The last day

We woke up early enough to go and make some waffles for breakfast, before doing the final pack and heading into LA. We stopped off at the Citadel – a giant outlet mall – in the hope of getting one last cheap pair of runners, but we didn't find anything that appealed so we continued on into Hollywood. We drove the streets of Beverley Hills for a little while, admiring the homes, then found a park off of Hollywood Boulevard near the Chinese Theatre. We took some photos of the Hollywood walk of fame, did some souvenir shopping, and decided that our last meal in the USA would be at the Hard Rock Cafe. We had burgers with fries and a peach cobbler for dessert, and then it was time to leave.

Our last drive in the Mustang was the 40 minute journey to LAX and, after taking some final shots of the car, we were headed through the delights of TSA enforced customs at the busiest airport in the world. It wasn't too bad, but we always forget that you need to essentially disrobe for their scanners, but once we were through we were able to chill out and wait for our flight. The flight itself was 12 and a half hours of turbulence, some of which was quite violent, so I didn't get much sleep on the way to Auckland. We only had a brief wait there before getting on the last plane of the journey and, four hours later, we touched down in Adelaide and we were home. Our parents met us at the airport, and thus our epic adventure in North America came to an end. We had a magnificent time, made hundreds of new memories and experienced some phenomenal moments that we'll never forget. Thanks for reading and we look forward to catching up with everyone in person soon :)   

We're really 12 years old

Saturday aka Disneyland day!

The tagline is 'the happiest place on earth' and it definitely must come close. We arrived at 9am and were greeted with the scrupulously well kept main street, leading to the original Sleeping Beauty castle. We did a circuit of the park on the train and from there the day was filled with magical, fun and exciting activities, including: Matterhorn, Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Teacups, Roger Rabbit, Toad's Wild Ride, Jungle Adventure, Mark Twain, Winnie the Pooh and numerous other rides. We also visited every shop, saw a show, watched the fireworks, took over 500 photos, met some of the characters, and ate stupid amounts of food (including fairy floss, or as they call it, cotton candy). Andrew bought an Indiana Jones hat and sheriffs badge, plus a charm bracelet for my Christmas present, and I bought an Alice in Wonderland tea plunger and a photo. We left the park at midnight, so in the end our day was 15 hours of joyful fun :)

Sunday – Universal Studios

As the title says, today was our day at Universal Studios and it was fantastic. Like yesterday, we had perfect weather, sunny and 20 degrees, plus it seemed that for most of the day there was no-one really there! It's amazing how much you can see and do when there aren't any lines for anything. We only had to wait ten minutes once, for the Simpsons ride, everything else we just walked straight to the front. This meant that we saw absolutely everything, went on all the rides, saw four shows, plus we had the tour, had lunch and did shopping. We arrived at 9.30am and we'd seen everything by 4.30pm, in part because there aren't that many rides and it's much smaller than Disneyland, though it's still a lot of fun.

We then decided to have a brief look at Hollywood, so we drove into the city and saw Rodeo Drive, Sunset Boulevard and Beverly Hills (from the open car) but, since we'd had very little sleep, we figured that some Chinese take out and the Golden Globes in our room was a fitting (and necessary) last night as we were stuffed. Tina Fey and Amy Pohler were hilarious, the food was fine and so ended our last evening in the United States of America. It's been a truly incredible trip and, with only a few hours in LA tomorrow, we only wish it could have gone for longer. We'll be leaving tomorrow (Monday) and we'll be home on Wednesday. See ya later, y'all! :)

Driving Big Sur

Friday

This day will be forever known as 'the most epic drive ever on Big Sur'. Big Sur is a 140 km stretch of road that follows the coast of California along the shores, cliffs, forests and farmland and is widely regarded as the most remote and inaccessible part of the country due to the fact that, once you're on it, there's no way to get off of it. It's a drivers paradise, with every turn giving yet another phenomenal vista that rival's anything we've ever seen. Our day was really around ten hours of driving punctuated with a lovely lunch in the middle of Big Sur at a local organic bakery where we had the most delicious custard filled doughnut ever. Throughout the drive we saw many eagles and vultures and, the best bit, ELEPHANT SEALS!

There's a whole part of the coastline that thousands of elephant seals have chosen to reside on whilst they breed and, as it turns out, it's pupping season now. As we were driving we realised the beaches looked odd because of the thousands of mammals lolling about on them, so we pulled over and had a delightful volunteer explain what we were seeing, as well as pointing out that some of them were less than two days old. Needless to say, I was thrilled. We continued the drive and tried (somewhat successfully) to take some photos of the surf and views.

After a very long day in the car we eventually found our way to our delightful little hotel a short stroll from Disneyland and, as we were unloading our luggage, the Disneyland fireworks began, which we could see perfectly from our stairs :) We settled in, went and got a late tea, and went back to our hotel for some much needed rest as we were exhausted.

I'm only borrowing your humvee

Thursday

Today we made a early start and headed to Muir Woods, the giant redwood forest just north of San Francisco. This was an amazing way to begin our day! These trees grow to be over 115m high and live for thousands of years. We had breakfast at the small cafe there before going on a short 4km 'hike' (wander) through this beautiful forest and we were lucky enough to see a woodpecker as well as a few other types of lovely birds that I didn't recognise. We were in the reserve for around two and a half hours, following which we needed some lunch so we drove back through the hills, stopping at a few viewing sites to get photos of the Golden Gate bridge on the way. We were exceptionally lucky with the weather so we decided to make the most of the rest of our delightfully sunny day.

With the roof down and being in the most ridiculous driving city, Andrew decided that we needed to stretch the car on one of San Fran's most famous and ludicrous streets; Lombard avenue. It's an insanely steep, heavily zig-zagged one way road down a very well kept street of gardens, which then rises steeply up to a lookout over the bay. I filmed it over the top of the windscreen – hopefully that turns out, because it was totally and utterly unlike anything else in the world.

We decided to see more of the city and pick up some carry on luggage to try and alleviate some of the strain on our very full bags, so we went into Chinatown and bought some cheap bags, dropped those back to our room, and went down to Union square for some our last shopping opportunity. We found another Uniqlo (yay) so we bought a few last items, looked into numerous other shops, and suddenly it was dinner time. The Golden Gate Grill seemed like a good and fitting end to San Fran. Giant hamburgers and assorted ribs, with chips and crème brulee to end, and we were done. Heading back to our hotel, we lamented that we only had two full days in such a wonderful city. Time to get ready for more epic driving tomorrow.

The epic drive and The Rock

Tuesday 7/1/14

Mental note: Buy flowers for hair...

We had an early check out, after some challenging shuffling of the many new items we had to try and find room for in out bags. Finally we set off on our longest drive from Vegas to San Francisco. With Stephen's (Fry) help we began our 8 hour journey across Nevada, into California and towards our second to last stop on our tour. We drove for a few hours and decided a break was needed, so we stopped in a place called Bakersfield for some lunch. We had some very average food at a burger place called Carl's Jr and, unsatisfied, I took the wheel of the car for the first time and after some practice laps of the car park, we headed onto the highway. It seemed that Andrew got lucky with the traffic, because as soon as I was behind the wheel, all of a sudden it was bloody trucks and heavy traffic for a hundred miles!

I eventually became somewhat relaxed with doing ludicrous speeds on the wrong side of the road in heavy traffic, but it's not something that felt comfortable and after two hours or so it was time for another rest. The most challenging thing for me was trying to adjust my sense of how wide the car was and the road position, as everything is reversed. We wanted to buy cowboy boots at some point, so we asked the GPS to find us a Boot Barn (the recommended boot shop) and we made our way to one that was en-route to San Francisco. We found it and, after much humming and ha-ing we both decided on some boots. It was also dinner time and Andrew wanted to try In-and-out burger. With one close by we went in and had perhaps the best fast food burgers of the trip so far. They only have about three items to choose from on the menu and they appear to do them well. Rested and satiated it was time for the final haul, which Andrew completed (the traffic magically disappearing) and we got into San Francisco at about 10.30pm that night. We were both exhausted so we went straight to bed, ready for our first proper day tomorrow.

Wednesday 8/1/14

Today was all about The Rock. We awoke in our (very basic) room early and printed off our tour passes for Alcatraz. The wharf to catch the ferry is about 3km from our hotel, so we decided to walk the streets and get a feel for the city on the way, and what a lovely city it is! The architecture is very similar to that of New York, but the addition of trams and the crazy streets make for a very different feel. People appear to be slightly more relaxed here (you can smell the 'relaxant' regularly) and the pace is calmer, with everything less crowded. It didn't take us long to find the dock and soon we were on the ferry to one of the most notorious islands in the world.

We disembarked, having taken some lovely shots of the bridges and bay area, to spend about three hours learning about the surprising history of the island, which began as a military base, before becoming a prison, then hosting a political protest which lasted for over a year, until finally being taken over by the National Parks and Wildlife people and being turned into a tourist attraction and bird sanctuary. Our tickets included the audio tour, which was excellent, and I'll admit a little part of me was slightly disappointed that Ed Harris and Sean Connery didn't feature more during our visit :) We wandered around ourselves for an hour or so before heading back down to the dock to catch the ferry back to the wharf.

A short ferry ride later and we were back on the mainland and looking for some food. We made our way to pier 39 and spent some time wandering from restaurant to restaurant deciding what we wanted. We settled on clam chowder (the local speciality) and fish and chips. The chowder was excellent, a bit like cream of chicken soup but slightly more seasoned and of course with seafood in it, plus potato, served in a sour-dough bun. The fish was a bit weird, no idea what kind it was. We had a great view of the marina whilst eating and Andrew pointed out that there were hundreds of sea lions gathered at the end of the pier. Very excited, we finished our meal and headed towards the viewing platform. It was lovely. Apparently, following the earthquake of 1932 the sea lions turned up and never left, no one really knows why. We watched them for a while then wandered the shops, grabbing some cinnamon doughnuts on the way, before heading back to our room for a brief rest (and to type this up). Now it's time to go and grab a light dinner and drink.  

Sin City: Vegas Part 2

So after a much needed rest (I'm feeling much better now) we headed to Burgr (sic), Gordon Ramsay's restaurant at Planet Hollywood for dinner. While Andrew waited in the considerable line, I went to the V theatre to pick up our tickets for Evil Dead the Musical. Almost a hour later we were seated and ready to order. We both got a milkshake and burger each and it was absolutely phenomenal. The shakes are served in a giant tall glass and consist of thickshake on the bottom, about six centimetres of pudding/custard on top, with whipped cream and a biscuit on top of that. Amazing! The burgers were also brilliant, on par with Fancy, but slightly greasier and bigger. (They were amazing - Andrew)

From way too much food we made our way to the musical. Sooooo glad we weren't in the splash zone, those people were horribly drenched in watered down fake blood. It was very funny and thoroughly enjoyable. You would need to have seen all of the films, as well as having a fairly sound knowledge of Raimi and Campbell's work to get all the jokes, but as we do we really enjoyed ourselves, and were close enough to the splash zone to get a few errant sprays ourselves. We stayed afterwards for a quick photo with Ash (the main character) before heading back to our hotel. A really fun night in Vegas. (I wish we were in the splash zone - Andrew)

Saturday

Today was a special day – we went and picked up our car. Andrew's Christmas present was that we upgraded the car to...a black Mustang convertible with all the options. So we now had a ridiculous American muscle car with which to traverse the country (I'm sure many photos will follow). We decided to use the new found car freedom to go shopping at the north outlet mall that day, so we set up the GPS (best invention in the world) and drove to the mall, a stressful experience that Andrew handled exceptionally well, with help from Stephen Fry. We spent about 4 hours shopping, buying Levi's, shoes and other cheap clothes, before heading back to pick up and do washing prior to my most anticipated show, Zumanity. 

We dumped our shopping, grabbed the laundry and went to a local laundromat, where we had some delicious Vietnamese food whilst waiting for our washing to be done. An our or so later it was finished and we made our way to New York New York for the seven o'clock show. Wow, it was stunning! It's a Cirque du Soleil show that I thoroughly recommend everyone see if given the chance. Sexy, funny and amazingly well put together with a live band as well as the performers, it's definitely one of the most incredible shows I've ever seen.

From the show we wanted to do some more driving so we headed to Caesar's Palace for a wander, having not visited before, and spent some time admiring the shops before heading back to our hotel. A brilliant way to spend an evening.

Sunday

We had a sleep in and then decided to do some more driving. To get in some practice we went to check out a WalMart, having heard a great deal about them but not actually having seen one. It's basically Big W, Bunnings, K Mart and Woolworths rolled into one giant store. We bought some socks and undies, some snacks and had a look around, but it's really just basic boring shopping.

We then headed back to the strip for more of a look around. We went and got some lunch and had a look in Marshall's, a cheap designer warehouse, but we didn't get anything. We had a general last wander of the strip and then went back to our hotel for a show.

Finally it was time for our final Vegas show, The Blue Man Group! They were excellent - it's hard to describe what they do - it's a mixture of performance art, audience participation, musical theatre and comedy, plus percussion fused with electronica. It was thoroughly immersive and really brilliant, I'd really recommend it for everyone, families included (there were many children present) and we were allowed to take some video (which might help to clarify my rather useless description).

Our last show done, we went upstairs to our room (it was in our hotel) and had an early night in preparation for tomorrow.

Monday

Road trip time! Today we began early, getting up and about, ready to head to Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon. We hopped in the car, put the roof down (who cares that it's cold, right!?) and headed onto the open road.

Hoover Dam is around 40 minutes from Vegas, so we made our way there through the mountains and had a relatively brief look around at this engineering marvel before getting back on the road. From the Dam it's approximately 4 hours to the South side of the Canyon in Arizona, the best part for the view apparently. What a giant, geographically spectacular place Arizona is! With music blaring, and flying along at 80mph (around 130km per hour) we passed up into the mountains, wound through the desert, back into scrub, up more mountains until reaching forest and (finally) getting to the canyon at about 4.15pm in the afternoon. I will say we pulled over around three hours into the trip to put the roof on when we saw that there was SNOW on the side of the road. It clearly gets very cold in the desert at 7000 feet.

We were panicked about losing the sun and practically ran to the lookout where we were greeted by a vista that is so breathtaking your mind has to expand to try and even conceive of it. You expect the canyon to be big, but it's very difficult to capture the vastness of the expanse and depth of the ravines in words. It's a truly awesome experience and one which was well worth the long drive. With the light fading we made our way onto a small 'path' and took some photos on an unprotected ledge we were able to (relatively) safely get to before we lost the light entirely and had to make the long drive home. It was freezing but we were both exhilarated by the experience of seeing such an amazing place. I was particularly happy because we also saw some deer with huge antlers on the side of the road, and a coyote ran across our path on the way back to the car.

Driving back was fine (Andrew discovered that the car is limited to 113mph) and as we pulled into the strip we decided our last meal (at about 10pm) should be something thoroughly terrible, so we went to the Cheesecake Factory at Caesar's Place. Some deep fried mozzarella, orange chicken and key lime pie cheesecake later and we were full to bursting, it was getting late and our last night in Vegas was coming to an end. We hadn't actually done any real gambling so we each took $1 and had about 15 minutes of fun on two of the old fashioned one-armed-bandit 1c machines. I won $1.83 and cashed in. Andrew lost his dollar. Tired but happy we drove back to the Monte Carlo to crash before another long day tomorrow.

Vegas, baby! Part1

Thursday 3/1/14

After about 5 hours sleep we woke up at 3am and got our shuttle to the airport. We got some breakfast of bacon, eggs, biscuit and grits then hopped on our plane with a stopover in Houston. We caught the shuttle to our hotel, The Monte Carlo and dumped our stuff before heading out on the strip. It's pretty amazing. We walked around a few hotels and checked out some shops before buying some discount tickets to see the Tournament of Kings at Excalibur. We then walked down to the Bellagio hotel and watched the fountain display, then headed back to Excalibur for the show. There was jousting, horse racing and sword fighting, all while we ate Cornish game hen and roast vegetables with our hands (no cutlery allowed). It was great. We then headed back to our room as we'd been up since 3am and were well and truly knackered.

Friday 4/1/14

We woke up around 9:30 but Jess' throat was killing her so we ended up sleeping until about 11am. We then went down and bought tickets for the Blue Man Group and Circ De Soleil's Zumanity. We walked over to the Mile Mall in Planet Hollywood and got some “breakfast” (it was 1pm by then) at Jamba Juice and checked out the shops. The mall has an indoor section that's painted to look like the sky, so you kinda think you're outside. Every half an hour it “rains” in a section of the mall. By this point Jess was starting to feel worse, so we went over to the Cosmopolitan hotel and got a free Margarita then won $15 on a Ghostbusters slot machine. Jess was done by this point so we went to check out the discount ticket stand and ended up getting tickets for Evil Dead: The Musical. I grabbed a couple of beers on the way back to our hotel (Sapporo) and Jess crashed out for a nap. Hopefully now I'll wake her up at 7:30 so we can go to Gordon Ramsay's Burgr bar and get some tasty food before out late show at 10:00. Tomorrow we pick up a car for the rest of our adventure.

Nawlins'

Sunday

An early morning and quick breakfast meant that it seemed that in no time we were saying goodbye to the most wonderful hosts and trying not to get too emotional. Thank you to Kathy and Doug for the card as well :)

We arrived in New Orleans in the late afternoon and had an interesting start to our stay in the big easy. On the shuttle from the airport our driver was regaling us with mildly amusing commentary, when he almost hit a skateboarder, prompting him to postulate about how skateboarders are the new 'organ donors' of the city, replacing motorcyclists (according to him). The group of four kids continued to skate next to the bus and at one point one of the kids bent over, exposing a colt .45 shoved in the back of his pants (a texan on board was quite certain of the type of gun). There was absolutely no threat or anything, but it was a somewhat unsettling reminder of where we were.

We checked in to our hotel and decided to explore. By this stage we needed some food, so we ended up wandering along Decatuer street and decided on getting some food at Emmaline's, a little pub with local beer. We had catfish jambalya, deep fried okra and dirty rice. Soooooo yummy. This kind of set the tone for the rest of our stay, meaning this bit of our trip was going to be all about the food. We explored some more and looked through some shops and just generally enjoyed the lovely atmosphere before heading back to our room, as we discovered that everything shuts very early on Sunday. There was quite the hiccough back in our room. Andrew was in the shower when we lost all hot water. It was after 11pm so we rang the front desk and they sent up an engineer. He came up about 5 minutes later and spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out the problem (while I'm in pj's and Andrew still has shampoo in his hair). It turned out that one of the boilers had gone out and it would take hours to fix, so we ended up packing up and moving to a new room at 11.30pm. This was very annoying, but on the plus side we were given a $50 credit on our account to make up for the inconvenience. An odd but good first day.

Monday

A beautiful day meant we had lots of time to wander the streets. We began by exploring Chartres and Bourbon streets, stopping on Ursulines at Croissant d'Or for croissants and coffee for breakfast. I wanted to see Elysian Fields so we walked the length of the French quarter and then some, past Frenchman street, and found it, took a photo of the sign, and made our way back to the quarter. We couldn't quite believe how quickly the and sharply the feel of the place changes immediately after Frenchman, so much so it would be comical if it weren't a real place where actual people live.

We walked back along the length of Frenchman street and turned down Royal to head back into the centre of the quarter. There are so many antique stores, clothing stores, galleries and interesting little shops to explore, and soon we were in need of lunch. We had a detour for a recommended record store, which was brilliant, and bought Conditions of My Parole before continuing. We stopped for a drink at the New Orleans Musical Legends park for mojito and mint julep (ugh, had no idea it was whiskey) before stopping at a little cafe for coffee and a scone. We continued our exploring, wandering past Jackson square and up and down almost every street in the quarter. There were quite a few street performers and it was lovely to see such amazing talent on display.

It became quite dark and again, shops were closing, so we went to the Jax brewery for some dinner. Wow, it was amazing. Andrew had a tasting plate of four local beers, and I had another mojito, and we decided to share a meal special they had as we've discovered that the portions here are beyond ridiculous. We had blackened red fish, gumbo and bread pudding for dessert. It was some of the best food we've ever tasted. The fish was incredible, the gumbo was delicious and I'm fairly sure I could eat bread pudding for a week and still want more. By this stage it was a bit late, so we decided that an early night was probably a good plan as tomorrow was New Years Eve. We finished up and then went back to our hotel, stopping by some more record stores on the way. A lovely day in a beautiful city.

New Years

We slept in to ensure we'd be up and about tonight, and decided to try a New Orleans speciality of beignets for breakfast and, after looking for a considerable time, we lined up for Cafe du Monde, a place that has been serving them sine 1862. They were excellent (though the coffee was ordinary) and they're a bit like hot cinnamon doughnuts except covered in icing sugar and a bit crispier. Delicious. The markets were next on our agenda, so we headed there and looked through the stands and decided to grab lunch there. Gator sausage on a stick and fried crawfish (yabbies) were delicious, and we had apple beignets for a dessert, before continuing our wander through the streets. We had no idea just how much a real chandelier costs (think $90000 and up).

It was getting really cold, so we popped back to the hotel to get our warm jackets, then we decided to walk back along the foreshore and find some dinner. There was one recommendation in the guide about a place called Coop's, so we went there. Yet again, incredible food. Andrew had cajun fried chicken, I had fried shrimp. Way too much food, but so yummy. We finished our drinks then went to the Allstate Sugarbowl Fanfest. This was basically a square that was taken over by football sponsors where there was a free concert and activities like kicking a goal etc. By signing up for emails, we both received free t-shirts, so that was a bonus. We stuck around for the last few songs of the last band, then made our way slowly along Bourbon street to soak up some of the New Years atmosphere, which was clearly in full swing. It turns out that you don't have to do anything to get beads, people just chuck them off balconies, so by the end of the street both Andrew and I were festooned with beads and we decided to kill some time back in our room before heading out for drinks and festivities closer to midnight.

Wow, the difference a couple of hours makes. Where it was fairly crowded and mildly sauced earlier, as we went out at 11pm to make our way to the banks of the Mississippi to see the fireworks, the crows were much bigger, rowdier and altogether more manic. There was a huge police presence and a really pumped atmosphere in spite of the rain. We grabbed a couple of drinks on the way and found a great spot on the river directly in front of the barge that had the fireworks. Unfortunately it began to rain somewhat heavily part way through the fireworks, but they were spectacular! They went for around 15 minutes and it was a brilliant way to ring in the new year. With the fireworks over and the crowds getting a bit much, we went and grabbed some wine and beer from the local supermarket, as well as some snacks, and went back to our room around 12.45am to watch some Parks and Rec and continue drinking in a quieter setting. A fantastic new years in all.

New Years Day

Sleep in! We got up late and decided that for our last day in the big easy we would go on a river cruise on the Natchez, the last original steam boat on the Mississippi. We paid for the lunch and river cruise so we were treated to a huge all you can eat buffet of jambalaya, catfish, okra, quiche, cornbread, sausage and bread pudding. This was our brunch so, with plates piled high with too much food, we spent two hours cruising up and down the Mississippi, enjoying the lovely live jazz band and exploring the boat. This was such a lovely way to spend the early afternoon and we'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone considering coming here.

Following our cruise we went past the Sugarbowl area and won some more free things, including gloves, a blanket, keyring and lip balm. We were fairly tired and, knowing that we'd need to be up at 3 am, plus having $50 on our account to use, we decided to head back to our hotel and type up some stuff and have dinner at the hotel. New Orleans is a brilliant, laid back, beautiful city with incredible food and welcoming people. We loved our time here.

Canada, eh!

Saturday

What a magnificent 6 days :) We were tense on the plane as we had been significantly delayed in Washington, and we had messaged Kathy and Doug on facebook but otherwise we had no way of letting them know that we were going to be late. When we arrived at Buffalo airport we couldn't see them but fortunately we had Kathy's mobile and we were able to call her. Serendipitously, they thought we were arriving tomorrow but they had checked facebook and in the dash to the airport they arrived about 60 seconds after we had collected our bags, meaning that they weren't stuck waiting for us and we weren't waiting for them.

A huge thank you to Kathy and Doug for welcoming us into their beautiful home. We were made to feel like a part of the family and it was a wonderful and magical Christmas that we were able to spend with all of you.

So we arrived the day before Christmas eve where we were introduced to Scamp (their beautiful puppy), Shannon and Steve, who were also staying, and we had a wonderful evening of sharing stories and meeting people, as well as sampling some Canadian fare at the famous Bugsy's. A lovely start to our time in Canada.

Sunday

Kathy made a magnificent breakfast of waffles with maple syrup (of course!) and we then began a day of pre-Christmas fun and relaxation. It was snowing quite heavily, so we were thrilled that we would indeed be having a white Christmas. We spent the day snacking on nuts n' bolts, an amazing mix of nuts, cereal, pretzels and chips baked in the oven, whilst watching the snow and getting to know everyone. We were joined by Kristen and Marty in the evening for dinner and had a lovely time reminiscing about Andrew's time spent here as a child. Due to the wonders of time travel we rang our parents in the evening to wish them Merry Christmas on their Christmas morning. We eventually got to bed in the early hours of the next morning.

Christmas day!

What a brilliant Christmas. The day began with crust-less quiche, home-made cinnamon scrolls and fresh fruit. This was followed by opening presents, during which we were extremely spoiled and received gifts of Canadian themed mittens, towels, clothing, cups and some very special syrup, as well as some lovely speciality beers! Feeling spoiled and very full we went for a walk in the snow with Scamp, accompanied by Shannon, Steve, Breanne, Kristen and Marty. We encountered some Canadian geese and saw Lake Ontario in its semi-frozen state. It was freezing but very beautiful.

We made our way back home for our Christmas dinner. We spent some time getting everything ready, elongating the table, making everything perfect, and then dinner began after our already large group was joined by Kathy's parents, Jan and Al, and their friends Kevin and Pat. With thirteen people ready for dinner we sat down to the magnificent feast that Kathy put together. Turkey, vegetables, mashed potato, squash, gravy, cranberry sauce and rolls comprised our dinner, followed by pumpkin and apple pies with cream for dessert, then some lovely home made truffles from Breanne for afters, as well as slices and biscuits as well. We were so stuffed full of the amazing food and wiled away the last of Christmas with some port and drinks until the early hours. A truly wonderful white Christmas.

Boxing day

A huge thank you to Shannon, Steve, Kristen and Marty for enabling us to have a brilliant day in Toronto. Steve and Shannon offered to give us a lift into Toronto to visit with Kristen and Marty who kindly offered to show us around the city. We piled into the truck and headed North to Toronto where we were shown around this beautiful city. We had a drink at Kristen and Marty's lovely apartment in a beautiful part of the city before heading to the Kensington markets, a very bohemian/hipster part of the city with some excellent shops and great street art. We all stopped for Jamaican meat patties (think a meat pasty) and then we headed to Rotate this, a record store where Andrew, Marty and Steve were left to their own devices as Kristen, Shannon and I explored some of the other boutique stores. After returning to the store and assessing the damage (Rush, Queens of the Stone Age and MC5) we decided to get poutin, a Canadian delicacy.

The first place we went to was closed so we went to another lovely fish and chip shop (not like the ones at home) where we had local beer and meals and we were able to sample the poutin. This chip, cheese curd and gravy combo was pretty amazing (though I only had a bite as I don't like gravy) and I can see why it's popular in this place of ridiculous cold! We then headed back to the apartment and said goodbye to Shannon and Steve, who were on their way to visit other relatives, and then we continued to explore the local area. We wandered down to the local castle and marvelled at the amazing architecture, as well as the astonishing icicles that had formed on the trees and railings as the temperature dropped. Fairy lights and icicle adorned trees and homes now make perfect sense. We went back to Kristen and Marty's to warm up before heading towards Union Station to catch the train back to Burlington where we would be picked up. Again, thank you to Kristen and Marty for being excellent guides for our brilliant day in Toronto. We found Kathy and Doug at the station (after some time as we'd gone to the wrong exit) and went back home to thaw out after our excellent day.

Friday

Today was about Butterflies. Breanne joined Kathy, Doug and us on an excursion to the botanic gardens to visit the Butterfly house, so we drove up into the snow covered mountains, stopping at he monument to Brock (a Canadian hero) before making our way to the exhibit. On the way we saw some of the very picturesque homes and buildings in Niagra, as well as the lovely place where Kathy and Doug were married. We made our way into the butterfly house after leaving our coats and spent just over an hour taking many photos of the beautiful butterflies and flowers in the garden. One of the huge blue morpha's took a liking to Andrew and sat on his shoulder for most of our time in the garden. It was quite surreal looking outside of the glasshouse to snow covered and dormant gardens whilst being in a tropical and humid climate.

After leaving the butterflies we then drove to see the whirlpool, a 90 degree point of the Niagra river where the water plunges over one mile down beneath the surface of the water in a powerful whirlpool at the corner bend before continuing over the falls further downstream. Amazing. We drove back past the phenomenal falls themselves and up through the town before dropping Breanne at work and heading home for a lovely roast for tea. The pot roast was yet another tribute to Kathy's exceptional culinary skills, and afterwards we made our way to Bill and Sharon's lovely new house in Niagra wine country for drinks and a catch up. We enjoyed some delicious ice wine and admired their huge tree and lovely dog Maya, as well as being treated to a look at Bill's most prized possession, a metallic cherry red 1980's Corvette. We didn't stay too late and headed home for a last cup of tea and another excellent day in Canada was ended with drinks and conversation into the late evening.

Saturday

Today was all about the falls. Kristen and Marty once again offered to be our unofficial tour guides and came and took us out for our day of touring the spectacular Niagra falls. Kathy sent us off after an excellent breakfast of french toast, eggs and maple syrup and we drove back into Niagra falls to see them close up. They are truly breathtaking and it was an awesome experience to stand a metre away from the edge and watch the millions of tonnes of water hurtling over the precipice to plunging depths below. As we walked along the path every few steps offered a stunning new vista that no picture will be able to capture fully. We took our time admiring both the horseshoe and American falls from many angles, marvelling at the beauty and roar of these incredible natural monument to the power of nature. We then decided to take the journey behind the falls, so we went down into the tunnels carved into the rock behind the falls where there were various portals and lookouts from which you could see the rushing wall of water and hear the thunderous roar even through the thousands of tonnes of rock. It was phenomenal.

Following our up close look at the falls we thought it would be fun to go on the skywheel and see what the views were like. We sampled some Tim Horton's (a Canadian coffee and doughnut place) and then went on the huge Ferris wheel, which had air-conditioned glass gondolas which offered the best views yet of both the American and Horseshoe falls. We went around 5 times and once we got off the light was fading and we decided it was the perfect end to a day in Niagra. On our walk back to the car we were able to admire some of the light displays in the park and a friendly black squirrel came over to say hello (which I was very excited about). We made a short stop at the Levi's outlet, though we figured we'd wait until Vegas, before Kristen and Marty dropped us back home. Again, a huge thank you to both of you for the magnificent day out!

In celebration of Kathy and Doug's 28 year anniversary and our last night we went out to dinner at a really delicious Thai restaurant where we feasted on Pud Thai, cashew nut chicken, green curry chicken and basil beef, plus a selection of entree's and drinks. It was a delightful evening and a really wonderful final night in Canada. Both of us went to bed that night knowing that we would miss Kathy, Doug, their wonderful home and fabulous family for quite some time. As ever, if any of you find yourselves down under, just say the word and you'll be set up in Adelaide any time. Thank you for making our Canadian experience so magnificent.