New York

We travelled by train from Montreal to New York, 13 hours on a train that seemed to be moving at snails pace! It was quite an excruciating experience, but WEggie and I entertained our selves by listening to iPods and watching DVD's. The good thing about the Amtrack train was that there was a powerpoint next to our seat, so we weren't relying on just 5 hours worth of battery power! We arrived in New York at approximately 9:00pm and caught the subway to our hostel where Weggie and I went straight to bed.

New York Day Two
We started this day by catching the subway to the Empire State Building, we qued in line for an hour and a half, first to get tickets, then to get in the elevators which take you to the 86th floor, we bought a pre recorded Audio Tour "Tony The Cab Driver", and walked around the top of the Empire State Building, pressing in the numbers and then gazing at the view as Tony explained what we were seeing and a little bit of the history about each landmark.

After the Empire State Building we again made a stop at a Library for more Blog updating, then walked to Times Square, which really does look just like it does in all the movies! We tried to line up for tickets to Wicked, our general admission theatre performance of choice, but after finding out that it wasn't showing on Monday night, we instead went to the Movies... again and saw Zoom a new Tim Allen Super Hero Teen Flick.
We had dinner at Cafe Europa and then went back to the Hostel for a relatively early night.

New York Day Three
We hit the Rockerfeller Centre first thing this morning where Weggie and I treated ourselves to Ben and JErry's ice-cream before going outside for a photo oportunity.

After snapping our shots, we went to the NBC Store and signed up for an NBC Studio tour.
A lot of my favourite shows are produced by the NBC, Law and Order, Will and Grace, Scrubs, Saturday Night Life, just to name a few, so it was very interesting to ge to go into the studio and see the behind the scenes of a few of the sets. Unfortunately we didn't get to see any famous people, and photography of the sets was strictly prohibited, we werent' even allowed to have our cell phones turned on at all during the tour.
We had lunch at Rockerfeller, before catching the subway to the Guggenheim. The exhibit at the Guggenheim was Zaha Hadid's work, she's an architect who's designs are all very sculptural and futuristic in nature. It was quite an interesting exhibit, which both Weggie and I think Julian and Monie would have loved.
After Guggenheim we walked to the Met so that Weggie could buy a painting for her mum, then we caught the subway back to Broadway so we could try to line up for General Admission Tickets to Wicked.
We put our names down for a lottery, and waited around to hear the results, not surprisingly our names weren't drawn, however upon enquiring at the box office if their were any seats available in the next 2 nights, we discovered that there were some, rather pricey, but good seats available.
$250 a piece later Weggie and I were the proud owners of tickets, Row F Centre Seats to Wicked on 16/08/2006. We bought the tickets on the proviso that this would be the only broadway show we see while in New York.

New York Day Four
Weatherwise, today was perfect for a trip to New Yorks most well known land mark.
We caught the Subway to South Ferry Station, and after a short walk to Battery Park and the Clinton Castle, we bought tickets to both Liberty Island and Ellis Island.
We disembarked and had lunch in a shaded spot on Liberty Island before taking a stroll around the great lady herself, she's really rather impressive, if a little smaller than she appears in all the films and such.

Time seemed to pass quite quickly on Liberty Island, becuase very soon we found we needed to get back on the boat, we sailed arround Ellis Island, opting not to get off the boat because I desperately wanted a shower before going to Wicked that night.
We spent a great deal of time waiting in line for the Ferry, and finally arrived back in Battery Park at about 4:00, we had a look at some of the creations in the stalls at the park before heading back to our hostel to get ready for our night on Broadway.
We got back to Time Square by 6:30 and had dinner at Cafe Europa before strolling up 5th Avenue to 51st Street and the theater where Wicked was being held.
As we were walking along 5th Avenue we happened to pass the WWE Programming Truck... i was so tempted to hang around and see if i could spot any of my favourite wrestlers, but we had a broadway show to get to, so i had to content myself with just looking from afar, i found out from a roadie that it was the Finale of the Diva Search, so i wasn't too sad that i'd missed it.
We arrived at the theatre with a little time to spare so we bought some souvenirs, an umbrella for me and a program for Weggie, then went inside to wait for seating.
It was an absolutely amazing performance! The Show was awesome, one that I definitely intend to see again when it comes to Aus. Elphaba, the main character had such a powerful voice and i just loved the story line!


New York Day Five
Our last day in New York for me was spent in bed, unfortunately I've come down with a cold and since we'd pretty much done all we wanted to do in New York I took the opportunity to rest up while I could, in hopes of beating this cold before it really sets in!
Weggie however flew solo and visited a couple of places that weren't on our itinerary and did some shopping along the way.
She tells me that she had a great time and I'll be sure to get her to put in a blog entry telling exactly what she did.

Hey its Weggie i'm suppose to tell you what i did the day without Taz so here goes;

I took the train down to Ground Zero if they had started doing stuff to the area, they've fixed the train station there and started to fill in the hole hopefully soon they'll decide what to build.

I then went to Century 21 which is a huge discount store, there i bought some designer stuff for my parents. Then i went back up to Fifth Ave to do some more shopping at the NBA Store and checked out the famous toy store Fao Schwarz which was in the film BIG with Tom Hanks. I even saw the piano that he does the famous chopstick skit on.
From there i walked along Central Park to Broadway and caught the train back to the hostel.

Montreal

We caught the train from Toronto to Montreal, the trip was approximately 5 and a half hours, so we arrived at about 2:30. We had intended to go on the Old Montreal Ghost Tour, but neither Weggie or I were feeling up to it after travelling on a train all day, so instead we went to the movies and saw Step Up.
It was quite strange being in Montreal, becuase i knew that there would be people speaking French when we got there, but I didn't think that French was going to be the main language, so much so that all the signs and such were in French and if you were lucky there was the occassional English Translation.
Anyway we went back to the hostel after the movie and had an early night.

The next morning after a sleep in, we went to the Library to update our blog, which proved problematic becuase the computer kept on freezing every time we tried to load a photograph. After the library we travelled to the pier where we would be taking the Old Montreal Ghost Tour.

We had an early dinner and listened to a live musician doing a whole list of popular cover songs, before buying tickets for the Ghost Tour.
The Ghost Tour was a bit of a let down, becuase rather than being taken to old buildings in Montreal and told the history of them, the tour ended up being self guided, and you walked to 4 stops on the water front where actors were dressed up in make up and costume, and did a short monologue on ghosts of Montreal.
The whole thing was kinda lame, but i do have to give credit where credit's due... it can't be easy having to play the rolls to an unresponsive audience. Especially an audience who is cut that they've just paid $16 for a tour which turns out to be self guided. They deffinitely need to advertise better what their offering, because I'm sure Weggie and i wouldn't have done that tour if we'd realised what it was. Having said that, once we got over the shock, it was an enjoyable evening, and the second "Ghost" that we saw was quite funny.


After the tour, Weggie and i went on a horse drawn carriage ride around Old Montreal, where we finally got to see some of the sights and building that Montreal is so well known for.
All in all Montreal was a bit of a bust, but at least i can say I've been there now, and I don't really feel the need to go back.

Toronto

We arrived in Toronto on the 7/08/2006 and were picked up from the airport by Pat and Don, now Pat and Don, are a lovely Canadian couple who are friends of my family through my parents, I first met Pat and Don when I was 12 years old and was lucky enough to travel to Hong Kong for my birthday on one of my dad's business trips.
They have been kind enough to let my older brother Scott and my cousin Jordy stay at their place over the years, and now that they've had me and Weggie, all they need is my cousin Dani and my brother Robert and fiance Mei to have a full set!
Dinner in Toronto consisted of a wonderful series of home cooked barbeque dinners, eaten out on the patio at the back of Pat and Don's house over looking their beautiful floral garden, and the meal was made infinitely better by the abundance of chatting and catching up we had to do. Word of the wise... boy can these Canadian's talk! Pat in particular but Don can hold his own!
Our first night and the consecutive ones were spent in real beds, a double upstairs for me and a single downstairs for Weggie. It was so nice to have a real bed to sleep in that I felt quite spoilt by the whole affair, especially when coming down to breakfast each morning and finding a proper place setting and breakfast all ready for us. Pat and Don were wonderful hosts who we can't thank enough for putting up with us for 4 days.
On to the activities of Toronto.
Toronto Day Two
Don drove us into work with him and let us use his computer to upload some photographs onto our Blog. Once we were done with that we walked to the CN Tower where we had lunch in the revolving restaurant. It took 72 minutes to make a full circuit, so we had a leisurely meal, that was a little over priced for the quality, but all part of the experience!
And the views of Toronto were simply magnificent.

After lunch we caught the subway to the Bata Shoe Museum which would have to be my favourite museum to date!
There's just something about shoes that is bound to strike any woman's fancy, even if they don't want to wear the pretty shoes, most of us are more than happy to look at them.
My favourites were the 18th Century slippers, closely followed by the themed shoes from television, fairy tales, or the outrageous platforms and colours of the 60's and 70's.

We caught the subway back to Pat and Don's area and walked about three or four blocks to their house arriving home at exactly the same time as Don, talk about timing!

Toronto Day Three
Today Pat and Don took Weggie and I to Niagara Falls, the drive took approximately 2 hours, so we arrived by 11:00 - 11:30 after a short scenic drive past both the American and Canadian Falls and onto the Hydro Plant above the falls.
Weggie and I then went on the Maid of the Mist Boat Tour which consisted of us putting blue garbage bag rain coats over our clothes and being taken right up close to the base of the falls, both American and Canadian, where we had the pleasure of being drenched by the spray. As you can imagine, i couldn't see very much after the first few minutes, what with my glasses being covered with water, but it was well worth the experience, just to get wet on such a hot day!


Weggie and I met back up with Pat and Don breifly after the boat tour and decided to meet at 4:30, which would allow Weggie and I to get some touristy stuff out of the way... so of course we went to Madame Tuesaudes Movie Land where after viewing the wax models we decided to go through the haunted/horror section.
Now I'm always the first to run head first into these horror sections, often dragging Weggie behind me, and this was no exception, the only difference between this experience and previous ones was that this Horror section was really good!
I was genuinely freaked out! To start off with it was quite dark with bright flashing lights, like strobe lights. Intermittently bursts of air would blow at you from random points, the floor shook at one stage, and the worst of it was the mirrors. It was like fun house mirrors but scarier because the strobe was going, the wind was blowing, and you kept on coming up against dead ends. I spent half of my time shrieking and the other half laughing, until finally we escaped into the gift shop where I went almost into hysterics i was laughing that hard. Weggie didn't stop glaring at me for at least half an hour.


After Movie Land we went on 3 4D simulator rides and an over the Falls Simulator ride. I swear I must have been on an adrenalin high becuase every time the ride moved or shook me I bust out giggling. I'm pretty sure Weggie wanted to smack me one by the end of the first ride, but luckilly for me she refrained.
We stopped for a Sundae at the Hardrock Cafe, before meeting back up with Pat and Don and driving to the Whirlpool Rapids for a photo opportunity and then on to the Patio Bar and Grill for a devine dinner which Pat and Don once again paid for.



Toronto Day Four
Since Thursday was our last day in Toronto and we'd gotten all the touristy things out of the way, we decided to just have a relaxing one. We started off by going to the post office and sending some stuff home, for Weggie it was all the breakable souvenirs that she'd bought, for me it was half of my suit case, yep, once again i've packed way, way, way too much!
After that Pat drove us to Yorkdale Mall, where Weggie and I went to a movie, and then did a little shopping before heading back to the Jeffreys.
We got Pat and Don some matching placemat and plate sets from Williams and Sinoma as a thank you for their wonderful hospitality, and presented them to them that night after dinner.
Our last night in Toronto, after chatting for a while with Pat and Don was spent watching DVD's of 21 Jumpstreet on the television downstairs, all in all a nice relaxing way to end our Toronto Tour!

Vancouver

We left Victoria on the 4th for Vancouver, we travelled by bus and ferry to the Vancouver Depot. We booked the whole journey through the one company and it was lucky we did becuase if we'd caught a bus to the ferry terminal and tried to get our own ferry transport we would have found ourselves having to wait until 7:00 at night, becuase every ferry leading up to that point had already sold out as of 2:00pm. We caught the 2:45 bus and basically travelled straight through.
I sat out in the sun for the ferry crossing, while Weggie was inside bubble wrapping the breakable souvenir's that she'd bought so far on our travels, when she was finished she came out to join me in the sun.
When we reached Vancouver and had booked into our hostel, we went out to dinner to Denny's before heading back to the hostel in order to call our mothers.
Day two of Vancouver found us buying tickets on a Hop-On, Hop-Off Vancouver Sight Seeing bus, the good thing about these tickets was that they were a two day pass, so we basically had all the public transport that we needed around Vancouver, with the added benefit of a sight seeing guide! (In this instance it was pre recorded, but still highly entertaining).
We went to the Vancouver Art Museum and saw and Exhibit on the Raven People, Native American Indians. The pieces were amazing, which you'll have to take my word for becuase I couldn't get photographs. My favourite pieces were the masks or anything carved out of this ebony coloured wood.
It was too late to go to Stanley Park that afternoon so we rescheduled for the next morning.
We caught the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus to Stanley Park, a wonderful public park in Vancouver, which had free admitance and beautiful scenery.
We went on a horse drawn carriage ride around the East Side of Stanley Park. The carriage was drawn by two horses, Smokey and Bandit.
One of the things that we saw at the park were totem poles. Totem Poles are actually a very common sight all throughout Canada.

Another thing we saw while we were on our horse drawn tour was this sculpture below. The sculpture is called "Girl in a Wetsuit", when the park was built, they actually wanted to have a replica of the "Little Mermaid" sitting on the rock, but they were not given permission, so they therefore had the Girl in a Wetsuit piece commissioned.

After the horse drawn tour we walked up to the aquarium, we figured that since we'd missed goign to the one in Seattle we'd better add an Aquarium visit in Vancouver.
The below image is a Beluga Whale, kinda ugly in my opinion, but the import of this photograph is that they used this very same spot to shoot a scene in Stargate... and no the scene wasn't about the damn whale, it was just a meeting place for Sam and Pete. And no I won't go into any more detail, you who have no idea who Sam and Pete are, are probably very happy with that fact.

This picture is of a sea otter at the Vancouver Aquarium, the sea otters were really cute, we got to see them when they were feeding. They pick up the fish, then float on their backs and eat with their heads out of the water. Apparently they will eat their own body weight in food in a single day, becuase they have a really fast metabolism.

In Canada, this year it was the year of the bear, i believe when my parents were in Canada they had moose, well we've been seeing all sorts of painted and character bears all over Canada, but it wasn't until we saw the bear below that we really felt like having our pictures taken with it. Yep, this would be our favourite bear, Darth Veda Bear!

We went to Granville Public Market after Stanley Park, but it wasn't what we were expecting, we've come to realise that the Canadian and American's ideas of what a market is is vastly different from the Australian Idea. Instead of outside stores with relatively cheeped priced produce, this was all inside a building, and well a bit of a disappointment. But regardless Weggie and i had a good time and are looking forward to getting to Toronto tomorrow and seeing my familie's friends Pat and Don!

Victoria, CA

We caught the ferry across to Victoria today, can i just say how bizarre it is to be in Victoria but not in Australia!!!
We had lunch as soon as we got off the ferry and then we went on a bus tour of Victoria. Victoria is one of the most beautiful cities i've ever seen, it is known as the Garden City, while our Victoria is known as the Garden state, how freaky!
After the bus tour we went to the Royal Wax Museum, relaxed by the water for an hour or so, before going to Miniature world.

The below photographs is of the Empress a posh hotel in Victoria, we caught our sight seeing tour from the bus stop in front of this place.











Below are a couple of images from the Wax Museum and Miniature World.












The next day we went whale watching where we actually saw some Orca in their natural habitat!
There are two types of Orca, "Transient", the kind that eat meat, such as seals, penguines and sometimes baby Gray Whales, these are the ones that have given Orca the name of Killer Whale. These Orca usually travel in small numbers and do not mix with the other type of Orca, the "Resident" Orca, which travel in large family groups, called Pods.
There are three pods which use the San Juan Islands as a hunting ground, due to the salmon runs. These are called J Pod, K Pod and L Pod. We were lucky enough to see K and L Pod swimming past our boat. Orca can swim up to 100 miles in an hour, so the photographs we got are mostly just of their fins sticking out of the water. However we did get a good shots of me dressed up in my Whale Watching Gear! Weggie calls me the yellow marshmellow. :(













After the whale watching we went to Butchart Gardens, an absolutely amazing place. It was lovely walking in the shaded Japanese Garden, or sitting under a pergola looking out at the rose Garden. We've included a picture of the map as well as the pictures we took of the gardens.


The next day before we caught the bus to Vancouver, we visited Craigdarroch Castle, which was built by a man who sadly enough died before the castle was completed.

Seattle

We caught the plane to Seattle on the 30th, and after waiting in the airport for 4 hours for luggage that did not show, we finally caught a shuttle to our hostel before walking to the water front and having dinner at a posh restaurant called Ivars, the food was divine, Weggie having chowder and i had rib eye steak.
The next day we went to the Science Fiction Museum, the Experience the Music Project and the Space Needle, they were all very interesting, but the Science Fiction Museum, which i`m sure you`ve noticed was not on our itinerary was an awesome find!
This is the outside of the Experience Music Project and the Science Fiction Museum, they are heald in the same facility, this is supposed to look like two broken guitars from above. We didn`t get a shot from above so you`ll all have to use your imaginations.





This is a picture of Weggie and i at the top of the Space Needle.










The next day we went on a land and water tour of Seattle, going past such places as the Pike Place Market, and also the Salmon farm where they harvest the Salmon each year as it make`s its run to the breeding grounds.
After going on the bus we caught a boat around Seattle Locks, however because of the beautiful sunlight and the gentle rocking of the boat, both Weggie and I fell asleep about half way into the boat tour, becuase of this there are really no photographs, but it was all very beautiful!

San Fransisco

My suitcase arrived on the 1st of August, after 6 days without any luggage it has finally arrived and the first thing i realise as i carry the monstrosity up stairs is that i have way way way over packed. I'll have to send some stuff home when we get to Torronto!
So enough about the suit case issue, on to the holiday which has in fact gone very well regardless of the little suit case hitch.
On the 28th we went to the Asian Art Museum and looked at some fabulous desplays of art through out the ages, we saw work from Japan, Persia, China just to name a few. After the Art Museum we caught the bus to the Japanese Tea Gardens where we walked around for a while oohing and aahing at the beautiful garden artwork. We had a traditional Japanese tea there, it was all very relaxing. Below are a couple of photographs that we took... yes, finally some photographs!









You should be able to click on the images to make them bigger.
The next day after the Japanese Tea Garden we went on the Bay Cruise. It was an enjoyable and somewhat informative tour which told us a little bit of the history of San Francisco. There was an amusing aduo commentary by `Captain Nemo` who was very strongly American and had retired his days as a Submarine Captain. We sailed around the islands, under the Golden Gate Bridge and past Alcatraz. Unfortunately we couldn`t go onto Alcatraz because the tour for that was sold out until the next Tuesday. More Photo`s!










We went to Chinatown that night and it was just as bright and colourful as it is in the movies, then it was back to the hostel for our last night in San Fransisco.