We saw loads of crazy massive bugs here! They were all pretty cool and we got a few pics:
Hercules Beetle
Tarantula
Monthly Archives: May 2009
Jardin Botanique de Montreal
We spent a beautiful day in the Montreal Botanical Gardens and were thoroughly impressed. We enjoyed ourselves here far more than at Butchart gardens in Victoria near the start of our trip – and they are ‘meant’ to be much better than these ones. There was an amazing Chinese garden which we spent hours in, a Japanese garden, a rock garden, water garden, Canadian garden, a Lilac garden and a few others. It was kinda ironic to love the Chinese garden best in Canada! It was huge though and a lovely place to be.
We also spent a lot of time amongst the Lilac’s, Soph you were so right, they are gorgeous and the fragrance is heavenly… Our photos are here.
Our first couple of days in Montreal
We decided to stay in the downtown area of Montreal for the first couple of days and then moved into an apartment that we booked for a week in the Plateau. The downtown area is the main touristy part with the port and all of the cool buildings and stuff, and the Plateau is a supposedly trendy area for people to live – and it did seem quite cool with lots of restaurants and funky apartments and of course, Mount Royal which has a massive park to hang out in. On our first day we wasted no time in trying poutine! Hot chips with gravy and cheese curds – it was good.
We generally wandered around and really liked the feel of the streets and atmosphere. We went to see St Joseph’s Oratory (which was built by brother Andre) and just basically chilled as this is our last stop of this trip. Also we went to the 25th Anniversary show of Cirque du Soliel which was fantastic. Our photos are here.
Quebec City
We loved Quebec City! A lot of our time in Quebec was all about views of and from the Frontenac. When we read that it dominates the city, we didn’t realise just how much until we got here. You can hardly walk or look anywhere without the beautiful and imposing Frontenac taking your breath away. We did also get out and do some other stuff too though; We went to the Shrine of St Anne, a supposed site for miracle healings, and it was a very pretty cathedral, we also did a cruise on the St Lawrence river, went to the Montmonrency falls and went to a Quebecois sugar shack. The cruise was a really nice relaxing way to spend an afternoon, and we both really enjoyed it. The sugar shack was a really interesting experience where we ate traditional Quebecois food like Pea soup, potatoes in gravy, salad, all with maple syrup on them! It was surprisingly good and the real stuff is quite smoky in flavour and not just sweet. We also learned to play the spoons and did some Quebecois dancing. And we finished off with some maple taffy, poured freshly onto some snow. Yum. We also spent a lot of time wandering Quebec City’s gorgeous streets, it really has quite a European feel about it and the people there seem very passionate about everything. Overall we had a ball here and wished that we could stay longer. Our photos are here (a slightly Frontenac obsessed album!).
Ottawa
We stopped briefly in Ottawa just for the night on the way to Quebec City. What we saw of Ottawa we actually really liked, it was a pretty city with lots of old buildings and we saw a gorgeous sunset there.
We spent the afternoon wandering the streets and went over to the Quebec side of the river for a view back over Ottawa, and then after dinner (at which Karen got the best desert of the whole trip – a divine flourless chocolate cake YUM) we went to see the city at night. It was quite lovely and we both really enjoyed our time in Ottawa. Below are the beautiful Parliament Buildlings with the flame in front. Our photos are here.
Parc Omega
The main reason for going to Montebello was to go to Parc Omega, about 5 minutes down the road from the lodge. It was a huge park with lots of Canadian animals, we saw Bison, Elk, White tail deer, Spotted dear, Timber Wolves, Arctic Wolves, Coyotes, Black Bears, Pigs, Goats with massive horns, Golden Fox, it was cool! Our photos are here.
Thousand Islands cruise and Montebello
On the way to Montebello we stopped at Kingston, and did a Thousand Islands cruise. It was a pretty little section of river that divides USA and Canada, and had 1842 islands to be exact. There were some with only enough room on the island for a small house, and other larger islands with a few houses. They are primarily peoples summer homes, as the river freezes in winter (but not enough to drive on), so unless you have a small plane or helicopter there is no way to get to the islands in winter. We saw everything ranging from a small shack to a castle which was built for a rich man’s wife, and once the exterior was completed she died, so the inside is still now a big empty space. Dre found a fancy house and island that he wants to buy :-)
After that we arrived at Montebello, a huge red cedar lodge on the Ottawa river that was built in 1920 and started off being an exclusive club before becoming a hotel.
Niagara Falls, Niagara on the Lake and Toronto
While in Toronto we visited the Niagara Falls, and went on the Maid of the Mist boat ride. It was so fantastic that we decided to take a helicopter flight over the falls as well. This was a great way to see how truly spectacular the falls really are and amazing to see the sheer volume of water thundering down them. We also visited Niagara on the Lake for the afternoon and spent most of our time there wandering the pretty streets and tasting ice wines. Once we were ice wined- out, we returned to Toronto and got beautiful views of the CN tower showing a cool lighting display for Victoria Day. There were fireworks as well but they were nothing compared to Sydney’s fireworks. The next day we went up the CN tower to get views around the greater Toronto area, it was a really clear day and we were told that we could see about 100kms, fantastic. Our photos are here.
Ketchikan
Before we got to Ketchikan, we read that it rains there 340 days a year, and that generally speaking if you are in Ketchikan for more than an hour it will have rained. Our weather luck reigned once again as we walked around the town for about 3 hours and it didn’t rain! This was sadly another ‘cruise-ship’ town though, very disappointing that the Alaskan cruise stops are so un-authentic with rubbishy tourist shops. The scenery has been absolutely amazing on this cruise, and for that it has been definitely worth it – Glacier Bay was so stunning and we could never have seen that if it weren’t for the ship, but the ports have been very made-for-tourist type stops which has been a shame. The towns used to be pretty little towns but now they have basically sold their souls to the tourist industry (excepting Sitka to some extent) which we were quite shocked to see. Again though, the fantastic scenery along the way has more than made up for this.
While in Ketchikan we walked around the original Creek Street (above), where the Salmon swim upstream to spawn in summer, went up to the waterfalls and then bypassed all the shops as quickly as possible! Back on the ship we had a Dutch chocolate night which consisted of over 100 chocolate dishes – impressive to see, yummy to eat, and gross to watch all the morbidly obese Americans eat plate after plate of.
Sitka
Sitka was a pretty town, set in an archipelago surrounded by snow capped mountains, and with Russian architecture around the town it was quite different to anywhere else we had seen. We walked around to the Totem pole park and stayed there for a couple of hours, and wandered around the town and found an American Indian mask that we liked and so bought. A fairly lazy day in this quaint little town.
