The Happiest Place on Earth

That's right, it's last stop, LA, so that means Disneyland. Yet another place in America which turned out to be better than I thought, Disneyland is heaps of fun. there's some great rides - my personal favourites are the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters (which we did twice, allowing me to redeem my abysmal performance the first time round. i'm sure I had a broken laser gun the first time) Soarin' Over California and the Grizzly River Rapids. We did pretty much the lot at both Disneyland and California Adventure, except the big rollercoaster, which was closed. My new friend Lou at the front gate told me the whole story, and many other things about his life and retirement plans which I didn't specifically ask for but was happy to find out anyway, but basically it was something to do with the brakes not working and causing an accident a few months back. Still, it looked like an awesome rollercoaster, and I totally would have gone on the test rides they were doing, if they were actually willing to allow humans on. Brakes, schmakes, just turn the power off and let it roll to a gentle stop I say.

Anyway, you would think Disneyland would be overly cutesy and childish, but once you get there it really isn't, and it's got such an iconic status it's great to see it for real, even if Karen was a bit disappointed with the size of the castle.

We managed to fit in all the classic rides, the teacups (which are pretty hardcore actually - they left me worse for wear afterwards than any other ride we went on), we somehow ended up on the Winnie the Pooh ride, after which we stopped letting Karen and Michael picking the rides. Trace enjoyed it though. We also saw Pirates of the Caribbean, and It's a Small World, which thankfully ends just before the point where you go mad from hearing that one song constantly repeating and start attacking the dolls and destroying the display. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the ride, it was good to see an important historical feature of the park, and I appreciated the whole kitsch, retro vibe of the thing, I just think that prolonged exposure could result in serious, irreparable mental damage.

The canoe trips round the Rivers of America lagoon are pretty cool too, but try and pick your team carefully, as we were stuck with a bunch of giggly girls who were absolutely useless. I also think special recognition should go to the mountaineers who constantly climb up and down the Matterhorn during 35-40 degree weather with no guarantee anyone's actually watching them. Make sure you give them a wave next time you're there - we did - it's the least they deserve.



We did Universal Studios as well - the Terminator 3D movie was super, Shrek in 4D was good too, but not as much as the Bug's Life one back at Disneyland, Tracy leaping out of her seat during the bit where maggots crawl under your butt was hilarious (if you haven't been to see it, that's actually much less gross than it sounds). Jurassic Park was okay, there's really not much to it except for the big drop at the end, which was admittedly pretty damn good. The Waterworld show was great too, especially when viewed from the part of the audience which wasn't getting soaked.

Did a day tour of LA too, saw all the usual sights, downtown, Hollywood, Santa Monica Pier (I don't know how anybody could swim in water that brown) and Venice Beach. It was all good to see, nothing i'd really rave about though. And that's pretty much it. Spent our last day shopping, after a bit of a detour which saw us end up in the dodgiest shopping centre I've ever seen and getting lectured for it by the cab driver who rescued us and took us to some proper shops, and then it was back to the airport.



No more pat downs when we left, although I was glad to see Sipowicz there again. I don't think he remembered us, but we'll always have fond memories of the way the day he checked our torsos without alarming us. Would have liked to have gotten a photo, but somehow I don't think the security at LAX would have much of a sense of humour about that sort of thing.

The whole trip was pretty much brilliant. Aside from some of the days we were in transit, and even including some of them, we were saying world-famous landmarks pretty much everyday. Except the one day in Vancouver when we went to the crappy museum, which was almost entirely closed for refurbishment. That was a pretty ordinary day. But every other day - brilliant. So it's back home, to sort through all the photos, which takes some doing I can tell you, tell all the stories, and now that's almost done, start planning the next one. Don't know where that will be yet, but you'll be able to read all about it here eventually. Stay tuned.

Canyons and casinos

So, Vegas. If there's one place which caught me completely by surprise, this would probably be it. I've never been particularly interested in casinos, and expected Vegas to be a pretty tacky place, but I've found it be pretty cool, but for reasons which have nothing at all to do with gambling. We only had about 3 full days so we never really had time to gamble, except Michael, who won $4 from $1, but never got around to cashing it in (the pokies pay out in vouchers so you'll be tempted to keep playing I suppose).

There's so much else to look at though the last thing you want to do is sit around for too long. We're staying at the Luxor, inside the pyramid, which we were pretty happy about. Don't have much of a view, the room Tracy and I are in looks out directly at the middle of a giant sphinx's butt, but still, we're inside the pyramid so that's the main thing.



You know you've arrived somewhere unusual when you're greeted almost instantly by slot machines in the airport terminal, and then have to catch a monorail a James Bond villain would be pproud of to get to the baggage collection. Walking down the Strip is pretty surreal, right next door to the giant glass pyramid of the Luxor is the Excalibur, styled like a medieval castle, followed by New York, New York, not to mention the desert palace of Aladdin, the Eiffel Tower at Paris, the pirate ships of Treasure Island and the canals of the Venetian, you would think it would be a complete mess, but somehow it just seems to work. Anyone looking for a hot tip: the buffet at the Excalibur is one of the cheapest and has some of the best food, the Forum shops at Caesar's are amazing to walk through, and you absolutely must spend some time watching the Bellagio fountain shows - these are just brilliant, except for the Celine Dion songs which are a bit wussy. Wait for one of the big dramatic ones which use the really huge jets - they're unbelievable.

One of the things I liked most about Vegas was the desert setting, the red dirt, the wide open spaces skirted by mountains, it's quite striking. And then of course the Grand Canyon. The first thing you notice about the Grand Canyon is that it's really big. Really. Big. Grand you might even say. It's so big you can fly over it for half an hour and still only see a fraction of it. That's pretty big. We were on a 20 seat scenic flight out to the South Rim, flying over Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam, then went on a bus tour to Bright Angel Point to see the Canyon at it's widest point. The tour was good, but there's just way too much to see in a day trip. It changes so rapidly too, there was a constant procession of big, fluffy clouds overhead, which causes this constantly moving patchwork of shadows across the canyon walls, it's really something to see from the air, even if the flight's a bit on the bumpy side. An amazing place, one I'll definitely be going back to. Did I mention it's really big. Cause it is. Deep too.

Start Spreading the News...

Well, our time in New York is almost up. It's the longest we've spent in any one spot so far, so it feels like we've been here forever. It's been good though, New York's turned out to be quite different to what I thought.

We've done all the touristy things, been on the sightseeing buses, did 3 tours in one day, Uptown, Downtown and the night tour so were so over buses by the end of it but they were good trips - even had a very minor traffic accident in the buses just to add that authentic New York flavour. Exerted our influence to ward off a looming thunderstorm on the night tour too. Some fantastic buildings here, both the Empire State and the Chrysler building never cease to take on a different appearance depending on the time of day and the weather. We went up to the Empire State observation deck at night, and with a full moon and the smog catching the glow from the city it's quite a beatiful sight.

Been to see two Broadway shows - saw the Lion King last night and it was fantastic, easily the best show I've ever seen at the theatre - Karen wanted to see Beaty and the Beast as well so we saw that the other night. It was pretty good too. Went to the Statue of Liberty this morning, she's smaller than you think but still impressive.

I've been doing the rounds of the art galleries - caught up with my friend Rico who's living in Philadelphia and we went to the Metropolitan Museum, the building was just as amazing as all the artifacts and paintings. Van Gogh's 'Cypresses' is shown there and it's an amazing painting to see in real life, there was also my old friend Matisse, Degas, Rembrandt and some great American art too. Also saw the Museum of Modern Art which had some great artwork, but I don't think it was presented as well as in the Met. My favourite painting from here would have to be 'Christine's World' by Wyeth, and another Van Gogh 'Starry Night' but it's just wrong putting a painting like that behind glass.

Wandered through Central Park a few times, the one place in New York where my sense of direction pretty much completely deserted me, as I found when I managed to walk about 30 blocks in completely the wrong direction. It's a bit of a maze until you figure out how to navigate using the skyscrapers visible over the tops of the trees, but it makes a great change from the city so it's quite a pleasant place to get lost in.

I've enjoyed the city more than I expected - I'm not usually a person who feels at home in big cities these days - and New York was somewhere I expected to be a bit overwhelming. Even though it's crowded, noisy and polluted it's so full of life you can't help liking it. Next top, Vegas, which should be a complete change of pace!

Water, water, everywhere

hurrah, get free internet access in this hotel so can make another blog entry already. It's almost 1am here so will have to make this quick, but will be busy for the next few days once we arrive in New York so don't know when I'll have time for another update.

Went to Niagara Falls today, it was a great day. Bit smoggy here unfotunately so it probably wasn't at it's best but was still very pretty. Did all the touristy things, the Maid of the Mist, the tunnels behind the falls, the white water walk, so we got repeatedly soaked. Will put up photos later of us all looking rather fetching in our plastic raincoats. Went up to Clifton Hill for dinner before we saw the falls illuminated at night, got wet once again as we stood with all the other tourists in the spray from the falls and the drizzle trying to get decent pictures of the falls all lit up. Our poor cameras copped a fair bit of abuse today, we're lucky they're not short circuiting and exploding from all the water we've subjected them to.

The International Film Fesrival is on here at the moment too so got vague glimpses of a few celebrities last night on our long search for something to eat. Saw Kevin Bacon, Charlize Theron and Colin Firth from across the street, along with other people who we didn't recognise or weren't famous.

Going to the CN Tower tomorrow, then it's off to the Big Apple!

Snow in September

So we've left the Rockies behind, which is a bit sad because they were just fantastic. We had a bit more rain for our drive up the Icefields Parkway, but that was okay because it also meant it was snowing when we passed through some of the higher parts of the roadway. We experienced our first real snowfall on the Friday afternoon when we drove up to Morain Lake, which is near Lake Louise. It's supposedly set in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, but we only saw about 2 of them because of all the clouds, so will have to go back sometime to see the rest of them. Karen was deliriously happy to see snow falling and managed to forget her usual apprehension of bears leaping out of the forest and attacking us. Even though we'd been to the snow in New Zealand we'd never actually been anywhere it was actually snowing at the time.

It's very pretty to watch, less pretty to stand around in as it it turns out snow's just like a heavier kind of rain, and it gets all over your glasses. But it's still pretty. So we took a very long time to traverse the Parkway, as we kept stopping at lots of lookouts and snowy places. We never took one of the bus tours onto the Coumbia Icefields - it was just too cloudy to see anything much, but we walked up to the toe of the glacier instead which was just as good. Jasper was a great little town, would love to spend a bit more time there. It's not as crowded as Banff so it's much more relaxing to stroll around. Spotted some wildlife on the way up too, two black bears in the forest and a group of elk.



On our day in Jasper we drove out to Maligne Lake where we went on a cruise down to Spirit Island. That's the picture of it above - it's one of the classic images of Canada. When you first see it from the boat it's nothing spectaular, but viewed from the right angle onshore it has to be the most picturesque place I've ever seen. Afterwards we stopped by Maligne Canyon, a 50m deep limestone canyon, very impressive. We then drove up to Mount Edith Cavell, a mountain I've always been particularly fond of and so was very glad to get the chance to see. It was great, we could drive quite close to the summit and visit a glacial lake. Even Tracy forgot her growing impatience with the constant visits to lakes and mountains when she found a chipmunk she could chase around trying to photograph.



Drove from Jasper to Edmonton yesterday, visited the West Edmonton Mall which a bit less exciting than we thought. The waterpark and ice rink and everything are impressive, but I think they cheat a little bit by repeating many of the stores, jusst to pad it out a bit. Tracy was very disappointed as it was a key highlight of the trip for her and she didn't buy anything at all. At Edmonton Airport at the moment, just about to fly off to Toronto and see Niagara Falls tomorrow. Can't upload any more photos yet, can't find a computer which will let me. There's plenty to see of the Rockies though trust me, went a bit nuts there, so been having a break yesterday and today so I don't cramp up.

Better go, boarding soon.

The mountains are calling...

It's a toasty 9 degrees outside in Banff today and it's raining so not much sightseeing to be done today. Everything's going exactly to plan though because that also means it's snowing on the mountain tops, which will make for better photos tomorrow when it's sunny again. And with our supernaturally good luck with the weather it had just BETTER be sunny.

Didn't write too much about Banff the other day as there was so much to detail about our trip over. We're not here that long so we've been on a pretty tight schedule to see everything we want to. Although when I say 'we', I mainly mean 'I', as the others are pretty much just being dragged along in my furious quest to see all the places I've been waiting to see since I was a kid. We've been up mountains, around lakes, through canyons, seen even more mountins and then a few more lakes just for good measure. We're actually staying at Lake Louise at the moment, but Lake Louise isn't so much a village as a street so we came back into town for the day while we wait for our snow to be prepared for tomorrow, when we're driving along the Icefields Parkway to Jasper. That will be a big trip, it's at least a 3 hour drive and we'll be stopping off along the way several times at the various lookouts, waterfalls and also to take a trip onto the Columbia Icefields in the enormous trucks with tyres which are as big as Karen is tall.

Karen is actually a pretty useful unit of measurement as we discovered at LA airport that you can actually buy a King sized cup of Coke which is literally as big as her HEAD, which is just crazy. But don't just take my word for it - I've now added a few pics to my Flickr site where you can see I'm not just making this up. Oh and there's some pretty scenery too. You can see them at www.flickr.com/photos/waynem

We've been eating very well actually, none of our hotels have kitchens or anything so far so we've been eating out. I tell you these Canadians do damn good dairy, we've had some of the best food here I've ever eaten anywhere. Breakfast in particular is always great, pancakes or french toast with maple syrup, omelettes, hash browns, and the cheese, milk and butter is just delicious. It's so good we've been able to get by with just breakfast and dinner most days. Life's tough ; )

Greetings from sunny... Toombul??

Okay, so things didn't start off exactly according to plan. I honestly couldn't tell you how many days we've been on the road, what with changing time zones and everything, but I'm in Banff tonight and this is the first chance I've had to get to a decent internet terminal where I don't have to spend two dollars for ten minutes of trying to get a webpage to load. So there's a lot to tell.

Let's go back to last Friday morning, bright and early at the airport, where we learned that due to fog in Auckland our Air New Zealand flight was delayed for 7 (and eventually 8 hours). So we spent a delightful afternoon at Toombul shopping centre, not wanting to go too far in case the flight arrived early and we had to get back to the airport in a hurry. It was truly bizarre, I hadn't actually been to Toombul in ages, and because we'd gone there form the airport it did seem like we were in some strange foreign country.

So after many hours wandering aimlessly and a very ordinary airport meal purchased with our compensatory $12 meal vouchers, we finally flew out at about 9:30 that night, and arrived in Auckland at about 3am local time. Needless to say we had missed our connections on to LA and Vancouver so we were told we'd have to wait in Auckland 24 hours for the next flight. The airline did arrange for us to be put up in a hotel for the night but as we had to check out that morning by the time we got there we had about 4 hours sleep max. Spent the day wandering around Auckland so it wasn't a total disaster - I probably would have liked to have gone there eventually anyway. Went up the Skycity tower, and that was about it really. Auckland's nice enough but there's not much to do in just a few hours, when you can't really go far, so I can at least cross it off my list of places to see.

Went back to the airport that night, plane was late... again, but not by much, so after all this the 11 hour flight actually wasn't that bad as we were pretty damn tired and extremely sick of hanging around airports.

So LA airport, what a delightful experience that was. We were all completely exhausted by this time and although we got to leave the plane early to make our connection, and so finally thought something was going right.. our baggage was the last onto the carousel so our headstart was completely wasted. Then we had the security checkpoints which involved a security guy who was a dead ringer for Sipowicz from NYPD Blue warning me he was going to touch my torso and not to be alarmed. The whole 4 of us got patted down and checked, and had shoes and belts removed, and I found out afterwards my bag had been randomly checked too so we were finally given the all clear and could at last proceed on to Vancouver! Where we got to the hotel at about 11 at night, wandered outside to get some dinner and found our hotel, which was quite nice inside, was actually situated in a neighbourhood we affectionately came to refer to as the ghetto, due to the proliferation of adult stores and sex shops offering 25c peep shows (which sounds like a bit of a bargain really), people wandering around trying to sell pot and dodgy board games and boots out of cardboard boxes on every street corner.

Vancouver actually turned out to be a really nice city despite out initial impresssions - it seems it's only the two blocks or so outside our hotel were the only dodgy ones. They have a really nice harbour with a massive park, so we wandered around the there, went to the aquarium and saw the beluga whales, went up to Grouse Mountain and the Capilano suspension bridge and wandered from one end of the city to the other several times.



Missed out on going to Seattle because of the delays, which was really disappointing, but flew from Vancouver to Calgary this morning and drove straight out to Banff, which is a fantastic town, completely ringed by mountains and probably my new Favourite Town in the World (although I'm still very fond of Queenstown).



So it's off to Lake Louise tomorrow to take another few hundred photos of the stunnning mountains and lakes.

Back to the hotel now, which should be fun, as I was so keen to get out of there and see the sights this morning I only have a very vague idea which room I'm actually in. I'm think it's somehwere on Level 3. Only one way to find out I suppose...

Weblog, eh?

Hello world. So I've jumped on the blogging bandwagon. Thought this would be a good way to record all my globetrotting adventures.

First up it's Canada and America for 4 weeks with my sisters Karen and Tracy and brother-in-law Michael. After that... haven't decided yet but it will almost definitely be somewhere with mountains.

Well, that's it, head off tomorrow, so Vancouver and Seattle are first up. Hurrah!