Toronto to Calgary

DAY 10/240 - Monday, July 23, 2007

Today we said goodbye to Woodstock - the first place I have been sad to leave. I mean don't get me wrong, all the places we've been so far have been great, but i was ready to leave them all when we did. However, I grew quite attached to woodstock, even though i can't really pinpoint why - all i know is that i definately want to go back one day.

We left about 9:45, as was our custom, with plenty of time to get to the airport. Despite our caution, we ran into very heavy traffic, and our expected 90 min trip, (we only needed to be at the airport by 12:30) ended up doubling in length. I had plenty of fun though playing around with the in car navigation system ('Neverlost') trying to redirect our journey to avoid traffic. Despite my rerouting, we arrived in Toronto just after the latest checkin time for our flight - so we had to catch a later one.

After a four hour flight we were in Calgary and took a shuttle to our hotel. A short time later we were picked up by Kevin - an old associate of my dad's at BHP and taken out for dinner. Dad actually hired Kevin, but he was later given an opportunity to go to Canada, which would allow him to have more than one child once he became a citizen. Kevin took us to this cafe restaurant that was in a lovely location, a luxury that was refected in the prices. I had the second most expensive steak on the menu, which cost $46 canadian dollars, and it would have been ~ 250-300 grams (and wasn't amazing). The four in the Tuck party were all a little worried about how much it was all going to cost Kevin until Dad explained that he was just going to charge it to the company.

After dinner we went back to the hotel, where the girls disappeared straight to bed, and the guys wen't down to the bar for a few night caps. Whilst in the bar dad and I decided to releive our wallets by changing all the coins we had accumulated so far. In north america, the price that is displayed on items doesn't include the equivalent of the G.S.T in Australia. There have been about 5 times now where i've had ready what i thought was the correct change , only to have be asked for a different amount - and because it takes me so long to work out the coins, i've just handed over a note. At one stage i think i had 26 coins in my wallet with a grand total of $2.07 - i haven't been able to carry my wallet in my pocket for the last few days as it's kept dragging my pants down.

Either our hotel wasn't in the best part of town, or calgory is a little 'slumish' as you couldn't step outside without someone coming up and asking for money or a cigarette. So when i walked accross the street for a subway at about midnight, i was harassed by about 10 people - but nothing can stand between me and a roasted chicken.

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