WestwardGo!

Boarding The Canadian (with free treat boxes) Even train delays are bigger in Canada! There was the initial 21 hour delay and then further delays due to freight trains having priority on the single track (which meant sometimes reversing slowly for miles into a siding to let one pass...) and a large portion of said track having been washed away a couple of days previously, so we arrived 32 hours late in total, not even a new record for this line and we went back 2 hours to Mountain time! Despite that we thoroughly enjoyed the 3 night journey to Jasper, the free champagne definitely helped! The freight trains are HUGE! We did play count-the-carriages on the trains that passed us, the longest was 175 carriages long and with each carriage being 60ft that means the train was 2 miles long!!! There was rumour of even longer trains but we had given up counting at this point. Highlights included spotting wildlife (beavers, bears, eagles, elk, falcons, groundhogs, mountain goats), stun...

When we arrived back at Toronto things weren't any better, waves from Lake Ontario were crashing on the shore and in Downtown people were battling with high winds, holding on to railings and avoiding debris being blown around by the 80mph winds. There was talk of patio furniture being blown from the condos high up on the apartment blocks (scary!) and we did later find out that 2 people were sadly killed by falling debris in the city! We had a 45 minute walk to our hostel which as Sod's Law would have it was into the wind the entire way, not so bad other than the grit sandblasting us (Amy's nail varnish needed reapplying due to gritblast!) We did seek sanctuary in a Lush shop where Amy bought more things to live in Mike's bag and carried on our way. On route to our hostel The hostel proved very difficult to find but after some help from a local we found our place for the night. It was quite 'arty' but not the best sleep we've ever had, we...

St Catharines This almost fell apart at the last second due to Megabus Canada not accepting UK cards on their online payment system, with only 2 seats left on the bus and hours of trying (and failing) to book them we gave in for the night and waited until we could phone them at 7am. Fortunately the seats remained available and we booked them over breakfast, our trip to Niagara Falls was on! Our stay in St Catharines was a room in a suburban house on a quiet and idyllic road in a peaceful neighbourhood. We received a warm welcome from our host, Vicki and then quickly set out on a quest for food. We'd both heard about Wendy's before our visit to Canada and had been looking forward to one, luck was on our side as there was one down the road :) Tasty burgers!!! After gorging on fast-food we returned to our AirBnB and spent a good chunk of the evening chatting with Vicki, putting the world to rights about our respective countries, governments, societies and ...

Since our last post 5 days ago we have been very busy! We spent 2 nights at the Only Backpackers Inn which is a great hostel, it's attached to the Only Cafe which is a popular spot with locals for coffee and great beer (with great names, our favourite being Pompous Ass English Ale). Amy digging in to the free breakfast down in the bar We used this as our base to visit some well known Toronto attractions, first up was Casa Loma, North America's only Castle which has great views of the city. Casa Loma Stables! The view of downtown Toronto They were big boozers! After a quick lunch stop it was back onto the subway to get to the CN tower, educational image below with an Amy for scale (bottom right corner of photo). Minutes later we had shot up the glass-bottomed elevator to the top of the tower to take in the views (and for Mike to have his sunglasses blown off his head) A long way down! We passed a notable milestone dur...

We made it! Its 23:20 UK time but 18:20 here - we had breakfast, then brunch at the airport, then lunch on the plane, then a plane snack and now we have no idea what meal we are on - just that we are hungry! Canada is super sunny today, highs of 26C here in Toronto - no leaves on the trees yet though so it look's a bit like southern Spain! Didn't get passports stamped as it's all automated thingies now but did somehow manage to get a free bus ride - the driver couldn't give us change and so decided to not bother charging us at all, what a loveley man! We took the bus straight to a train station, jumped on a waiting subway train then 23 stops later we are at the hostel - it has a coffee bar and a regular bar and we hope some food for supper!! Below is a photo from it at night (we didn't take it) P.S. American trucks are HUGE and the bus stop was underneath a MONORAIL!

Our journey has officially begun! After final (slightly teary in Amy's case) goodbyes to Devon family and Ted we set off from Tiverton and headed north to a surprisingly sunny Stockport by train. Whilst mostly an uneventful journey other than seat thievery we did encounter the worst and most dreaded 3 word sentance in the English language: Replacement Bus Service This also meant we had to battle through Birmingham city centre traffic and were greeted at the train station by opposing groups of footy fans in the midst of a fight/riot on the platform which was quickly brought under control by a small army of police officers, welcome to Stockport! We now have a couple of days before flying out to Canada which will be spent saying our farewells to more family and friends and spending Mike's car money on headphones, noise cancelling ones are essential for travel apparently.

We did a dummy pack this evening, involving making many, many piles of various things.   According to the dogs we absolutely MUST pack a tennis ball as this is the singular most important thing in the universe. Furry helpers are not as helpful as they think they are!  It's funny how after 26 years my life can be condensed into a single bag. So now all thats left is packing up of electronics, toiletries and photocopying important documents and we are pretty much good to go! (As soon as Mike leaves his bag unattended I can sneak in several more pairs of my shoes into his bag, he won't notice right?)