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Castle On The Hill

Friday, August 9th, 2013

We had booked the first train to Quebec City from Montreal, and had to wake before dawn to make it. The train was very comfortable, with spacious airline-style seating, and the trip was smooth and relaxing.

I’m taking Bernard’s comment from the other day to heart and today’s blog will feature only ‘street photography’ in accordance, I’m sure, with his exacting standards 🙂

We arrived at Montreal just after 9, and since nothing had been open when we left Montreal the first order if the day was breakfast. I’ll illustrate the event in a ‘visual tone poem’:

Quebec City has an old section inside a wall and up on a hill and our hotel – the Chateau Frontenac – is right at the top. Even so, it was a relatively easy walk up to the hotel from the station through the picturesque streets of old city.

And the hotel itself! Here’s the first you see of it:

And a couple of other views:

It’s 120 years old, absolutely massive and (obviously) built to resemble a classic European castle. Our room is large and comfortable, and the hotel sits atop a cliff with incredible views of the St Lawrence river. According to a plaque, it is the most photographed hotel in the world!

It’s also one of the most expensive I reckon! Ignoring for a moment the (ugly) $12075 sculpture of a violin in the gift shop, take a gander at this ‘fridge’:

It’s pre-stocked with all manner of beverage and if you drink any a charge is added to your bill. A can of soda? $4.25! A can of beer? $9! The total price if you drink everything (and eat the snacks as well)? $328.25 🙂

After dumping our stuff we went out and explored the near bye area, including a fort and a field upon which a historic revolutionary war battle occurred. Eventually we ended up in lower city at the base of the cliff on which stands Frontenac.

The rest if the day was – if you can believe it – spent relaxing! Here’s Jim snoozing the afternoon away:

I went exploring and found some old cosplayers in the hotel foyer…

A handsome horse just outside…

And a ‘Caramilk’ bar that I speedily shoved down my gulliver…

Later on I did some shopping (more postcards mostly), some eating, some watching of TV and then – after dark – a walk on the promenade. Here I saw a great acrobat show:

And a very large and very impressive castle-hotel looking beautiful with the lights on:

Tomorrow we’re going to visit the great outdoors…

Posted in Art, Family, Food, Miscellaneous, Trip | 1 Comment »

In The Fight Between 2 Geezers And Montreal… The Sun Wins!

Thursday, August 8th, 2013

Today, after a very early start, we took the subway to the 1976 Olympics location. Although the stadium and other venues are still there, our destination was the Biodome, which is a sort of indoor zoo.

That’s Jim with one of the locals.

The Biodome contains 4 ‘biomes’, which are separate habitats that represent three parts of Canada and… well the fourth is tropical rainforest! Each is very large and has controlled temperature and a variety of animals and plants to see. It’s very impressive.

Here are shots from the rainforest section:

And the Canadian wilderness section (can you see the beaver swimming?):

And the Canadian Atlantic coast:

That’s a sturgeon Jim is admiring. The massive tank (which has surface viewing as well) is full of them. Me; I’m pointing to an evil fish. Don’t believe me…?

Maybe he has a good heart?

The final section was arctic, which meant the animals (birds) were behind glass in their cooled enclosures. The penguins were particularly popular with the visitors:

All in all, the Biodome is a very impressive place to spend a couple of hours, and you should visit if you’re in town.

The ~~lovely filly~~ concierge at our hotel had recommended the botanical gardens to me yesterday, and since it was a hop and a skip from the Biidome we hopped (and skipped) over.

The entry cost included the intriguing ‘Insectarium’ and it was this that we visited first.

What a surprise! This was an amazing collection of insects (most dead, but many alive) from all over the world sorted by family of colour or habitat or diet etc., etc. There were thousands to admire, and the presentation was as good as any I have seen.

(Yes, that’s my hand!)

Perhaps the highlight was an ingenious display of leaf cutter ants, crafted in such a way as to give guests the chance to watch them harvest and then carry leave pieces to their nests:

Awesome stuff! In my opinion, the insectarium alone made the ticket worthwhile, and we hasn’t even really entered the gardens themselves…

Anyway the Gardens are where it’s at here in Montreal right now, because of a topiary art installation. You know what that is: sculpture from plants. They can draw big crowds for this stuff?

I’m going to cut right to the chase:

The ‘Tree of Birds’! 16 feet high, 18 feet wide, dozens of tonnes and 56 birds all made with plants (over an aluminium frame, of course).

It was – and I’m not a big fan of this word – amazing!

But wait…..

Look at her! Gaia, The Earth Mother, rising 5 meters tall, deer in one hand and a waterfall in the other, all made of plants. It was awesome.

All told there were over 50 of these sculptures, ranging from ‘better than anything I could ever do’ to ‘difficult to believe it’s even possible’. Here’s a few more examples:

I was a particular fan of the orangutan, which very effectively used a type of brown grass for the fur. Needless to say, this exhibit (and the gardens overall) was absolutely worth seeing.

Did you see the bright sun in those photos? Well it saw us, especially the fact we had no sunscreen on since when we left the hotel rain was forecast.

My plan to stave off the inevitable sunburn by applying sunscreen after hours in the hot sun seems to have failed. In the afternoon we went for a walk around Old Montreal, but clearly by that point we had been ruined by a mixture of sunstroke and dehydration, and if it wasn’t for the (no joke!) over 2 hours of post carding and blogging I may have fallen asleep at 8:30 like Jim did 🙂

Posted in Animals, Family, Food, Garden, Miscellaneous, Nature, Pets, Trip | 2 Comments »

Summer Vacation #2

Wednesday, July 31st, 2013

Next week, JBF and I are off on a vacation to Canada! Specifically, we’re training to Montreal and then Quebec City (and then back).

All told we’ll spend over 20 hours on trains, and in the two cities I hope to explore some of the older parts with European influence. For instance, we’re going to stay in a converted castle in Quebec City!

Needless to say, you can follow our exploits on this very blog. Needless to also say, you can probably expect a postcard or two as well.

Who knows, peut-être qu’ils vont être rédigés en français!

Posted in Family, Miscellaneous, Trip | 1 Comment »

Never an Expatriot!

Saturday, July 27th, 2013

This may seem weird, but recently I’ve been thinking a lot about being an Australian living in the USA. As I get older the call of my homeland gets louder. I wonder if one day I will do something about that?

At any rate, I became curious as to where I had spent most of my life… so I did some calculation.

I’ve lived for approximately 15115 days, and have been in America since May 1993, or over 20 years. However, I decided to count travel destinations as well and this is what I came up with:

Yep, about 7300 of those days have been spent in Australia, versus only about 7100 in the USA. If it weren’t for the first year-and-a-half of my life being spent in The Fatherland, Australia would be well in the lead. If I didn’t count vacations (a total of about 33 weeks spent outside of the US since I moved here) then the US would be in the lead.

Using my system – and accounting for an upcoming Canadian vacation and Australia (again!) in the new year – sometime next February the US will surpass Australia as the country in which I have lived more of my days. I guess I’ll have mixed feelings when that day happens.

Posted in Family, Time | 2 Comments »