Friday 31 August 2007

New England (and NYC)

So,..it's been a couple of weeks. After Montreal (which I loved by the way, but I got sick of everyone speaking funny french, montreal = very cool in summer, lots of festivals etc)

After montreal, I hopped on a bus down to Boston. I have to say, after summer in Ontario, driving down through Vermont was soo awesome. When I'm rich, I'm totally wanting a cabin in the forests there. The entire trip was driving along a highway with mountains either side, trees and rivers as far as the eye could see, with the occasional house nestled in the trees, Gorgeous!

I spent a week in Boston, one of the hottest weeks this summer! I arrived thursday night at about midnight and it was still over 30 degrees. Friday, Me and Grant decided it was too hot to stay in town, so we headed out on Boston harbour to an Island with a fort on it. I got to put my feet in the atlantic! (which is v. cold btw). Friday was soo hot that breathing produced condesaion on my sunglasses which then tricked down the side of my nose all day - yummy!

Friday night Grant and Halvar went to NYC for the weekend, and I caught up with Boston and NYC cuochsurfers who just happened to have a big meetup planned that weekend! We all met at a bar downtown boston, there were over 50 people! Then sat some cs people and I went to the beach! It was soo hot, and the water was soo cold! Me and the Aussie chick were screaming and squealing about how cold the water was, and the English guy we were with didn't understand. I guess the Atlantic isn't the Pacific eh? Soo cold. it was about 40 degrees out of the water and about 15 in. perfect for cooling down, but you couldn't stay more than 5-10 mins!

So after a big cs party weekend (party sat night- about 100 ppl!, trivia night Sunday night), Grant and Halvar came back on monday and I got to catch up with them. Soo good to see Halvar after 2.5 years!

Boston was awesome, I met soo many cool people. The whole city has a pretty laid back feel, Harvard (where the guys go) is gorgeous, and I totally am adding Boston to my list of places I could easily live. Despite lots of tourist groups everywhere (apparently people care about american history?), it has a cool vibe, and my new favourite museum ever is there. The Harvard museum of Natural history is amazing. Just a small museum, made up of things harvard alumni have brought back in their travels around the world. There's this amazing section full of taxidermied animals, all collected by 'harvard scholars' in their trip around the world. They were in these, like 50's joiner cabinets, glass cases with wooden joins, painted pastel blue. There were soo many different animals in there, I was blown away! It was awesome! For example, there was a case with over 100 hummingbirds!

Anyways, it's now my most favourite museum ever.

After Boston, I bussed down to NYC. New York was awesome. Partied the weekend away. I arrived Thursday night, then toured around Friday. Went to a cool Masquerade party on Friday night with all the New York couchsurfers. Then Sat, we toured around the bottom of Manhatten, walked the Brooklyn Bridge, then went down to the financial district and saw the stock exchange and the statue of liberty. That night, we went on a pub crawl in the east village. A unitard paub crawl! Funny. We took the city by storm and made quite a few people laugh I think.

Finally Sunday night, I went to an International dinner where all the couchsurfers brought food from their home country. On short notice, I scraped together a packet of tim tams. US$6. world's most expensive tim tams

Then, I bussed back to toronto overnight on Sunday to monday.

So yeah, very cool road trip. The crew in NYC were awesome, I guess its that kind of city, people from all over the world go there, leave their families at home, so form their own family, and hang out often. very cool.

I loved New England, and wish I could have stayed later. Pity I lost all my pictures though :'(

I'm off to Europe next!

Thursday 2 August 2007

Montreal...

I`m in Montreal! (as you should have guessed from the title). life was a little boring, with not working and not having any money, so «i decided to entertain myself by travelling around visiting people instead!

So a couple of weeks ago, I caught a ride to Ottawa to see my family! Now, you have to understand, I didn`t actually go anywhere near downtown Ottawa, my fmaily lives in a farmhouse west of Ottawa. My cousin and his wife and 4 kids live in the upstairs, and my aunt and uncle live downstairs. SO normally, there`s 8 of them living there. When I was there, my other cousin and 5 of her 6 kids were there too! So - there were 9 kids, 7 of whom were between 3 and 10! Plus the toddler (18 months) and the baby, oh and me the visitor! lol. It was slight chaos, but the good thing about that many kids is they keep themselves entertained mostly! Still, when my cousin`s husband and last kid arrived, it was 7 adults, 10 kids in a 4 bedroom house! slightly squished.

Last week - i headed up to Peterborough - lake country - to see another cousin of mine. She`s originally from Whakatane, and even used to babysit me when i was little, but she`s been in Canada for 15+ years now as a teacher. Her house is inthe outskirts of town in a beautiful area, 5 mins walk from the beach! I was soo jealous!

On saturday I went to a theme park, Canada`s wonderland! Fun times running around going on rollercoasters andsomehow geting myself talked into going on a ride that simply went up and then down into a giant puddle so you get soaked. That`s all. Just up and dunk. Honestly, I thought there was going o be a rollercoaster involved to make up for the soaking! But no, apparently not. Although, it is kinda scary being at the top and then realising this is the last moment you will be dry for a few hours! Good thing i was about 28 degrees. Pity we thought it was going to rain, so were all wearing jeans.

Now, I`m in Montreal. I arrived here on Monday, and am leaving on friday to go down to Boston to see my friends from Uni, then NYC for the weekend umm yeah, so doing the tourist thing for the next while, then onto Spain in 4 weeks! Ahh exciting!

Montreal is .. hot. And fun. Apparently the western world`s 2nd largest fench spĂȘaking city. After Paris (and I guess a whole lot of non-western world places - africa?). As you can see from my many typos, the keyboard is a bit different here.

But overall very fun, and there's lots of outdoor festivals, so have been out drinking at 11pm at night (when it`s still 30 degrees), very european!