McPlassmann Honeymoon

I wasn't quite prepared for the degree of French dominance in French-speaking Canada - so it has taken me a day or two to adjust mentally to the language barrier. Hester, of course, has taken it all in her stride after some initial doubts. Her language skills still continue to amaze me.

Driving east from Toronto along the lake into the province of Quebec and our first stop in Montreal was straight and boring - real flood plains and swamp/marshes, dual carriage way the whole way along.

As soon as we crossed the border into the province of Quebec it was BOOM - French everything! The marked difference surprised me a lot - in the rest of Canada, virtually everything is dual labelled in English/French. But not in Quebec - with typical French arrogance, not a single road sign is dual labelled in English, despite the rest of Canada doing the right thing by dual-labelling in French.

The difference is so marked, I would suggest it feels like a completely different country. Walking down the street in Montreal the majority of people speak French. The streets and buildings are very European in architecture and the style and fashion of the ppl walking down the streets hits you. The fashionistas really come out in this place - beautiful people everywhere.

Montreal, especially Old Montreal is very nice, lots of al fresco dining and a shopping paradise down the main street. We only had one night there, but enjoyed it thoroughly. Montreal is a mis-mash of English and French languages - in a cafe we stopped in at, the ppl working there conversed in a combination of French and English!

We made the most of our short time in Montreal and then continued east towards Quebec City - known simply as Quebec - which is about a 3hr drive. We moved on with a little trepidation - from what we'd read, and heard from locals, Quebec ppl tend to only converse in French and won't even bother speaking English to you... as it turns out, thats not really true in our experience - as long as you make an effort to converse in French initially. Luckily, I have Hester

Compared to Montreal Quebec is really a town, not a city - Montreal has a population of around 3.9million, whereas Quebec is only 190,000. From what Ive read, it swells due to tourism tho, which is not surprising once you see the place.

The Old Town in Quebec is North Americas only walled city - and is on the U.N.'s World Heritage listing. It's spectacularly European, with old cobble-stoned streets and beautiful buildings. We wandered the old town today and being quite compact everything is within walking distance.

The French-ness of this place is really something - I (perhaps) naively expected "French Canada" to be like the rest of Canada but with some citizens simply speaking French, but really being a true dual-language country. However, it seems the French-speakers very strongly hold on to their heritage and everything is exceptionally French dominated as a result. They really could break off Quebec into its own country and not much would change IMO. I wonder how much seperation the rest of Canada feels from Quebec and vice-versa.

We will find somewhere nice for dinner tonight, then tomorrow we're flying to NYC for some shopping and the real NY experience. I have no doubts it will be somewhat different to our French-Canada experience!

Canada has been great - we'd recommend it to anybody - the diversity of the place is great and the Canadian Rockies is definitely something not to be missed.

We'll write next from the Big Apple!

Craig and Hesti

Next day we were heading down to Niagara Falls - we picked up our car at Hertz in the supposedly downtown location that took about 30mins to get to and a taxi driver that kept repeating the street number - very encouraging. Luckily we didnt get too lost, but I think he had a genetic abnormality that prevented him putting his foot on the accelerator for more than 2secs. It was a bit of a jerky trip.

So we picked the car up - no Toyota Matrix sadly - a grandma Corolla. Still a Toyota I guess - Ive always lauded the Toyotas brilliant reliability - my MR2 attests to this! (Sime, shut up).

We drove down Niagara Falls, only about a 90min trip without much trouble navigation wise, due to my wonderful map-girl-german. Efficiency at its best! When we arrived at Niagara, we found the car was making a great grinding noise from the gearbox. So off to Hertz we go - the sound wasnt instilling me with much confidence for a 1000km drive over the next two days. The guy at Hertz was somewhat helpful and to cut a long-ish story short, we drove back up the highway to St Catharines to get a replacement for the SHITTY TOYOTA. Guess what we got as a replacement - a Ford Taurus!! A BOAT - Sime, youd be right at home... hahaha.

So with me making Jeremy Clarkson-esque (Top Gear fans, will get this) GRRRRRs and POWWERRRRR noises down the highway, we went back to Niagara and checked out these fabled falls....

Which are pretty awesome just by themselves. The power of those falls is pretty impressive - as is the spray and the sudden hit of cold air blown off all that water. But being so close to the USA border, I think that part of Canada must have been infected by American Trash. I was naively expecting the falls, looking spectacular, in a national park, removed a little bit from civilisation. Maybe a bit like the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains at home - but nope, the Niagara Falls are surrounded by hotels, theme park rides, sideshow alley, and general touristy ugliness.

Its a pity they cant be celebrated for the falls themselves, rather than building kitschy, gaudy theme parks and stores because the falls dont seem to be enough to capture the attention and interest of Americans.

Happily, we had a fantastic meal at a local restaurant with sublime steaks, great wine and a friendly waiter who was the first to recognise my accent is Australian. We tipped him generously, especially thanks to his great recommendation for the Chocolate Heaven dessert... mmmmmmmmmmm.

Next day, drove the long trip up to Montréal (about 700ks - same as Canb to Melb I guess) which just doesnt compare to The Rockies in the scenery stakes.

Last time we left you we were heading out to the theatre - Phantom of the Opera - which was great - Hesti says it was more than great. I think she cried. Freak.

No seriously, it was very good, the lead who played the Phantom had 10-years experience in the role and theatre all around the world and I thought he was brilliant. Christine, the main female character, was also great, but sadly no Emmy Rossum

We spent most of our full day in Toronto exploring the city and shopping - H&M for me and Hester bought NOTHING! muhahaha I win for once!

Toronto seems like a very cosmopolitan city, I quite liked it - The CN Tower is a big block of concrete that is actually a tv-radio tower - thats been done before!! (Telstra tower anybody). Sorry about the lack of punctuation and no question marks I cant work this stupid french keyboard out. damn frogs!

We got asked multiple times whether we want tickets - for what we wondered - the baseball apparently. We assumed ice hockey, since everybody is ice hockey mad over here, but there you go...

After the theatre we went and had a drink at a pub just downstairs from our hotel that was pretty cool - it had about 30-40 beers from all around the world - ALL on tap - how insane is that. I had an Erdinger in honour of my inherited German heritage and we both laughed on our way out at the replica of a stone statue of a child *pissing* in a fountain pool. Hester said its called maneken piss and is well-known in Belgium. I think its just a bastardisation of the english ManCanPiss - what do you think.

Next blog entry coming right up!

Onwards from Kelowna to Banff - a 6.5-7hr drive ahead of us right through the heart of the Rocky Mtns. Yes it was a long drive but WOW the scenery is absolutely spectacular.

I didn't realise that there would still be so much snow around up in the Rockies, but every mountain top was snow capped, and travelling through Rogers Pass we got snow falling!! Now to you lot in Germany, snow might be a bit of a regularity in winter, even a bit boring, but to me, it's just exciting!! Hester thought I was a bit weird that I liked the snow so much - I thought she'd be used to my weirdness by now

We stopped at Lake Louise about 1hr before we got to Banff and despite being tired from the long drive, it was nice to get out of the car and checkout the lake that is up on the wall in Hester's office at Student Flights (that she's been looking at for the last year!!).

The funny thing is, Lake Louise (despite still being spectacular) was FROZEN so we couldn't see the tuquoise blue colour that Hester was so looking forward to seeing - ah well, can't have it all - it was snowing again a bit while we were there, but that just added to the atmosphere. I loved it - the photos really don't do it justice.

Banff is a little tourist/resort town that is apparently absolutely overflowing with tourists in the height of Summer and Winter - we're in the low season at the moment, so it wasn't too busy at all which was actually quite nice. It's a very pretty town, surrounded by spectacular snow-capped peaks everywhere you look.

We stayed in Fairmont Banff Springs - a castle about 2km out of town that the Lonely Planet defines as The Top End of Town - "THE place to stay in Banff" - yep that's where we're staying!! Hester sweet talked the reception lady and we got upgraded to a room with a million dollar view of the valley and we were happy campers!

We went out for dinner that night, and upon coming back to our room, we found the front-desk had left a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket for us on the house! Can't complain about that - the service at the hotel overall was just great and is certainly a special place to stay. I doubt we would ever be able to afford it in the high season tho!

It would have been nice to spend a little bit longer in Banff at the area, but I'm sure we'll come back one day - it's one of those places that just begs to be explored more. In an attempt to make the most of our time in Banff in the full day we had, we checked out the town in the morning and in the afternoon we drove an hour out of town towards Lake Louise and drove part of the "Icefields Parkway" - Lonely Planet says its "the most spectacular road in North America" - big wraps.

We drove out to Lake Peyto (well we think it was Peyto, but we didn't see any signs), that like Louise, was frozen, but still looked grand. Randomly, we stumbled across this little lodging/cafe near the lake that was built in the old log-cabin style and had a very yummy tomato soup and warm drink. It was snowing *really* heavily by this time and the randomness of our find made for a great meal and experience - definitely one to remember.

We made our way back to Banff with perfect timing to make Hester's appointment for a massage at the nearby Spa, while I went off to explore the castle grounds and resort a bit more and get ripped off by their internet ($5.60 for 10mins!!).

There's more to tell - we're in Toronto now after flying in late last night and there will be a blog entry to tell that story - but I must go and get changed for the Theatre tonight - we saw signs for "The Phantom of the Opera" that's playing in town, and we managed to get tix for the show tonight. I have to beautify myself

Hope everybody is well in Aussieland, Siegerland and anywhere else you are in the world!

Craig and Hester

It's been a while since we blogged about our travels, but that doesn't mean there hasn't been a lot to talk about - there has! Internet is quite expensive in Banff, so we just quickly checked emails while we were there and saved all our travel stories for later.

So leaving Vancouver, we picked up the car from Hertz - a virtually brand new Toyota "Matrix" (yes, I am The One) which ran like a charm - no overheating engines for me this time!!!

The drive from Vancouver to Kelowna was about 4hrs - not a bad run and pretty scenic country. A friendly local advised us to stock up on fuel between Hope and Merritt as there was virtually nothing between there and the advice came in handy. Going over the mountains there's not much around. We planned to get a bite to eat for lunch in Merritt and upon turning off we trawled through this backwater ghost town (I swear the tumbleweeds were literally blowing past us in the wind). The town's claim to fame was "Country Music Capital" so you get the idea. It was a sunday so probably explains the ghost town bit, but we hastily beat a retreat - it was everything I would have expected from a horror movie set with zombies coming to attack you.

(We got a bite for lunch at a roadside "stall" called the "Snack Shack" - that was about as good as it got in Merritt).

I found that driving on the opposite side of the road came back to me pretty quickly after driving so much in Europe a couple of years ago - so no dramas there. Strangely enough, speed limits on most of the highways here are 90km/hr - yet *everybody* travels about 20km/hr over.

On the whole Canadians are so much more friendly in general than Americans we have found. The social diversity is also pretty huge - perhaps even more so than in Australia. There is a massive asian population in Vancouver - walking down the main street at night you could almost think you're in little Tokyo.

Anyway back to our roadtrip. We finally arrived in Kelowna and found our boutiquey little accommodation (eventually - it was sorta outside of town a bit, with a spectacular view of the city centre, but not really on any maps). The little area we were staying looked like where all the richer retiree's had set up shop - some huge, huge houses and the RV's (Recreational Vehicles for those who don't speak North American - they're like campervans) they almost rivalled the houses - they are HUGE! Like bus sized. Ridiculous - I think some of them must have had a spa bath and pool inside or something.

Kelowna is a prime wine producing region in Okanagan country, their weather is fairly constant and steady, not much rain and lots of sunshine. I can only gather their weather is regulated by the mountains around them - apparently lots of "well heeled" retirees move to Okanangan because the weather is so good.

After Kelowna it was on to Banff!