It was a pretty radical change on leaving Halifax, it was a 24 hour train trip to Ottawa when I left, no snow in sight, and by the time we reached Quebec the whole world was in shades of white and grey, and stayed that way for the next month pretty much. Now, a few months ago I would have said I'd experienced 27 winters so it was a bit of a surprise to find that this year marks my first actual winter, because what we get back in Australia does not even qualify. About the most you could call it is an absence of winter. It's COLD here. When you say it's freezing it is not a figure of speech. You learn to adjust though, and your definition of what is actually cold weather is constantly changing, I now consider anything above 0 warm. I've already had to revise my thinking about winter, I thought the first month of snow had gotten me used to it, but then I got to Winnipeg. It's generally been between -20 to -30 since I've been here, and with windchill it feels more like -40. If you want to know what that feels like, imagine the painful burning sensation of touching metal in a freezer. Now imagine that the AIR is that cold. It quite literally burns it's that cold. It's amazing, and I have to admit I'm kind of enjoying it, in a weird masochistic kind of way. Not so much that I spend every minute of the day in it. I did go for a 'leisurely' walk yesterday, think I managed to be out for about an hour all up, before I was forced inside to thaw out some of my more frozen extremities.
You also get used to dealing with snow, plodding and slipping around the place, but they're pretty well set up to deal with it over here and manage to keep the sidewalks and roads pretty clear most of the time. The main hassle is it blowing in your face, in your eyes and up your nose so you tend to spend a lot of time looking at the ground. And everything gets all wet when it melts and gets tracked inside. So that's one (and possibly the only) advantage of -20, it's too cold to snow anymore, and the existing snow is freeze dried so doesn't melt.
But enough about the weather, on to where I've been. Ottawa, the Canadian capital, is quite nice, but smaller than I thought. The Parliament buildings are impressive, and the hostel I stayed at used to be an old jail which was novel. It was supposedly haunted but the only thing I noticed was the pillows made a crackly sound. Apart from the National Gallery I didn't have time for much else, but I think Ottawa would be more attractive in the summer so will have to try and get back there again. Montreal I'd already been to, it was nice to see how it looked in the wintertime though, and there I met up with my Swiss friend Sandra (who I'd met back in Calgary and again in Halifax) to go back up to Mt Tremblant. This was the most spectacular place I'd visited back in the fall, it's a very picturesque area, and being a ski resort looks very nice in the winter. We hiked around in the snow for a bit (which is hard work, believe me) and caught the gondola to the top of the mountain to spend a very relaxed afternoon in front of the fire, leaving all the sliding downhill to other people. Back in Montreal I also caught up with Martin (or Uncle Swiss), who was one of the group of people I'd hung around with back in Vancouver. I now actually have a pretty extensive network of people I know all across the country (and the world) so I'm hardly ever without company for more than a few days anymore, which is handy.
I headed off alone though to visit Quebec for a few days, the Old Town of which is the only walled city in North America. It has a very mediaeval European feel to it, and is home to the impressive Chateau Frontenac, one of the Fairmont Hotels. It's a pretty place to wander around but there was a big snowstorm when I was there, which was actually kind of fun to be out in, but but did mean most of my memories are of Quebec's sidewalks (which were largely white). It seems to me snowstorms are much more inconvenient if you actually live there and have to drive - on foot they're really not that bad as long as you're dressed for them. Clouds have an insulating effect too so it's often much colder when it's sunny, which seems kind of unfair; I remember when the sun actually used to make some sort of difference.
After Quebec I caught up to Martin again in Ottawa (after a brief stopover in Montreal to retrieve the Vegemite I'd left in the hostel there) and we headed down to Toronto to meet Sandra again, as it was my birthday and I wanted to spend it with friends. It turned out to be a good day, Toronto was actually looking quite pretty with sunshine and snow, Sandra gave me some chocolate, I spoke to my family on Skype (they gave me some money which I used to buy a snazzy new iPod) and then I found out Signal Hill, the band I saw all the time back in Halifax just happened to be playing in town that night. I'm sure some people think I planned that but it was pure coincidence. So we went to see them and Sandra, having heard me go on about gravy a fair bit, even scraped the gravy off her dinner for me to have on my beef dip sandwich. I got quite emotional as you don't get good gravy much over here and it's one of the few things which can make me homesick. And Signal Hill rocked of course, so it was a top night.
After that, we said goodbye to Martin and set off for Niagara Falls, which I saw a few years back but wanted to see in winter. Wasn't much snow but everything around the falls was covered in ice from the frozen spray so that's pretty cool (I swear Sandra found the icy trees more exciting than the actual falls, which I found a bit odd). We crossed over the American side of the falls too, thought Sandra might have been getting deported when she got held up in customs for a while but once through we found the American side is quite nice. Goat Island, which sits between the two falls, is all parkland so it seems a bit more natural than the highly developed Canadian side, with all the casinos and tacky attractions.
After Niagara I went south on my own to Boston. It's always a little bit weird passing through US customs, you can't help feeling intimidated, like you're doing something slightly naughty and are afraid of getting caught, and it always takes a few days for that feeling to wear off and for me to feel comfortable in the States. Boston was alright though, I had another snowstorm here though which impeded my explorations again, and mainly just walked the Freedom Trail, a circuit of all the historic buildings (twice actually, but only once on purpose), humming the Boston Legal theme song as I went. Next stop was Philadelphia, where I stayed with Rico, a guy I went to university with. Was nice to have a local resident show me the sites, such as Independece Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the Liberty Bell, and to stay in an actual apartment instead of a hostel for a change. It's very easy to eat well in America, and Rico pointed out all the local delicacies, which are essentially various kind of meat sandwich, like the Philly Cheese Steak (steak and cheese on a bread roll). It might not be stunningly creative but it's exactly my kind of food.
Then it was up to New York for Christmas, where I'd arranged to meet Sandra again, and Emily, who we'd met up in Halifax and is from New Zealand. New York was great, I liked it the first time I visited but I wouldn't have exactly said I loved it. After my second visit though I'm prepared to make that commitment. We spent a lot of time walking around the city, exploring all the different neighbourhoods, walking right from the Upper West Side down to the sourthern tip of Manhattan
(over 2 days). Revisiting all the well-known sights was just like seeing old friends: Times Square, the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, Central Park; and with all the Christmas decorations around town, like the famous Rockefeller Centre tree, the city was looking particularly pretty. No snow, but it was such beautiful weather, up around 15 degrees and lots of sunshine we weren't complaining. We spent Christmas Eve at the Top of the Rock observatory watching the sun set over Manhattan and the Empire State building, it was really stunning.
On Christmas Day we were feeling the need to hear some Christmas carols so went to a church service in one of the cathedrals on Fifth Avenue. We got our carols but a lot of extra religion too, but I suppose it's their show so they get to call the shots. It was a really nice day so we went down to the Brooklyn Bridge and spent the afternoon there wandering across and watching the sunset. It's a very nice bridge. We went to dinner that night at a nice restaurant with some other friends of Emily's so there were 6 of us and although we had a really nice time, we agreed it didn't quite feel like an actual Christmas when you're not spending it with family.
We went to see a Broadway musical of course, got half price tickets for The Colour Purple, which turned out to be really, really good. We also spent a whole day in the Metropolitan museum (I lectured Sandra and Emily that if they saw any museum in New York had to see the Met, but it is one of the best museums in pretty much the whole world and they agreed later I was right). I made up for my harrassment by taking them on a carriage ride in Central Park as my Christmas present (they gave me more chocolate and some syrup, I think people they'd picked up my sweet tooth).
It was pretty sad to leave New York (and Emily of course) but Washington DC was next. Sandra came down for a few days and we checked out the National Mall and all the monuments and celebrated New Year's eve there. Was a pretty quiet one though as there were no fireworks or big celebrations in Washington, but we found a bar to count down the changeover and got party hats so that was alright. After Sandra left I ended up staying much longer than I planned in Washington, about 2 weeks, but after all the travelling of the last few months I needed a bit of a break.
I quite liked Washington, it's got a lot of very nice buildings and it's very quiet so it was relaxing, I could sleep in, get plenty of work done and could pop into a different museum all day as there's about 20 Smithsonian museums and they're all free. In all I visited the National Art Gallery (saw some good exhibitions on JMW Turner and Edward Hopper), the Gallery of American Art and National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of Natural History (disappointed in the dinosaurs but liked the mammal hall), the Museum of the American Indian (very interesting and a fantastic building), the Corcoran Gallery (great photography exhibitions with Ansel Adams and Annie Leibowitz here), the African and Asian art galleries as well as both Air and Space Museums (one's particularly cool, in a huge hangar out near Dulles airport full of historic planes, even including a space shuttle). Once you're done with all the museums there's not that much to do, but I think I left DC with my mind considerably broadened, and all up I really enjoyed my time in America. For some reason, almost everywhere in America reminds me of Disneyland (in a good way). Not entirely sure why. It didn't hurt too that it was about 20 degrees down there - I could wear actual shorts if I wanted to - and I knew I would be returning to the coldest months of the Canadian winter.
But I am glad to be back in Canadia. First stop was Toronto, where I caught up with some friends, Brad, a guy I've known through the Flickr photo site for years but had never met in person - he showed me around some of the outer regions of the Toronto area, and also met up with Laura again, who I'd met back in New Zealand. Now I'm on my way back to the Rockies, catching up with more people I know along the way, such as Darcie, who I met on the Salty Bear trip in Nova Scotia and lives here in Winnipeg. Looking forward to getting back to the mountains and will be staying there for a while before I go too far again.
