Au revoir Canada...ya

Greetings all I will leave the comedy to my travelling companion, "Woody Costanza"....but just wanted to record a few thoughts now that part one of our Canada adventure is over and we are now officially in the USA after being smelt by US immigration dogs.

I have loved our time in Canada so far, both Vancouver and Jasper.

From my perspective Vancuover really seems to be the Sydney of Canada, just as Ottawa is the Canberra of Canada (though with beautiful architecture and a lot more class!).  The harbour is magnificient and would really outdo Sydney's if it hadn't been somewhat spoilt by industry, including huge piles of sulphur everywhere. I would love to live in Vancouver but I suspect I would be an outcast - the city seems to be filled with fit, beautiful and lovely people, who make use of the many beautiful parks and walking tracks. I could potentially also develop a fountain phobia (they sure don't have water shortages here...). Nevertheless, I think I could be happy to spend significant time lazing around in Stanley Park (just beautiful) or Queen Elizabeth Park and consuming as many different foods from Granville Island markets as possible. If I had Ms Singh with me, I am sure I would have bought a lot more things at the Punjabi markets as well (credit card breathes sigh of relief).

From Jasper, we caught the overnight train to Jasper in the Rockies. This is something I have been wanting to do since I was a serious teenager. It was quite an amazing experience. It was quite bizarre curling up in my bunk at night looking at a slightly industrial twighlight landscape, and then being greeted with the morning sunshine rising over the largest snow capped mountains I have ever seen in my life. The great thing about getting the train, is the journey is as much of an experience as the destination. Certainly, I am sure its the people we meet a long the way that will remain key memories of this trip. Already we have met some really interesting characters (plus unfortunately some very loud ones...). Howard and Cliff from St Louis were brilliant storytellers and really gave me a different insight in to military life in the USA, and the personal consequences of the ridiculous "don't ask don't tell policy". Last night we met the Davids - one a young, uber Newtownish muso type from New York who is writing his own Ulysses, I am sure we will all be reading it one day! And the elderly David a retired academic geologist who is still working to help countries better understand undersea earthquakes and possible tsunami impacts.

Jasper itself was just gorgeous - I rather felt like we landed on the set of Northern Exposure (but with no Moose ggrrrr argh grumpf). It was picture perfect. Surrounded by snow capped mountains and gorgeous lakes - oddly named with very unmajestic names of Colin and Mildred. I really wish we had more time to explore but we did pretty well and I managed to mostly keep the car "Colin" on the right side of the road...amazingly the time I didn't nothing beeped, that would have been useful...Colin appeared to beep at us for absolutely everything else which started to drive me a little nuts. It even accused Jay of trying to break into the car via the boot.

Maligne lake was definitely a highlight. I loved that the tour guide on our boat took us to Spirit Island and advised "this is what you think you are here to see and you can stand there and take the photo that everyone has, but over there that is the good bit" - and sure enough he was right.

It was also great to spend Canada Day in Jasper - with flags everywhere and fireworks. I am sure this is hypocritical of me. Australia Day makes me want to vomit but this just seemed so quaint.
 
Anyway, USA time now...it will be interesting to see how different things are just over the border in Seattle.

So far the only annoyances I have experienced in Canada are a regular use of "ya", excessive faffing around by government employees (although this made me feel like my work colleagues and I are so efficient), ridiculously large servings of food and things taking a long time  - but largely due to people being way too nice and helpful!

Weird things so far...serving wine in mini carafes, drug stores, berries in salads, ridiculous sized punnets of strawberries, pop, crap sauvignon blanc, good chardonnay...

Good things so far....interesting people, breathtaking scenery, funky chunky popcorn, yam chips, wines from Okanagan valley, gluten free food in Jasper!, lots of walking and sleeping for the first time in months, getting to see bears, mountain goats, elk and deer just wandering along the side of the road.
 
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C