Over to Vancouver

May 23-25, 2012: The best way to travel between Vancouver Island and the city is undoubtedly on a small plane. I saw the seaplanes landing both in Victoria and Vancouver, but wasn’t willing to pay over $100 for the experience. I was a little extravagant though. I could have used public buses between the city […]

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Vancouver: A Bad Finish

I should say up-front that the bad finish was hardly Vancouver’s fault. Sometime during my Stanley Park day, walking round in sandals,  I remember turning my right ankle, but since it didn’t hurt at the time I thought no more about it, even when the strap on my sandal started feeling tight. The next day […]

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Vancouver: A Good Start

After a peaceful night in the airport terminal, my visit to Vancouver really began with a magnificent sunrise seen from the Canada Line SkyTrain into town.   The whole of the eastern sky lit up in every shade from pink to purple. After leaving my bag at the YWCA and looking around Granville Island I ate […]

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Okay, Ottawa

May 31 – June 4, 2012: Two nights on the California Zephyr had been just right. Three nights on the Canadian was maybe one too many, and I was eager to get off after breakfast on the last morning. Unfortunately, the Canadian ran late, so not only was I stuck on the train developing cabin […]

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Crossing Canada

May 28-31, 2010: Back on the train for the three night trek to Toronto. My first thought was to call this piece Cruising Canada, on the grounds that there were some similarities between a long distance train and a cruise ship. You are, after all, confined on a means of transport with a lot of […]

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Riding the Rails to Jasper

May 25-26, 2012: When you buy a ticket for Via Rail over the Internet, they email you a bar code. For some bizarre reason my email server wouldn’t display the bar code within the email, I had to print it separately. It covered all four of my Canadian trains, so when I went  over to […]

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Very Victoria

May 19-23, 2012: I had been looking forward to Victoria. I had enjoyed Vancouver in 2010, and thought Victoria would be a smaller, quieter, perhaps quainter version, with reportedly better weather. I was disappointed. The weather didn’t help, varying from cool to cold and from damp to wet, and getting sick (probably from standing out […]

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Seattle: The City

May 17-19, 2012: After our tour of Bainbridge Island, I said farewell to PS, and boarded the ferry back to Seattle. You certainly get a great view of the city’s waterfront from the ferry! Despite my research, on both Google Maps and hopstop.com, I had a bit of trouble finding the right bus stop, but […]

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Portland: The City

KC doesn’t live in downtown Portland, but in one of the many suburban areas. Hers is about 30 minutes by car, or an hour by IMAX light rail, from the Amtrak station. She had been so busy working and studying that she hadn’t done a whole lot of exploring, so we were discovering Portland together. […]

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World’s End

Jan 18-22, 2011 – I liked Kandy but I loved the Hill Country. It turned out to be my favorite part of Sri Lanka, although next time I think I would stay in Ella rather than Nuwara Eliya. I stopped briefly in Ella on my way down to the coast and the scenery was even […]

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