Photo Friday - Granville Island

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A Tale of Two Cities

We're self-confessed not-city people. When on holiday in or near a city we find we run out of things that we want to see or do very quickly - in particular spending lots of time in large shopping areas holds little appeal. With three days planned for Vancouver we were a little worried that we would hit this problem - but apparently not! We successfully managed to enjoy the bits of a city that do appeal and largely ignored the rest!

One of the few things we often say we do miss about living in a big city is the sheer variety of food places there are. The demand is there for the interesting, quirky, local restaurants and the food markets offering all sorts of delicacies. Over the three nights we ate differently each time and, be it tacos or curry wrapped in a roti, all was very tasty and reasonably priced.

Tea!

We fell in love a little with the public market on Granville Island and certainly if we were local would have visited regularly. We were amazed to find a tea stall with over 100 varieties of tea, include single estate pickings of some of the best known black teas. They brewed us up a pot each of two of the single estate assams and we came to the conclusion that Jen preferred one and Joe the other. The market there also provided us with lunch on one of our days - a bagel stuffed full of pastrami - Joe was in heaven!

Pastrami + Bagel = Tasty

We made up for all the good food by keeping active and on Monday we rented bikes for the day and cycled most of Vancouver's sea wall cycle path which is mainly flat and takes you for a lap of Stanley Island as well as round the harbour.  It was a fantastic way to see the city, though just under 20 miles later and we were rather tired and sore (more cycling than we've done in many many years).

False Creek, Vancouver

On our last day in the city we were looking for something to do not too far from the airport and came across the VanDusen Botanical Gardens - 50 acres of gardens with plants from all over the world. It was another beautifully sunny day and a lovely way to spend our last few hours in Canada.

Waterfalls at VanDusen Botanical Garden

Then, "just" 14 hours of flight later and we found ourselves half a world away in Auckland Botanical Gardens taking the excuse for some fresh air and a leg stretch before the drive to our first hostel. Despite a climate that felt very familiar the jump from an Indian Summer in Canada to early spring was rather confusing for the senses - particularly the sudden abundance of daffodils. While many of the plants felt similar to those back home - a great magnolia display being their seasonal highlight - there were many that felt strange and slightly tropical. The abundance of ferns - particularly the larger tree ferns were a definite reminder that we were somewhere new! We spent much of our walk round the gardens trying to decide whether what we could hear was a rusty gate or a bird, before getting our first sight of a tui - known apparently for including timber-like creaks in its song!

Ferns uncurling at Auckland Botanical Garden

We spent our first 3 nights in New Zealand on the Coromandel Peninsula - chosen for being close to but not in Auckland itself (see earlier notes about not being city people). Little did we realise that after just a two hour drive we would be in a remote quiet mountainous region with a stunning coastline. It was a lucky stab in the dark but we really hit the jackpot. As in Canada we had low expectations of ourselves the first couple of days to help with jet lag and travel fatigue, but apart from being a little sleepy in the evenings we coped with the travel much better on this leg giving us space to go for a couple of short walks, observe some of the local birds and borrow the hostel's kayaks for an hour on the quiet estuary. I don't think we could have planned it better if we tried.

View from the top of the hill at Oputere Youth Hostel

Our next stop is three weeks WWOOFing near Cambridge and is going to be a complete change of pace from what we've experienced so far... watch this space!

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Photo Friday - Kelowna

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A Weather-full Week

This week for us has been shaped completely by the variations in weather and of course we've been very British and talked about it a lot. Shortly after polishing off last weeks blog post on Saturday morning we left Edmonton and started the journey west. Our flight out of Canada next week is from Vancouver making the aim of our two weeks here to see a much as we could while travelling the 1500km between the two cities.

Saturday was a warm clear day, great for watching the changing views as we travelled towards Jasper. Initially we had a couple of hours driving through large swathes of pine forest, with little else to mark the passing of time which we found a little disconcerting. The roads here are clear and wide  and we ended up having a gummy sweet every 15mins just to give us a tangible time marker! We were surprised to find the lorries doing the same speed as everything else, they're not restricted to a different speed limit as they would be in the UK, and that all corners here are marked with a warning sign - no matter how gentle.

On one of our days driving we stopped to stretch legs and found a boardwalk
through a giant cedar forest!

Then we saw it, the hazy row of mountains in the distance, and suddenly everything felt much more exciting. Other drivers were watching us while we kept stoping to take photos, looks of "you know there's a better view round the corner, right?" but we didn't care! Slowly but surely the view just grew and another couple of hours and we were in the national park itself . The weather was perfect and we just couldn't get over panoramic after panoramic of grand mountains and beautiful turquoise lakes and rivers.

Jasper National Park

We'd booked to stay in a wilderness hostel just outside Jasper, meaning it was completely off grid. Limited power from solar panels, wood stoves for heating and no running water (unless you jog to refill the barrels for the kitchen, as the hostel manager informed us), but regardless we had a great couple of days there meeting a variety of people (mostly Europeans). When we arrived we sat outside with a cup of tea and just absorbed the quiet mountain surroundings, and we were glad we did because Sunday was a little grey and damp and by the time we got up on Monday the ground was covered in snow!

  

Left: the hostel on Saturday; Right: the hostel just 36 hours later on Monday morning

Knowing that the hostel was at a much higher altitude than the main road, and that even there the roads seemed to be clear we didn't worry too much as we set off for a days driving down the Icefields Parkway to Banff. Little did we know that we were about to spend the entire day driving in a snowstorm! We stopped a couple of times to enjoy the view first at Leach Lake (very pretty) and then at the Athabasca Falls (huge volumes of water, plus some cool rocks from where the water had worn it's channel), but by the time we stopped at lunch time the glacier that was supposed to be over the road was completely lost to the mist.

Beautifully carved rocks at Athabasca Falls

By the time we arrived in Banff that evening we'd come to the conclusion that if the snow wasn't going to improve we were going to need to change our schedule. We weren't really geared up for cold weather (this snow being an unseasonable early cold snap) and the car wasn't either. When the weather forecast said another 10-15cm was due a day later we got in contact with the family we were staying with for our next stop and arranged to come a day early. Over the course of the following day the thermometer in the car went from reading 1C to 20C as we moved west again, we slowly stripped off all the layers we'd dug out in Banff, and by the time we reached the Okanagan Valley it was lovely again. We found we just kept chuckling over experiencing such a change of temperature in just a days driving, something neither of us had done before.

Quails Gate Winery

Kelowna has been lovely and we don't in the slightest regret getting here early. We've enjoyed visiting a couple of the regions wineries, even if just to enjoy the view and the sunshine (they have picked the nice warm slopes for their vines as anyone would do). We've seen the city from both the top of Knox Mountain and a sailing boat in the middle of the lake. We've explored the local craft distillery and wandered through the town centre. I think we've got past the point of looking at everything and gaping at how big it is, though Joe's been loving the occasional sight of the large trains pulling miles of carriages.

Sunset over West Kelowna from the top of Knox Mountain

Despite all the weather changes it has been a good week. We've seen plenty of stunning scenery, met lots of different people and just about got used to the Canadian road system. We're finishing off our week with the final part of our Canadian journey over to Vancouver and I'm sure that will be as different again as the places we've seen so far. 

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Photo Friday - Leach Lake

Leach Lake, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

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A Postcard from Edmonton

We arrived in Canada on Wednesday evening after months of planning and 19 hours travelling. The flights were long but we enjoyed watching the world go past, starting with the clouds clearing to give us a cracking view of our beloved Islay, to seeing the sea ice and glaciers in Greenland. For the last three hours or so we were looking at Canada itself and that really helped us understand for the first time the size of this enormous country, along with just how sparsely populated it is (sure we knew it was big but the reality took some getting used to). 

Icebergs, glaciers and mountains of Greenland

Our change of planes in Iceland went smoothly enough, with the exception that we think our bags were left outside in the rain for the hour and a half we were in the airport - the wet had soaked through both our outer cases and our rucksacks and a lot of stuff was damp which would have taken more than just the 5 minutes to load them from the trolley onto the plane to achieve. We were pleased though when we got onto the second plane to be able to watch them put our bags onto the plane too so we knew that transfer had safely happened.

Wet bags in Reykjavik

So we finally arrived, collected our bags and our hire car and got on the road into Edmonton. We made it safely to Adam and Morgans house despite the new car, right hand drive, new road layouts and not having much of a clue where we were going. We were immediately stuck again by the scale of everything, particularly the size of other vehicles on the road. Most people around here drive trucks apparently... and they are not small! 

Our hosts in Edmonton have been lovely, greeting us with news that they'd got the teapot out specially and they'd let us loose in their attic where there was plenty of space to spread out our things to dry. We slept fairly well despite the 7 hour time difference though once we'd woken up at 5.30 there was no way we were going back to sleep. 

Our plan for our days in Edmonton had been to take things gentle, not knowing how either of us would react to the jet lag. Thursday morning we wandered slowly toward the centre of Edmonton, first going into a sewing shop and discovering a larger collection of patchwork material than either of us had seen in one room before, and then visiting the highly recommended Duchess Bake Shop. We walked as far as the top of Victoria Park and the River Valley. Edmonton is a flat city based on a grid system with the exception that there is a river that runs through the middle surrounded by trees and parks. Coming across this as we walked caught us by surprise even though we knew this was what we were aiming for - again just the scale of everything was what hit us, are you spotting a theme here? 

Aside from a few trips to supermarkets that has been about it for Edmonton. Jet lag has left us rather knackered and we decided to pause now rather than fail to enjoy the mountains. We did manage to cook a meal for our hosts on our last night with them - sausages, mash, yorkshire puddings and onion & red wine gravy.

Next stop, the Rockies...

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Photo Friday - Duchess Bake Shop, Edmonton

We happened to be walking past one of the best bakeries in Canada this week and... 

Well it would be rude not to sample the produce! Pain Au Chocolat for a second breakfast from Duchess Bake Shop, Edmonton.

P.s. Don't forget you can stay up to date with our travels at http://twitter.com/urban__cottage 

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