Deve’s Blog

(last pictures!)

After leaving Banff, we had a whole day of travel ahead of us, with not a lot of things to see after the “indigestion” of the previous days… The destination for the day was Vernon, a pleasant city in British Columbia, renowned for… well, not much I think… for us, it was merely a night stop, no point in lying. But we had to get back to Vernon somehow, right?

Along the way we stopped first to visit some anonymous waterfalls (I honestly can’t remember the name), then at the observation point for Big Hill Spiral Tunnels, two tunnels in an 8-shape that allow trains to climb a remarkable height without an excessively steep slope… nice, but unfortunately if there’s no train going through there’s not much to see… The main highlights of the following two stops were a nice squirrel, peeking from a hole in the asphalt of the stop area, and a nice ice-cream in a local farm / ice-cream shop. Then we got to Vernon and the day was over!

Ok, not quite, in Vernon we had an included Chinese dinner, not so great honestly (and please tell me: if I’m visiting Canada, why are the included dinners spaghetti, pizza, Chinese… which have nothing to do with Canada?!). Then we set up our own party in one of the hotel rooms, high-school trip style, with a bit of booze from the supermarket in front of the hotel, as we didn’t have many other options… fun things were Franck with an open umbrella, neck massage lessons and a few laughs together…

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(photo set here)

After getting to Banff in the afternoon, we went on to take possession of our rooms, some very nice 4-people chalets; but Mike and I got like and had one all for us… They’re just out of town, but in a few minutes by taxi or 20 minutes on foot you can get there easily.

After a shower we headed to the Bow River Falls, for the traditional group photo… with a little accident… good ol’ Bear, next to me in the pic, lost his balance and fell from the little wall we were standing on… trying to keep up, he hanged on to me, literally ripping off a part of my polo shirt, under the right arm! We had no time to get back to the hotel, but fortunately the temperature was quite cool, so I could cover up the problem by wearing a cardigan…

The dinner was included, honestly I can’t remember the place… maybe it was Melissa’s Restaurant? Could be… dinner was not bad, even if there wasn’t any really nifty food; we stayed in the bar are for a while, playing pool and foosball, before Ron led us to Wild Bill’s Saloon (dedicated to the Bill Peyto whose name was given to the omonimous lake…) for a cocktail and some country music, before getting a taxi back to the hotel.

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Here’s the photo set…

So far, western Canada had almost only given us rain… and rain… and more rain… Well, we were repayed on July 25th with the clearest and sunniest day since we had landed in Vancouver… just when we had to travel along the scenic route called “Icefields Parkway“! Priceless!

We left at 8 o’ clock sharp, and Ron had told us he woudln’t have any qualm leaving behind anyone who was late, as the day was packed with things to see… I tried to get there way before 8, so I could get the front row seats, but I was beaten by Kylie by a few minutes, so I had to make do with the second row…

The Icefields Parkway runs between Jasper and Banff, parallel to the Continental Divide of north-western America (the so-called “Great Divide”), that is the mountain range separating the rivers flowing into the Pacific Ocean from the rivers flowing into the Arctic or Atlantic Ocean. What is peculiar of this highway is the beautiful sight on the many glaciers of the Greati Divide, with waterfalls, lakes and rivers nearby.

And indeed, just travelling along the road is a show in itself, and on that day we really saw lots of “rocks and trees”!

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After… way, way too much time… still following my good intentions, I’ll get back to the travel diary of my trip to Canada, 2007… maybe my memories will be a bit blurred by now, but let’s try, also with the help of the usual pics.
So where were we? Kamloops, a stop between Whistler and Jasper.
As I woke up I felt a bit of fever… just on the day we where supposed to go rafting… And, for a change, it’s still raining…
We left, and travelled the whole morning, going from British Columbia to Alberta (on the notes of “Alberta Bound” by Gordon Lightfoot). The bad weather even spoils the view of the tallest mount of the Canadian Rockies, Mount Robson, of which otherwise we could have had a great view from the rest stop where we had lunch.

That’s where the rafting guys came to pick us up and take us to the Fraser River, the same river that flows into the sea by Vancouver, but that to the north-east is good enough for some medium-levle rafting.
Getting “dressed” in the rafting wetsuit and boots was curious… they made us change under the rain (a light rain, fortunately) withouth ceremonies… and the inside of the wetsuit was not dry at all…
Oh well; I still didn’t feel very well, but we got a paddle and split on several rafts, starting the navigtaion… I must say the experience wasn’t so great for me, maybe also because of the rain and cold… but still, there weren’t many exciting rapids, and a good part of the navigation was a bit boring. We even had to walk around the toughest rapids, because they were considered too dangerous… Near the end we also had the chance to jump in the river for an icy bath, but considering my conditions I decided to avoid that…

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Link to the piiiiiiics.

Wake up at 4, devastating. At 4.30 we’re in the hall. Funny thing with Yosuke, who was on the “North By Northeast” tour going to Chicago, but he showed up at that crazy hour, too, asking Kris “am I leaving for Vancouver?” “No, you can go back to bed…”
We say bye to Kris and hop on the shuttle, taking us to Toronto’s airport. Check-in, security checks, a quick breakfast, and a few minutes after 7 the West Jet plane takes off. 5 hours in flight, 3 hours for the time zone, so we land in Vancouver, British Columbia, around 9 in the morning; I couldn’t sleep much on the flight, I was tired, but in that tired way where you can’t fall asleep somehow…

When we arrived, the first thing which meets us is rain (which, as you can tell by the title, will be with us for a few days…). Then our bags (on mine they put the “HEAVY” sticker… eh eh, I had every kind of stuff for 3 weeks…).
And then the new tour manager and driver, Ron and Dave; totally different style from Kris and Jerry, and totally funny, too!
And finally, here’s the new bus: I hope Jerry doesn’t get offended, his bus was great, but here there was a clear step up in quality: leather seats, comfortable and reclinable, a working toilet (:rotfl:), a flawless Dave in white shirt always ready to pull out a door mat, and to cover us with a huge umbrella when we had to get on or off the bus.

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(the usual link to the pictures, first and second set…)

Wow. If I keep this pace I’ll probably go on holiday again before I’ve finished organizing the pictures and the posts about this summer…
But enough said, let’s go back where we were…
July 17th, we left Québec City, headed for Montreal. The trip was going to take the whole morning, so Kris put on “Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby“, with Will Ferrell. A nice and ignorant movie, not a masterpiece but it has its moments.

As we got to Montreal, the first stop was Mount Royal, the hill that overlooks the city (and that gave the city its name): a short walk was what our legs needed, and from the viewpoint there’s a really nice panorama of the city and the river (it’s still the Saint Lawrence).

We went back on the bus and into the streets of the city for a short tour with the usual explanation by Kris; after that, fighting with the traffic and with some narrow roads, we got off close to the Jetboating (woooo! ) pier. It’s past 1.30 pm: those who are not taking the Jetboating (woooo! ) had a free afternoon in the city, while the others (including me) were meeting at 3. So we went to eat something in a nice pedestrian street, chatted a while and came back, ready for the Jetboating (woooo! ).

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(ever-present link to the pictures)

Bags at coach, 7.45. A long day trip today, from Boston to Quebec City passing through New Hampshire and Maine before crossing the border. The morning begins with Kris telling us about the mishaps of the people who stayed at the Felt club until it closed, at 2 am, and who couldn’t find a taxi to bring them back to the hotel… the drivers said “oh no, it’s too far, then I’ll have to come back, you have to pay me double”, and so Kris “went Philly on the taxis” insulting and swearing around… Anyway, somehow everyone managed to get back.

Oh, before I forget: in the first post I wrote about “Live Free or Die Hard” and about how its title is different in the USA and in the rest of the world… well, passing through New Hampshire we found out the official motto of the state (here the list with all the mottos) is… “Live Free or Die”! It’s the best known and most famous of the mottos, so any American will get the pun of the film title, while for the strangers it’s a bit harder… By the way, Kris told us that, as the motto is also written on the license plates of the state, a Jehovah’s Witness covered the “or Die” part on his car, and someone tried to sue him… but the Witness won, and rightly so… Well, digression’s over, back to the trip…

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I’ll remind you the link to the pictures, here.

So, last time I wrote about the last night in New York… well, the morning after that I left the hotel around 6.30, just to be safe, tipping one dollar to the hotel guy who called me a taxi and loaded my bag, and with no traffic at all I got to the meeting point, the Beacon Hotel, in 15 minutes. Nobody yet, but soon I meet Sabrina, a German girl who’s actually not taking the Grand Canadian tour, but the North By Northeast: I soon find out, indeed, that my tour is a combo of two separate tours, one in the East and one in the West, and so I’ll travel also with people who are just taking one of the two (most of the people). We had a quick breakfast at Starbuck’s after loading the bags on the coach, and Sabrina’s tale scares me a bit: before this tour she had taken the short Contiki mini-tour of New York, and in that case the tour manager had been terrible, for example being 2 hours late and making them wait for the helicopter ride (which in the end they had to shorten a lot)
Luckily our tour manager, Kris from Philadelphia, was much better than that…

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Here I am, finally talking about my awesome trip to USA and Canada… The photo retouching is going waaaay slower than expected (the more you improve using Photoshop, the more you see tons of small flaws you want to try to correct…), and September 19th is getting closer and closer…
Oh well, anyway I’ve uploaded the first pictures (this is the collection which will hold the whole trip, and this is the New York set), and I’ll add more as soon as they’re ready. At the same time I’ll write some posts about the various days of the trip, and I created a subcategory to the Viaggi & Vacanze category (it means Travel & Holidays, sorry but the categories names aren’t translated yet…) specifically for them, so later on it will be easier to retrieve the pieces of the “diary”.

Enough chit-chat, let’s talk about the first stop: the Big Apple, New York…

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UPDATE: after a couple of years I’ve finally finished uploading the pictures on Flickr… I edited the post so it now links to the final Collection, and deleted the old preview Set…

I wish I could write a stream-post about the trip… but I wouldn’t know where to start, and I don’t really have much time (I haven’t packed my bag for Ireland yet, and tomorrow we’re leaving early!). In the meantime I uploaded a bunch of photos in a Flickr set, here, but that’s really nothing compared to the 999 photos and 4 hours of film I’ll have to go through somehow…

So I’ll just write a quick list of the great things of the trip, and I’ll write more in September, with no hurry…

New York by night from the Empire State Building, Boston’s harbour, Quebec City’s small streets and the Saint Lawrence panorama, Jetboating in Montreal, the Thousand Islands cruise, the CN Tower in Toronto, paddling on the river under the rain in Whistler, strolling around Jasper in the free time, the cruise on Maligne Lake, Maligne Canyon, the Icefields Parkway, standing on 300 metres of ice on the Athabasca Glacier, Peyto Lake (the one from the picture, click to enlarge… yes, I slightly adjusted it with Photoshop to improve the contrast and the highlights/shadows, but I didn’t touch the colour of the water… it’s really like that!!! ), Lake Louise, the horseback ride in Banff, the helicopter ride, the dinner cruise in Vancouver…

And of course my travel companions from all over the world, all nice and funny people who I hope I can keep in touch with and meet again, our great tour managers (Kris and Ron, so funny and competent at the same time) and our indefatigable drivers (Jerry and Dave), the fact that I spoke only English for 20 days and I found myself thinking in English (and back in Italy I replied with a “yeah” to the taxi driver asking me if the address was the correct one ), the desperate efforts to understand the Australian accent (”noise” for “nice” ), the morning song every day…

Oh, the nostalgia…
Well, I’ll stop here. ‘Cause tomorrow is another day!