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Twenty Things We Saw At The Fair

Saturday, August 17th, 2013

It was time once again to visit the annual Altamont fair! It doesn’t change much from year to year, but I can’t resist the lure of the rides! Here’s twenty things we saw today:

1) A new ride, called ‘Pharoah’s Fury’. Basically a version of the Pirate Ship, this was notable for the 90 degree maximum incline that created sustained zero-g. KLS was screaming almost non-stop. A very fun ride 🙂

2) Another new ride, called ‘Vertigo’. I was impressed with how high it was! Unfortunately, since it’s a rotator, I didn’t ride it due to motion sickness.

3) All the old favourite rides returned, staffed by the usual gang of creepy ~~murderous ex-felons~~ carnies. We saw a guy ‘fixing’ The Zipper using a piece of string (not a joke!)

4) I saw KLS eat delicious fries with me, shortly after I had eaten a hamburger myself.

5) We saw this device, but for the life of us couldn’t work out what it was called or what it was supposed to do:

6) We saw a tiny, tiny goat:

7) And a kangaroo with a joey in it’s pouch. She bent down to eat some grass and the joey ate as well!

8) We saw a very special duck…

9) And an evil looking chicken…

10) And a happy sheep… in a barn full of happy sheep 🙂

11) Over in the art contest displays, we even saw Doctor Who!

12) Nearby, the first prize winning scarecrow wasn’t perhaps as scary as you’d imagine:

13) Here is a princess being defended by a dragon:

14) Heading back to the midway, past the vendors selling spa’s, blenders and insurance, I found an unusual sight!

15) We didn’t go on that many rides, mostly because they almost all go in circles. The Ferris Wheel is always fun though. Right next to it this year was a ‘cryptozoology museum’ with some extraordinary art hanging out the front:

16) Oh, I almost forgot! The giraffe was back:

17) As was the circus we saw last year. We didn’t go since we were a bit tired and it was very, very hot.

18) The games on the midway are as dubious as ever. Surprising prizes this time around included live goldfish and knives!

19) The animals are fun, but for me the fair is always about the garbage food…

20) And the big, noisy, scary and quite possibly life-threateningly dangerous rides:

I just wish I was 12 again, so I could ride them all without getting sick 🙂

Posted in Animals, Family, Food, Miscellaneous, Tech | 1 Comment »

Apotheosis of The Machine Brain

Saturday, August 10th, 2013

It’s 8 pm and I’m sitting on the promenade outside the ~~castle~~ hotel overlooking the Saint Lawrence river. There will be fireworks later; people are everywhere! It will be a fun end to a busy day!

Here’s the very start:

We’d return to this bakery later for bread and pastries for our dinner!

In the morning we caught a bus upriver to the famous Montmorency Falls.

Beautiful! See the bridge over the top? We walked that. The photo above is taken from a steep staircase that leads from the top to the bottom:

Here’s a shot from the lookout to the south side of the falls, visible on the left in the first photo:

We started at the top, took the stairs down, then got to the top again via a rope way!

Here’s me hamming it up in the car:

Growing up in Australia waterfalls are not exactly common and it’s always a treat to visit one. It was a sight definitely worth seeing 🙂

Afterwards, we returned to the city and headed down to old town, at the base of the cliffs on which stands the hotel. Here I met a lovely bird:

Whose hand is that? ONLY MINE!

I petted him and he leaned into my hand. So cute!

We wandered on, and ignorantly walked right past the Canadian Museum of Civilization! Booooooring, we all might think. But stop the presses since a certain poster caught my eye…

What’s this? A froggy museum exhibit on the history of video games in Quebec, Canada? Could it be good? Was it worth $15?!?!?

Yes, my friends, it absolutely was!

The exhibit, which was divided into various eras (Origin, Arcades, 3D etc.) contained over 500 items including a staggering 88 playable consoles and arcade games!

And believe me, whoever curated this exhibit was no slouch to game history and the landmark games from each era.

The above snap shows Barbarian playable on an Amstrad!?! I was in hog heaven as I effortlessly demoed the 1-hit kill move to Jim almost 30 years since I had last played.

I would go on to play PC-Engine, MSX (!!), C-64 and countless other gems, including…

Tempest 2000 on a Jaguar! Jim got in on the action as well:

That’s him playing an Amiga for the first time. The game? Turrican!

Here’s a cute display:

That’s Bubble Bobble demonstrated on 4 different machines. A fifth was playable adjacent to this display.

I also went a bit menerk when I found Thunderforce III playable for Mega Drive. It was as if this exhibit was custom designed for me!

Oh and the relics! They ranged from breathtaking original working Space Invaders Deluxe cocktail cabinets:

To displays of rare game merchandise:

To awesomely nostalgic game packaging:

And to stuff bizarre beyond words:

There was so much to see and play, from Odyssey to iOS and Wii U. Superb beyond my mere words, this exhibit was one memory after another. As I got to this screen on my first man:

In this game:

I knew my visit to the ~~boooooring~~ Museum of Civilization was one I’d probably remember forever 🙂

Oh yes, and later in the day we saw this:

Gotta run! Fireworks 🙂

Posted in Animals, Art, Food, Games, Otaku, Tech, Time, Toys, Trip | Comments Closed

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 »

The Day We Collectively Ate 10 Shaved Ices

Friday, June 14th, 2013

After Nara, we all slept like stone dogs, getting 10 or more hours of sleep and barely registering our pricey hotel! The next day – the last of our whirlwind Kyoto trip – was reserved for the sights of Kyoto itself.

Now the guides say Kyoto can be appreciated in a few days, or at best a week. We had one! KLS and I had been here before 11 years ago, and I asked the concierge which sights were recommended in one day and she gave four suggestions. Soon we were on the bus to the first, Kinkakuji Temple (the golden pavilion):

Or, as it may have looked in a 1950s technicolour travelogue:

Beautiful isn’t it? The wooden structure is lacquered with gold, and sits next to a garden (the lake) which is considered one of the greatest in all Japan. To see it in person is quite a sight.

Here is a slightly different perspective:

As with all tourist sights here in Japan, Kinkakuji was mobbed with school kids. Given it was 93F, with almost no breeze and little shade, I felt sorry for them in their long pants, dresses and sleeves!

We quickly felt the heat as well, and I had a bit of a turn at the temple, succumbing to vapors that drained my life rapidly. We decided to head directly to another famous temple on the other side of Kyoto, then call it a day.

Upon arriving at the new location, we found a stall…

Selling a product called ‘potatornado’:

Which was delicious, especially with shaved ice!

Rapid consumption of such treats restored my HP quickly!

That is a pile of sand, intended to symbolize Mt Fuji, in the gardens of Ginkakuji, another famous temple in Kyoto.

As with Kinkakuji, it was built over 500 years ago when Kyoto was the Capitol, and today is one of the national treasures of Japan.

It was during exploration of the beautiful gardens on Ginkakuji that someone who shall be named only as ‘Francis’ was heard to utter: “When does this death march end?”

He was referring to the stairs, and the heat, and the two weeks of exhaustion. It was time to leave the heat and find solace in air conditioning, and that we did!

The above shows ~~Francis~~ Bernard enjoying lunch, and here he is a bit later after some mall shopping:

The tray contains the 8th, 9th and 10th shaved ices of the day, all but one of which had been lemon flavour! It would not be an exaggeration to say the ambrosial quality of the sickly sweet arctic treat had saved us from an early grave in the Kyoto heat!