Wednesday July 1st Canada Day

A public holiday which made no difference to us, except for the special celebration cake for afternoon tea.

All day travelling through Ontario. From the border to Toronto is further than Brisbane to Melbourne, and the scenery hardly changed. Scrub and small trees, conifers, beech and the like and water in swamps, lakes, channels, streams and rivers. The whole province seems to be waterlogged. The topography is fairly flat which explains all the water and this part populated by very small settlements mostly with small wooden or fibro clad houses on untidy lots. Plenty of pick-up trucks.

Each day has been very different scenery wise and geographically. The weather was also bleak today and Michele did not get off the train at the only stop, the railway town of Hornepayne. Although somewhat repetitious, both today and the whole journey have been an interesting experience, it makes you realise just how big Canada is. The food and service have been good as has the company and we have enjoyed both the journey and experience. Toronto in the morning.

Arrived Toronto 9.30am. We had booked an hotel supposedly 200m from the station, probably a bit more but not too bad. When we got there, No BOOKING!! Apparently Bookings.com hadn’t forwarded booking!! They will be hearing from us. Fortunately, they had one room left, and we have to move to another room tomorrow, but at least we have a bed.

On the first day in Vancouver, we walked past two men having a look at the footpath and a discussion, we looked at their shirts they were, Gum Busters!!.

Everybody spits their chewing gum onto the footpath and everywhere there are lumps (dirty blotches) of old gum, (what pigs) and it is hard to believe that people are employed to remove it. Ban all gum, I say!!

Geoff has just headed off down a few blocks to do the washing at a Laundromat, while I add to the blog. It’s a challenge typing on this tiny notebook, I keep hitting the wrong keys, that’s my excuse anyway.

We stopped for a few hours in Winnipeg which was interesting. There was no commercial area, just streets and streets of office buildings or apartments, we couldn’t find anywhere anything that looked anything like a café or the like. So we turned around after walking for a couple of Kms and headed for the river, where we found a fast food outlet on a bridge over the river, which could have been a lovely restaurant, but it was a cruddy place a bit like Hungry Jacks, so we had a dreadful coffee and sat for a while and then went back to the station and sent emails and talked to Aerlyn on Skype. Everywhere seems to have wi fi so easy access to the internet, not like last time we went away. The days are really long, the other night it was still light at 11pm. Wasn’t awake for the sun to come up so don’t know what time that was.

The train looked really old when we got on and I thought it would be a bit of a trial. The first night I was so tired I only remember turning over once during the night, It was a really smooth ride and amazingly quiet, much more smooth than The Ghan which my sister Lesley and I went on a couple of years ago.

The food was good, you seemed to eat all the time, and if you wanted to you could. They had tea & coffee and muffins or sweet biscuits available all the time. So all and all it was a good experience and we chatted to some lovely people, as you sat at every meal with someone different.
Actually I think I am still rocking, strange feeling.

We have a couple of days here and then off to Niagara. Staying quite near the falls for one night, then off to New York from Buffalo airport.