Hampstead in the Rain

We have had a wonderful day catching up with Nick and Fleur in their little patch of London.  We started out walking to Addlestone Station in the rain, ready to catch three trains – Addlestone to Weybridge, Weybridge to London Waterloo and then the London Underground to Belsize Park where Nick and Fleur were waiting to meet us.  The trains linked up very well until Waterloo where we missed our first underground connection by literally one second.  Of course, trains come every few minutes so we didn’t have to wait long.

Nick and Fleur had a great agenda set for us, starting with coffee at a café that caters to Antipodean coffee tastes – the waiter was Australian and the barista was from Auckland.  The latte was perfect.  So, any Kiwi coffee loving friends who come to London – we can wholeheartedly recommend Ginger & White in Hampstead.

Once the caffeine fix was dealt to, we ignored the rain in order to enjoy a lovely ramble over Hampstead Heath.  Fleur wanted to take us to Parliament Hill to see the view over London but we didn’t get to that.  We suspect the view wouldn’t have been at its best in the rain anyway, and we enjoyed the Heath itself.  There was a little farmer’s market at the edge of the Heath, where I got some delicious proper home-made fudge and Fleur added to her candle collection.  I particularly liked the ‘dog creche’ section where people had to tie up their dogs before wandering the market.  It was unfairly close to the sausage sizzle though, poor pups!

By now it was lunchtime, and still raining steadily, so we were taken to a favourite watering-hole, The Stag, to enjoy drinks and food.  On the way we stopped to drop Fleur’s purchases off at their home; it was nice to finally see their place and be able to picture them at home. 

The pub we went to for lunch was very nice – beer drinkers can check out the beer notes at the end (I just had apple juice).  We had a very leisurely lunch, enjoying the food, the atmosphere and especially the company.  It was quite surprising to realise we had actually seen Nick and Fleur less than a year ago, as it feels like longer.   So after lunch, the decision to simply head to a different waterhole, The Garden Gate, and continue chatting was easily made.  Nick and Fleur had lots of great advice for us regarding next steps now that it is time for us to get settled.  Apparently the flats next door are being done up and should be ready in May; Fleur said we should just move in next door.  That way when it’s pub-time they can just put a sign in the window!  While the thought of leasing a London flat before we are sure we have jobs is scary, the idea is a tempting one.

We didn’t want to leave, but at the same time we didn’t want to be negotiating trains in the dark, so it was time to head back.  The morning coffee had been so nice that we walked to the tube station via Ginger & White to get a take away to have on the train.  Coffee-wise, a great idea; cup-wise, not so great.  We really struggled to find a rubbish bin for our empty cups.  I noticed signs on the trains about disposing of rubbish properly rather than littering; this would be an easier task if there were any bins about.  Grant eventually asked a policeman at Waterloo who advised him to leave the cups on a newspaper stand and someone would come along and clear it later!!

We made it back to home-base by 7pm, so it was still a bit light.  It has been wonderful day; thank you Nick and Fleur.

Tasting Notes

Pale Ale – Sambrooks – Quite nice and very drinkable.  Typical pale ale and not overly hoppy.

St Peters Cream Stout – Very dark and a nice bitter flavour.

Cutthroat Porter – Odell Brewing Co, Colorado – This was nice and warming on a cold day.  Slightly unusual to find an American beer on tap at a UK pub, but a good beer.

A Spring Day in Addlestone

We had such a good night’s sleep last night, thanks to finally not being too hot.  We had agreed to go out with Mark at 9.30 in the morning when he dropped Emma at Forest School, as Grant needed sneakers.  So after a quick shower and some breakfast with the family we all piled into Mark’s car for a tiki-tour to Weybridge.  Mission accomplished with the sneakers, we ventured on foot (it isn’t raining today) into Addlestone to sort out a UK bank account.  Nationwide couldn’t help us, as we have no proof of our own UK address.  We explained why this was but this was an insurmountable obstacle.  So it was over the road to Lloyds, who couldn’t have been more helpful.  So first hurdle passed, we now have a UK bank account.  We also found Frazzles (yum for Siobhan) and Badger beer (“Fursty Ferret”, yum for Grant) at the supermarket.

After lunch we went, at Emma’s request, to watch her gymnastics class.  Grant and I then walked back to Addlestone along the canal path which was very pretty, if somewhat soggy.  We made it all the way home without a) getting lost or b) getting rained on, so we consider our stroll a great success.  It was lovely to have a family dinner too; the fact that after the girls went to bed, supper consisted of jaffa cakes was a wonderful British bonus.   Our second spring day in Addlestone has been great.

Tasting Notes

Badger “Fursty Ferret” – Countryside Ales – This brewery says since 1777, but as you’d imagine from the name, it seems that all of the ingenuity went into the name rather than the recipe or brewing process.  Cool name, but you’d have to be a “fursty ferret” to drink this stuff.

The Longest Day

The day started with, once again, preparing our baggage for international travel.  We made sure our stuff was evenly distributed among our two suitcases and two small backpacks ready for checking in, and doubled checked that we had no liquids etc in our hand luggage.  Once again, we needed to ask the hotel to store our bags for the day as we didn’t need to be at the airport until about 6pm.  Happily they were glad to do this and we set off, unburdened, to board the hop-on, hop-off bus again.

First stop was the CN Tower in order to enjoy the views out over Toronto.  While the weather was not beautiful, it was better than the day before and we only had today left anyway.  The lift was cool, travelling up over 340m in 58 seconds.  Grant said the speed of it gave him a headache, but the view was great as the door was glass.  The views from the viewing tower were also lovely although having part of it obscured by fancy café spoils the panorama effect.  We went down to the glass floor area and while we were able to look down to the ground, neither of us could bring ourselves to step onto it.  I managed to slide half my foot on but chickened out after that.  Stupid I know but the eyes rule in such situations and they told me there was nothing between me and the ground 340m below.  We actually enjoyed the Space Needle in Seattle more even though it is much smaller.

This is the view...

...from up there.

After bailing from the CN Tower (and getting out was nearly as hard as getting out of a Las Vegas casino), we walked along to the St. Lawrence Market again, as I wanted to pick up a couple of gifts.  When we finished there it was lunch time and we went to C’est What, a pub that we read about the night before.  The food was lovely and Grant got to try a couple more Canadian beers.  We had no special plans for the afternoon so had a very leisurely lunch before getting back on the hop-on, hop-off bus.

We had to wait much longer than expected for the bus, but the tour guides were very funny and we were the only passengers for a lot of it so it was worth the wait.  We got back to the beginning well before we needed to go to the airport, so we stayed on for more entertainment.  The guide had told us where would be a good place to get off in order to walk back to our hotel in time for our taxi to the airport, and the route included some places we had missed through hopping off early before.  When we did get off, at the Royal Ontario Art Museum, we quickly realised that our bag of gifts was still on the bus.  Luckily the tour kiosk was close to our hotel, so we walked there, called the company and arranged to meet the bus on its return and retrieve our bag.  Of course, this also required changing our taxi plans but we managed to get it all sorted.  We had a cup of tea and then waited at the kiosk for the bus to return.  In fact, the bus itself did not come back, as it was the last run for the day and had no passengers.  What did happen was the two tour guides tried to sneak across the square where we were waiting and surprise us with our bag.  Still entertaining even when they were off duty.

Retrieving our bags took longer than expected, but at least that meant that we didn’t have to wait long for the taxi.  The airport was further away than we had realised so we were glad it was a fixed rate trip.  We were at the airport was quite early so there wasn’t too much of a queue.  We quickly discovered that the check-in rules about baggage are just stupid.  While there are weight restrictions, the real restrictions are around the number of bags.  We wanted to check in four bags, but two of them were small back-packs so the total weight was well within the limit.  No, we could only check in one bag each.  Extra bags were $65 – each.  One of the small bags had a toilet bag in it so we had to check it in; we decided that we would just pay and be done with it.  The guy at the check in counter was quite helpful and directed us to someone who could wrap the two bags together so we only paid one fee.  It did frustrate me though as other people were checking in enormous bags with no problems.  Ah well.

The airport was pretty comfortable so the wait for our plane went quite quickly.  The flight was less than seven hours, and we were due to arrive at Heathrow at 8.45am English time, so we planned to sleep as for much of the flight as possible.  Of course, the best laid plans etc., and we only managed a few cat-naps before landing at Heathrow on time.  So, we landed in England at 8.45am, and were finally united with our sister-in-law at about 10.45am.  We are not terribly impressed that it took two hours to get from the aeroplane to the arrivals lounge.  I don’t know how London is going to cope with the Olympics.

Sadly, the English spring weather was even worse than the Toronto spring weather (except not quite so cold), so it was a soggy drive to Mark and Paula’s house.  Apparently they are having a drought and there is a hosepipe ban.  I can’t for the life of me see why. 

Weather aside, it is just great to be in England.  Mark and Paula very kindly juggled their busy Wednesday schedule in order that Paula and Emma could meet us at the airport, and we have had a lovely day accompanying them to various activities.  Mark came to Tesco with us to help us get UK phone numbers sorted, and we even found a place that made nice coffee.   The only real struggle was to stay awake until a proper bedtime so that we got onto UK time.  We did it though, chatting with Mark and Paula until about 10pm when the novelty of sleeping in a non-air-conditioned room kicked in.

Tasting notes
 10W30 - Neustadt Springs Brewing - It really is dark malty sweetness.  This was very smooth like engine oil, but didn't taste like what I'd imagine engine oil to taste like.
Coffee porter - C'est What - The coffee flavour was very strong, but quite bitter.  Overall good though.
Steve's Dreaded Chocolate Orange Stout - C'est What - There was nothing to dread here except that it might run out.  It was as dark as a stormy night.  The mouthfeel was silky smooth.  Steve has managed to get a nice orange aftertaste.  I didn't get the promised cardamom taste, but who needs it.  It was delicious as it was (I'm not sure why the reviews for the third and subsequent beers get better).

Casa Loma

Today we picked out a couple of spots on the hop-on bus tour that we were going to investigate further.  The first of these was Casa Loma.  Just to the north of Toronto, is a big castle overlooking the city.  It is Casa Loma.  It was built by Sir Henry Pellat who seems to have been one of the people who really put Toronto on the map.  His story sounds quite tragic though, as he seems to have made heaps of money doing quite innovative things at the time, and then when WWI started he made a series of bad decisions that kept getting worse and ended up dying penniless.  Anyway, he built a pretty snazzy castle that the City of Toronto has taken over and lets tourists wander around inside it.  On a day that was forecast for rain and snow showers, being inside a warm castle seemed like a good idea.

The castle was awesome and the history on the audio guides was pretty good for the most part.  Sir Henry was a man of vision, and he envisioned a grand castle and so that is what he built.  There is an underground tunnel linking the main house with the stables and the potting shed.  The castle had extensive gardens and glasshouses (which have since been pulled down) and Sir Henry was renowned for his beautiful flowers.  The whole thing was done with a lot of style.

The castle itself was very grand with a massive library and dining hall.  Apparently Sir Henry was a good guy too, as his staff seemed to think highly of him and that they were treated fairly and well-compensated.

One of the highlights was getting to go right to the top of one of the turrets of the castle that looked out over Toronto.  Unfortunately, the rain etc that was forecast materialised, and the view was less spectacular than it might have otherwise been.

We didn’t leave the castle until about 2pm – it had been really interesting.  We grabbed a bite to eat on our way to the ROM – the Royal Ontario Museum.  It is a very architectural building.  In fact it seems to be overflowing with architecture.

Inside, there were a number of interesting exhibits.  The ones about the First Nations (native American Indians, or Inuit) contained a good quantity of stuff to look at, but there was very little telling you what it was all about.  By contrast, there was a lot of stuff telling you what was going on in the Canadian history section, but not as interesting stuff to look at.  I guess that some people are hard to please.  But we’ve seen a few museums on our travels, and I’d have done this one a bit differently.

On the second floor was where all of the animals lived.  They started with the dinosaurs and ranged through to a whole collection of stuffed animals of today.  They even have a Bat Cave, where they tried to show how bats lived in caves.  Hmmm.  I’d have done that differently too.  All of their stuffed animal exhibits were very good though, but by then our feet were getting a bit sore.  We find that we can walk with purpose for quite a distance each day, but the meandering around looking at stuff really kills your feet.  Life is tough when you’re on holiday for a year I guess.

Niagara Falls

Sunday was a day of great excitement as we were going to go to Niagara Falls!  Our plans of a great night’s sleep on a comfy bed in a quiet hotel failed to factor in the stupid hotel air-conditioning.  It seems to be set for an ambient temperature of about 23°C.  This is way too warm to sleep.  We tried turning it down, but that unleashed a howling gale of cold air into the room.  We eventually just turned it off but the room got hotter and hotter during the night.  Sleep will have to happen some other time.

We had to be ready for pick-up outside our hotel between 8.30-8.45am.  We planned on heading out for something to eat first and being back at the hotel by then.  Unfortunately, nothing around us was open that early except for BK, so it was some sort of muffin thing for breakfast.  We were back at the hotel at the appointed time, but there was no sign of our tour bus.  Siobhan had booked it and just had an email confirmation on her phone and no voucher.  She was starting to get worried, even though we had called and confirmed with them the previous evening.  We called them again to find out when the bus might arrive, and the guy told us he’d be there in 5 mins in his black BMW.  He turned up in his flash 7 series car, and whisked us away.  We were going to be travelling in style.  Unfortunately, he took us to another hotel where there was one of those half-size buses.  We got kicked out of the flash car and into the bus.  The bus was packed with no spare seats.  It had clearly seen better days, and seemed to have been made before suspension was invented – or that was how it rode.

We set off for Niagara and our first stop was a winery where we got to taste, white wine, red wine and ice wine.  I had been looking forward to the ice wine as I had heard good things about it.  Don’t believe them.  It is pretty nasty stuff.  More interesting though was another couple on the bus were from NZ.  He was from Wellington and she was from Christchurch.  They had been living in Vancouver for a year, and are about to go to the UK too.  

 

Back on the bus, we headed to Niagara on the Lake.  This is a very picturesque little town with beautiful plantings through the streets and shops full of quaint and useless stuff.  We wandered around there for about 40 minutes.  Well actually more than that, as one couple (who only spoke French) turned up back at the bus when it suited them rather than when we were supposed to be there.  

Whirlpool - water comes in bottom right and goes out top

That coffee-filled interlude over, we then stopped at a couple of lookout points where we could take photos, and then stopped at the whirlpool.  This is where the Niagara river comes to a right angled corner.  Instead of simply turning the corner, the water is in such a hurry that it has carved out a cul-de-sac where it turns around on itself before heading back out again.  This creates the whirlpool.  Apparently the current is so strong that stuff that goes in to the whirlpool often takes a week or two to emerge again.  Hopefully our photos will give you a better idea.

These appetisers and tasters had all been greedily devoured as we raced to the main event of the Falls.  They are pretty big and pretty impressive.  Somehow when I imagined them though, I expected that they would be higher.  Not as high as the ones we saw in Yosemite, but I was expecting a bit more height to them.  However, I didn’t and am still struggling to comprehend the volume of water that goes over the Falls.  When you see the volume of water going over the edge, it seems as if that could keep going at that rate for about a minute, but then all the water in the world would be used up and it would stop.  But it just keeps going.

American Falls

Horseshoe Falls

Our tour guide took us down to the Maid of the Mist and Siobhan was most impressed that there were no queues of people.  When she had been to the Falls with her Mum, they had stood outside in the line for about an hour.  We simply grabbed our ponchos and walked straight on.  Given it was freezing cold, we already had our big warm coats on.  The ponchos seemed superfluous.  They weren’t.  The spray from the water is very soaking, and in true Wellington winter style, comes at you virtually horizontally.  The ponchos were good, but we still got reasonably wet.  The Falls were amazingly impressive.  Very cool.

Horseshoe Falls

Once off the boat, we walked up to the top of the Horseshoe Falls and it was there that you could see up-close the volume of water going over the edge.  The American Falls are also impressive and they have more water falling over rocks tumbling down.  The Horseshoe falls have water disappearing straight down at an incredible rate.  It really is one of the wonders of the world.

We then had some time before we were due back on the bus so we headed into town.  This place is crazy.  It was like we were back in Las Vegas again.  There is a street where every garish thing you can imagine and then some is gathered there in a single place to try and trick you into parting with your money, for what looked like pretty crappy entertainment.  It is also possible that I’m a little bit cynical.

The ride back to the hotel was reasonably uneventful, or we hope so as we slept for a good part of the way.  I guess that you get to a point where you take sleep where you can get it.

As we had only really snacked during the day, we headed out to the 3 Brewers for dinner.  It was the closest restaurant on Trip Advisor to our accommodation that had reasonable reviews.  Honest.  Anyway, a nice dinner was had and I got to try a couple of their beers.  They did have a weird beer menu of beers though.  They brew their own and they have a white, a blonde, an amber and a brown beer.  Rather than picking styles, it seemed that they had simply gone for colours.

Tasting notes: 

Pillitteri Estates Winery – Ice Wine – Pours very clear almost like water.  Tastes nasty.  Sweeter, more winey than wine.  Don’t drink it.  Drink beer instead.

3 Brewers – Amber ale – this was very nice.  A nice deep red, and without being over hoppy.  Maybe a bit sweet, but I liked it.

3 Brewers – Brown ale – while I was looking forward to trying this, it was a disappointment.  It simply tasted brown.  Not chocolately, not caramel either, just brown.

Toronto - Day 1

We arrived in Toronto just after 9am.  By the time that we had retrieved our bags and caught a taxi to our hotel, it was 10am.  We were once again pleasantly surprised to be allowed to check-in at that early time so that was great being able to dump all of our bags. 

Dundas square by our hotel

The weather in Toronto has been trying to make up for all of the beautiful weather we’ve had to date.  It has been cold, overcast, and trying to rain most of the time.  Our hotel is on Dundas square in Toronto which is right in the centre of the city.  So when we ventured out to explore Toronto, we stumbled on their hop-on, hop-off bus tour.  For a very reasonable price, we can use it every day that we are here.  I’m sure that will prove useful.  At that stage it was only threatening to rain and so we sat upstairs on the open top bus where the view is the best.  For safety reasons, this meant that the tour guide girl doing the commentary also had to sit up the top.  She had a hard night and clearly hadn’t looked out the window before she got dressed and came to work and if she had, she would have worn warmer clothes.  I lent her my gloves and she let us sit up there on our own for some of the trip around Toronto.

We rode on the bus for a while, getting off at in the Old Town District at the St Lawrence market.  This was quite a cool market with all sorts of goodies available for purchase.  Because it was Saturday, they also had a Farmers’ Market there too.  We wandered for ages, stopping to get a Bacon Buttie each for lunch.  It was jolly good bacon, but they didn’t put any T sauce or whole grained mustard on it.  So good attempt, but they have some work to do to make it perfect.

After that, we wandered further into Old Town to the historic distillery district.  Not sure how we ended up there.  Coincidentally there happened to be some breweries there, and we went into the Mill St Brewpub.  I had a couple of beers there and they were OK.  Having been trapped on the train for a few days, we decided that rather than try and find the hop-on bus again, we would walk back to our hotel.  It was a good walk in very cold conditions, but very refreshing too.  On the way back we found an enormous shopping mall where we got some wrapping paper to wrap up all of Jared’s birthday presents.  We then headed back to the room set on getting a good night’s sleep given that we had a comfy bed in a quiet hotel room, as compared with the bunks on the train from previous nights.

Sculpture in Old Town

Tasting notes:

Mill St Brewpub – Tankhouse Ale – Quite nice, deep red in colour.  Was quite hoppy but still very smooth.

Mill St Brewpub – Coffee Porter – Not the best exponent of the style.  I was promised chocolately coffee goodness but it was quite thin and not so tasty.  Part of the problem was that the beer and the outside temperature was freezing cold.  As the beer warmed up, the flavours started to come out, but I finished it before it might have become really tasty.

Saskatchewan, Manitoba & Ontario

Canadian provinces have such cool names.  We woke relatively early this morning, although we both managed a pretty decent sleep.  Just as we were getting ready to go for breakfast we pulled into the town of Saskatoon and everyone still tootling about in the station got to watch us in the dining car.  We must admit that although three cooked meals a day while sat on a train doing nothing much is not very good for us, it is nice to be waited on and the food is very good.

After breakfast we headed up to the dome car to watch the Great Plains roll by.  This was great fun, especially after only a short time up there our view was significantly obscured by a snow storm.  In the middle of April.  Because there are only a few things to do on the train, you have to ensure that you don’t do all of the exciting things at once.  So, having seen it snowing, we went back to our cabin and had our showers.  The shower on the train is actually very good.  Better than a number of hotel showers we have experienced.  Although not quite as roomy. 

 We have since played cards (Cribbage), read, and otherwise tried to occupy our time.  Lunch was finally called (we were in the 3^rd sitting) and we met some more interesting people and had more yummy food.  The afternoon has seen us bathed in bright sunshine watching the prairies of Saskatchewan and Manitoba roll by.  It has also been a chance to write up the blog for the day, although not sure when we will get to post it.

The opportunity arose when we got into Winnipeg.  After our Jasper experience of being locked off the train, we were a bit wary of being locked out again.  Counterbalancing that was the fact that we were keen to get off and stretch our legs.  We decided to go for it on hearing that the train station had Wifi so we could upload our most recent entry, and hopefully Skype the kids or Mum.  Plans made, we were in the middle of having dinner when the train rolled into Winnipeg earlier than expected.  Once we were done, we headed in there about 8.45pm.  It was still light (just) and we wandered around the area around the train station.  It is very beautiful with a lot of sculptures and public spaces.  They are also in the final stages of completing a Museum of Human Rights.  Canada seems to be making similar efforts to NZ in terms of their “First Nation” and it will be interesting to return here when it is complete.  We wandered around and got back to the station about 9.40 and got to upload the blog.  We didn’t get to talk to anyone on Skype (sad face) but did get to check out Facebook for updates on what people have been up to.  Back on the train at 10.30, we both had a great sleep lasting through until the morning.  Not sure if we are getting used to sleeping on the train, or just getting so tired that we’ll sleep anywhere.

We woke to forest, snow and lakes - a change from the prairies of yesterday.  That has continued throughout the day ceaselessly.  You would think that we have been on some form of loop, going around seeing the same thing all day, but it has been slightly different all the time.  Not much to report on the wildlife front either, except for the Bald Eagle that Siobhan spotted.  We also saw some footprints in one of the many iced-over lakes / ponds too, which we were assured were otter tracks.

We stopped for about 30 minutes at a little place called Hornepayne.  It used to have a railway station, but it has fallen into disrepair.  Our only option to stretch our legs was to walk up and down a muddy track beside the train that had about a foot of snow piled to the side of it.  The walk in the cold air was very refreshing and a much needed change from the sitting around in air-conditioning on the train.  We also had cell phone coverage which meant that I could Skype Mum and find that Dad is probably getting out of hospital on Monday.  We are all looking forward to that – him and Mum more than any of us I expect.

We reached the end of the day without reaching our goal of spotting more Canadian wildlife (we have become blasé about such things as Canada geese, crows and hawks; these no longer count), but we did enjoy a pretty sunset in the Park Car.  This is the lounge car at the end of the train where the old folk and the knitters gather.  I, armed with my lovely purple knitting, gained access for both Grant and myself (we are too young otherwise).  Of course, it may be we were welcome simply because we are in a sleeper car and that’s who the lounge car is for.  We stayed on for a little while after sunset but eventually returned to our cabin for our last night of train-sleeping.