as no surprise that I spend large quantities of time down there, especially seeing as before I had a job the Olympics, Wimbledon, and Euro 2008 were all on. The basement also houses a dart board which ... read more

I had envisioned being exhausted and wanting to sleep all day but woke up feeling fine and energetic. It was to be our last full day of our trip so we wanted to make the most of it. One of our busabout guides had recommended doing a cable car up into the mountains so we decided that would be our first venture of the day. We strolled down to the station and as we walked through the door I saw two girls - Tammy and Nickola who had been on my Croatia sailing trip. Nickola couldn't believe it, so much so she yelled 'ohh f*ck off'. Jez and I didn’t know whether to be shocked or amused, we opted for the latter. We yarned to them on the cable car up about all of our travels. ... read more

Another early start, we made the most of the hostel's free breakfast and pilfered a stack of food for the trip. The bus was the fullest we'd seen it and we worked out from the sign-up sheet that all on board were Aussies except us. We didn't hold it against them, especially when a group of them told us they loved Flight of the Concords, that show is huge, travellers all through Europe were singing its praises and rightly so. Can't wait for the second series. With the Euro 08 football championship being played in Switzerland we experienced strict border control. Apparently they hardly ever stop people but I don't think it helped that our bus driver looked like Ozzy Osbourne. Anyway they must have thought we were drug smuggling because they got sniffer dogs on ... read more

Despite knowing that we had to be back for the afternoon bike trip we still almost missed it. Our guide was not French but in fact a girl from Texas. She had a great knowledge of Paris so we were happy. It’s been a while so hopefully I get my facts correct. Our first lesson was about the Eiffel tower. We learnt that it was built in 1889 for the world trade fair. A competition was held to design a structure, the Eiffel was in first place, second was a 300 metre tall guillotine, imagine if that won! It took two years to build and the building costs were recouped in just six months from people paying to use the elevator. It was the tallest building in the world for 40 years. Although it was fortunate ... read more