We're having a lovely time and have been pretty lucky with the weather so far too! We arrived in the Ottawa Jail Hostel yesterday after a 5 hour drive from Linda's house! The automatic Nissan drives really nicely and apart from close to Ottawa the roads are pretty easy! Ottawa has about 900,000 inhabitants and the roads around it are 3 lane huge highways so we had to concentrate to be in the right lane for turning off but it all worked out fine and the GPS Linda lent us helps a lot! We arrived in Orillia, where Linda lives, yesterday at lunchtime and they have a really nice little house! She picked us up in Barrie, about 1/2 an hour from her place and after a nice shower and a snooze we hit the town for a "pint and pound"! If you say that...all Canadian know you mean a pound of chicken wings....there is apparently quite an art to cooking them and the sauces are a big deal but they were delicious! At their house later that eve, we looked at their wedding photos which was great and then got served steaks from the grill...but not just beef steaks....we also had some moose stake! Don't know what the word is in German....but it's bigger than an Elch for sure!! It tasted like wild meat, drier than the other steaks, but interesting! Anyhow, the bus drive from New York City to Toronto was quite long, 10 hours, but not too bad as it was in the night and we did manage to sleep a bit! At the Canadian border you have to get off with all your luggage and go through passport controls....it was quite funny, cos they were not happy with Ivan's passport and they took 20mins or so to clear us! The passport runs out it 2 years and is quite used and they were inspecting it closesly.....but seeing we got into NY without any problems.....where we had a photo taken and fingerprints of each hand taken!!!.....it shouldn't really have taken that long! Of course the whole bus had to wait for us!:-) In Toronto it was easy getting on another 1 1/2 hour bus to Barrie, and having two whole seats to spread out on on this bus.....it was much more comfortable! Although we booked our tickets in advance, it's a first come first serve seating......so we were glad to arrive at the Bus terminal in NY an hour and 1/2 in advance as not everybody got on!
Talking about new York, we couldn't have had a better time there...the first day was amazing as we did a bus tour all round downtown Manhattan and even Uptown so we got a really nice feel of the city! Manhattan island alone is huge and we basically only saw that! We did a night tour on the 4th July, yes, Independence Day, which was great, the whole city lit up, and that took us into Brooklyn a bit! Wow, that really was amazing, we even caught some of the fireworks at about 9.15 pm! We also caught a glimpse of Queens as we went to the Museum of the Moving Image which was quite interesting! Outside Manhattan NY feels just like any other city I guess, but, I have to say, Manhattan really blew my socks off! The tour of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island was well worth it and although it wasn't sunny at least it wasn't raining! Lady Liberty is quite far out in the harbour, about a 15mins ferry ride, and she is a lot taller than you would expect! 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island and although 2% doesn't sound like much.....a hell of a lot of people were rejected.....and the island of hope turned into the island of tears! It was interesting to see what the immigrants were asked, one woman was asked how she cleans the steps, from top to bottom or bottom to top....she replied...she wasn't coming here to clean stairs! :-)
Another great experience was the Broadway Mamma Mia musical we saw! It really was entertaining and fun as you literally know all the songs .....how the hell the managed to make a story out them all is fabulous! :-) We even managed to see a great Jazz show of one of the top quartetts at the lincoln center! The performance was awesome, on the 5th floor with the night skyline behind the band.....wow....and they even had the crowd singing towards the end....a little tune we keep on remembering!!
We've had a nice day in Ottawa and saw the Parliament buildings with the flame that always burns....the Museum of Civilization was very worthwhile and the old locks (Schleusen) that let boats pass are still manhandled and we even saw a boat passing through which was cool!
We're off to Quebec city tomorrow and we will hopefully have another easy enought drive.
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