Tuesday, May 30, 2006
More first time experiences
The
long awaited weekend to Niagara Falls had arrived and by now we had the organising for these trips away down to a fine art. T
he weather was even favourable as summer in Canada had arrived. The drive to Niagara took about 2 hours following the usual very busy major highways and some not so major busy roads. I am still amazed at the population density here. Mind you, we need to remind ourselves that this area of Canada is the most dense, most industrialised and most prosperous of all regions. Each town or city (populations vary from very small 50,000 towns to larger 500,000 cities) merges into another with no apparent green belt or distinction between them.
We met up with our billets, Rudy and Elaine at the Niagara District School Board, had pizza for dinner, dropped our bags off at the home then Elaine drove us to the Welland Canal. This canal has been around for a long time and has been redeveloped or its course changed 4 times in its history improving in efficiency and size to allow for increasingly larger ships. They have been thinking of another upgrade for some time now as many newer larger vessels do not fit in this already massive facility. There are four locks between Lake Huron and Lake Ontario lifting or lowering ships 552 feet (168m) to get them through. The only other alternative is to go over Niagara Falls itself. It takes about 8 hours to get through the lock system and costs around $78,000. Elaine and Rudi were excellent hosts, providing us with many stories of their travels and stories of the huge number of visiters they have invited into their home.Saturday started off at the IMAX theatre viewing a film on the falls and all the daredevils that went over them.
Then up Skylon Tower for our first good look at the falls. We were all excited and were not disappointed. The weather got better as the day went on and the slight haze was burnt off so that by the time we walked down to the Maid of the Mist it was a beautiful day. The Maid of the Mist is a typical tourist experience where we lined up for ages, put on the blue spray bag (one size fits all) and were herded into and out of the boat. The experience was really a lot of fun and an awesome sight and feeling at the foot of these massive falls. Then a walk back along the edge of the river to the where the falls go over the edge before heading back to hop on a yellow school bus to visit a local winery. 
The winery tour was a lot of fun sharing our time with friends. Back to Niagara for a meal at the Polish Club then a stroll along the Niagara streets to check out the tourists traps. Alex was freaked out by this guy dressed as Jason from the Halloween movies who stood very still holding a carving knife outside the "House of Horrors" . He was wearing a mask and looked like a statue until you saw his eyes move, following you, as you walked past him.
Last
day Sunday saw us meet for breakfast below the falls at a 
park that was the starting point for some walks along the river and to the whirlpool. The whirlpool is where the river takes a 90 degree turn and in doing so the water swirls around the bend creating a whirlpool. We met up with all exchange people again for the walk and spent a couple of hours exploring, enjoying the spring weather and parklands and chatting. 
Caught a glimpse of the power boats that take joyriders through the rapids which looked like a lot of fun. We would like to try this on one of our many return trips. Our last activity before heading off was our choice. The thought of hoping across the border into the USA briefly appealed to us and we also thought that we should go through the exercise while we had the time and patience to iron out any problems that we heard we were going to encounter. Although a short trip it was an interesting experience. Of course we were asked to get out of the car and go into the immigration building and reapply for our entry permit which we got in Honolulu so long ago. The permit lasts for 90 days and every 90 days you must reapply and send the old permit to the US embassy. Once in New York State we all agreed that it had a different feel about it than Canada but could not put our finger on it. Maybe after some more trips into the US we will be able to define it. 
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Ottawa
A new very scary experience confronted us on our start to a weekend in Ottawa! The Ottawa weekend was another trip organised by the CLEE (Canadian League of Exchange Educators) which involved three days in Ottawa looking around the capital city and s
ome of the schools. We decided to leave at midday on Thursday so as to get through Toronto before the traffic builds up. It was raining lightly but got worse as we traveled towards Toronto on the 401. I haven't spoken much about the traffic on this road yet and I will talk about this and other things in a later blog, and compare things like traffic, driving on the other side of the road, weather and other day to day differences that we have discovered and are experiencing. But for now let me tell you that driving on the 401 between Waterloo and Toronto can be terrifying in the rain as it was on this day. Many, many trucks drive on this road c
oming from the States. It is a six lane divided road that expands to 14 lanes as it goes through Toronto. The trucks do not have any spray deflectors on their mudguards and so spray from the roads when it is raining is thrown up into passing traffic in a blinding screen. As most of the traffic are traveling at over 110 km/hr (speed limit is 100) this can be quite daunting for many motorists one would think. It was crazy. You couldn't pass the trucks because of the spray but you had to maintain a certain speed as the
other trucks behind you would pass and blind you anyway. We drove in this weather for a bit changing lanes to avoid trucks, which was almost impossible, and thought that this is far too dangerous. We almost turned back when we came to a tollway (the 407) which travels in the same direction as the 401 and has less traffic so took it much to our relief. The toll is sent to you in the mail as they photograph your license plates as you enter and exit. We are expe
cting a $20 bill for the 50km trip but it was worth it. Once past Toronto and back on the 401 the traffic and the rain had eased, thankfully making the rest of the trip less memorable.We arrived in Ottawa and found our billets house. Sue and Fred are people from the Ottawa group of CLEE and Sue has been on exchange to Scotland. They are very keen to come to Australia one day so we helped them plan their trip which included a stop off at Forster of course. The weather was not kind to us this weekend but we had a great time being shown around. The Ottawa CLEE people were very organised. Sue and Fred went overboard making our stay as comfortable as possible and filling us up with food at every breath. We also imbibed in some local and Australian wines with them each evening whilst discussion
g travel.Chris went to a performing arts school and then on to tea with the Australian High Commissioner on Friday whilst Alex and Jenny went to the War Museum and the shops. We drove along the canal in the afternoon which had all the tulips on display. This weekend was also the weekend of the Tulip Festival. 1,000s of tulips are given to the Canadian people each year by the Dutch royal family as a symbol of thanks for when Queen Beatrice came to Canada to avoid the war. Unfortunately she was pregnant and gave birth to her child in the hospital in Ottawa. This of course posed a dilemma for the Dutch royal family because the heir to the thrown would be born in Canada and therefore not be a naturalised native of Th
e Netherlands. So a special decree was passed by the Canadian Parliament that made the land on which the hospital was built, Dutch soil. Since then the Dutch send over tulip bulbs every year to be planted for the tulip festival. And as our luck would have it, it was the first festival in 7 years that it has rained.We found Ottawa to be a delightful city, easy to get around and the usual friendly Canadian people. Because Ottawa was built on the Ontario/Quebec border it had a very French flavour about it which made it feel a lot like Quebec City and Montreal. On Saturday we were flat out being escorted all over the place. We met up with all the CLEE people and reunited ourselves with Bob & Helen, Dave and Jess and others who we had met on previous trips. Alex also met up with Monique who she became friends with when she was in Quebec City. They piled us onto a canal boat and took us along the 7km stretch of water that was initially built in the 17th century for military purposes. The trip was a hoot even though it was a gloomy day as the tour
guide kept us entertained with some great stories. He was very funny. Then went to a First Nations tour where the history and culture of the first nations people was described, including many stories that have been passed down through the generations. We were exposed to traditional dances and told of their significance and some of us sampled buffalo for lunch. Off again to meet at Parliament Hill. A very busy place for tourists and our first experience really at lining up in a queue for entry into anything. Once inside we were scanned and escorted around the building in a military style shuffle gaining glimpses of images and lists of past and present politicians with an all inclusive commentary on historically significant facts on Canada, Canada's government and the building.
To complete the day we gathered downtown in the Byward Market district for Dinner then home to more wine and chatting with Sue & Fred.
On the Sunday we checked out the Museum of Civilisation which is different from the Museum Jenny & Alex went to on Friday. Some fabulous exhibits, very people friendly. They had a travelling exhibition from Jordan about the lost city of Petra. This is the city that was the stop off point in the desert along the ancient silk road route. It was a thriving city because it was the only place in the desert with water. The whole place was carved out of the rock cliffs. I remember it from watching 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' . The city never recovered after some earth quakes and the advent of sailing ships changing the route. The most interesting permanent exhibits were the First Nations exhibit and the Canadian History tour. Alex lined up for a balloon dog as well. Find out more at http://www.civilization.ca/indexe.asp
All in all a great experience. We will be back to Ottawa though in the summer when the weather will hopefully be kinder to us.
On the Saturday I think we went into the RC centre which is a very large shopping mall and passed a barber shop that looked pretty trendy. Jenny suggested that I have a trim and I agreed
so off I toddled whilst Alex and Jenny did some browsing in the shops. I was taking my time having what I thought was a lovely chat with the Vietnamese barber and found that he didn't understand my lingo as I didn't understand his. Needless to say the trim was more like a shave and the poor barber faced the rath of Jenny when she returned to see all the locks gone. The poor barber was speechless and very embarrassed, as was I and on leaving gave me my 'trim' for free. Do you think he did a good job? 
