Oh Canada

Vancouver Harbour is a sight to behold. Along the waterfront, called Canada place, there is a replica of a ship's bow topped by white sails. This is what you are looking at from the Harbour Tower just a couple of blocks away from Canada Place.

Vancouver is beautiful...clean and easy to navigate. Moira and I wandered around - and shopped-SURPRISE! Made it to a movie at this funky movie house too. Most of the buildings downtown have these amazing waterfalls, sometimes they are cascading down from a great height. Wish they could export half of it to Aus...that would fill up our dams. Along with the water features, there were beautifully kept "gardens"- all in all a very pleasant city.

We also visited Vancouver Island -namely Victoria.


A hour and a half on the ferry each way-which doesn't include getting to the ferries. Victoria is a gorgeous little city. We ate lunch at the Empress hotel -a very imposing hotel with the usual manicured gardens.


It was a beautiful day and we strolled along the waterfront looking at the market stalls, and then made it half way up government street, but got stopped at a jewelers and that was our tour of Victoria. Short but sweet.

After a few days we got ready to go to Alaska on a cruise ship....stay tuned for the next installment.
Ciao
Genie

Back in the US of A

Well, NYC is all they say- exciting, stimulating, crowded, dizzying and over the top!
For a long time I have been fantasising about staying at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. The Algonquin is the place where the famous round table happened. The Algonquin Round Table was a meeting place for the prominent literary figures in New York in the 30's and 40'- authors and playrights and publishers of both books and magazines like the New Yorker. There are tons of gorgeous little stories connected with the hotel. I always swore that if I ever went back to New York and ever got the $ together, I would stay there. As you know, all of that came together, and so I did.

IT WAS FABULOUS!

The room was gorgeous and I actually got to sit at the table that Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley and other literary figures sat.



Mostly I went to theatre in New York. I saw Hairspray [cute and lively] Doubt [funny and thought provoking] and Forbidden Broadway -a send up of all the shows on Broadway plus other Broadway issues [hysterical and clever!]. The rest of my time was spent navigating my way through a squillion pedestrians [tourists and locals] and trying to swim upstream in Times Square. Everyone is talking on their cell phones while they are walking along, which makes navigating harder. I did take a walk down 5th Avenue to Central Park which was nice. Also went on the city circle line, [thanks Brad for the suggestion] which was a ferry that went all the way around Manhattan Island replete with commentary. Very interesting.

Then I took the train from Penn Station up to Niagara Falls where I stayed at Rob and Clint's -"the only exclusively gay guest house in Niagara Falls". Clint- who originally told me there was no room at the Inn and sent me to the Crystal Inn on the freeway, and then somehow changed his mind and came and got me- recommended this gorgeous restaurant, where I sat outside and got a view of the falls and this man who walked a tight wire between two buildings at about 750 feet off the ground. That was a trip!

The falls were beautiful- and I have some lovely photos of them- from up above and from the Maid of the Mist which is a boat that runs right into the falls. [you get soaking wet standing at the rails-it was a blast!] It rained the whole day, so I hardly noticed getting wet from the Falls. I couldn't help thinking though as we hovered by the thunderous waterfall: "Why are we digging up all this oil with all this energy right here? There must be a lot of waterfalls that we could trap energy from".



From Niagara, I took a bus to Toronto and met Moira. Next day we got on the train to Vancouver. The train took 3 days and the scenery was totally amazing! The train was pretty neat too. Great service. We were in the berths- they are seats in the daytime and the porter comes along at night and turns them into bunk beds with curtains- just like in Some Like It Hot! Every so many cars there was a "dome" car which had a second story with a windowed dome on it and you could see 180 degrees all round. The views were spectacular.We met some really nice women on the trip- Beth and Sue- mother and daughter, who were extraordinary and Helen- from NYC who was lovely and interesting. It made the trip even better.




Now we are in Vancouver and will hang here for 4 days after which we get on the ship to Alaska....whooee! My head is spinning for visiting all these places in such a short time. There are definitely some places I would like to return to- and some things, like the QM2 I can tick off my list forever! And in answer to all your questions: NO I DID NOT RESIST THE FOOD-

Chubbily yours
Genie

Snaps from the Sea

The QM2 rests in New York Harbour

New York at 5AM

The QM2 plows into the Sunset

The grand staircase into the dining room



Just in case we sink


A view to the bridge

Sailing the Atlantic

This has been an amazing experience.....the Queen Mary 2 - it was impossible to get a photo of the whole ship while I was on it] was simply HUGE! This is me at dinner at the gorgeous restaurant on board called The Lotus- and another out the window on the one rainy night we had.

There are 13 decks- I lived on deck 5. My room was so big, I realised one night while lying on the bed that I could have a party with 40+ people in there and there would still be room for a couple more. For some reason I was lucky- not everyone's room was this big. It took me an hour to get to the loo which was by the front door.

The staff were divine- very courteous and helpful, and there was so much to do on board- lectures from professors from Oxford University, films, dancing lessons, art lessons, shuffleboard and other sports, high tea every day at 3:30, discos, shows and more....even a casino, that sometimes it was overwhelming.

Every morning I got up with all the other mad people who were also probably overeating like I was, and walked around deck 7 [3 laps=1.1 miles] despite the fact that it was so windy some days that you could have literally been blown overboard if there weren't protection around the deck. Most of the crossing was smooth except for this 1-2 days where it was super windy and choppy on the water.

As I said, overeating was definitely on the agenda...beautiful meals. Breakfast and lunch were buffets and dinner was sit down- though on two nights I ate elsewhere because it was a formal sitting, which means cocktail frocks. I did attend one formal sitting, with my Dame Judy Dench outfit on, which worked out fine.

Coming into New York Harbour at 4 Am was pretty amazing and most of the 2,500 passengers were out on the deck watching us glide past the statue of liberty and downtown Manhattan....I have so many pictures of NYC that I want to save it for another entry. I also need to do another QM2 entry because I can't add another image to this one....so ciao for now. Stay tuned for more!

Pounds, Pence and Stones

The stones you can see behind you...yes- that's me in front of Stonehenge. I mean, how can you visit this part of the world without going to see the Stones? Even though they were incredibly touristy- squillions of people wandering all over [you can see someone behind me to the left with the ubiquitous head piece listening to the audio commentary] still and all it was a pretty remarkable place. The energy there is palpable, despite all the people. The guide we had on the trip was incredibly eccentric and funny and had a mind full of trivia, which he miraculously related to Stonehenge in some round about way.

I am in Bath- probably one of the most expensive places on the planet. The town [people here call it a city, but I wouldn't go that far] is lovely- sandstone buildings built in the "Georgian" style as you can see from above. For some reason the sky is incredibly blue- which is unusual. The day I got here, it pissed down within about 10 minutes - naturally I forgot my umbrella - I take it out all the time now. What they say about English weather is true- mostly overcast and rainy.

The street you are looking at is called Gay Street, and that's where the Jane Austen Centre is located. It's evidently around the corner from one of the places in which she lived. At the end of Gay Street is a housing estate called the Circus, which kind of imitates the layout of Stonehenge. And then off one of the streets in the Circus, is a place called the Royal Crescent which is where all the incredibly posh people live- as opposed to just the Posh people who live in the Circus.

There's lots to do and see here: the Roman Baths [from whence the name comes], the Abbey- which is huge and gothic and beautiful-rising majestically up into the sky, the gardens along the Grand Parade, the GuildHall and museum and tons of other things. There are millions of tours to go on that cater to all kinds of needs. Every tour you go on they give a long list of famous people who lived or live here plus all the history associated with the place. I can see why anyone would choose to live here- it's just getting the money together that would make it a reality.

The first night I arrived, there was a charity concert in the cricket grounds by Jamie Cullen for the Bath Hospital. I stood on the bridge across the river with all the other cheap bastards who didn't buy tickets and met a woman who gave me all the Bath goss. She works in a bank here, so the goss was enhanced by financial information. She told me that to buy a flat here- say one bedroom- would be 1/2 million pounds [multiply that x 2.5 for Aussie dollars]. The concert was OK, but the gossip was priceless.

I have been staying at a gorgeous guest house in a square called Abbey Green- just behind the Abbey [duh!] The building is probably about 300 years old and it's been renovated to include ensuite bathrooms. It's not only the best bed I've slept in so far on the trip, the room was divine. In the mornings there are the most extraordinary birds which start warbling [though that is a mild word to use to describe the sound they are making] at about 5 AM. At least it gets dark around 9 instead of 11 now so I am getting some reasonable sleep. My only regret is that I was not in St Petersberg in June when the White Nights happen. White Nights mean that it is light for 22 hours of the day and dark for 2....though sometimes during the Russia part of the journey it felt like I only had 2 hours of sleep.

Today I am headed to South Hampton on British Rail- fabulous trains by the way- to board the Queen Mary 2 and sail away to NYC. I am very excited about all this, and even stopped at a shop in Bath and bought some "suitable" outfits to wear on board. At least I think they are suitable....Dame Judy Dench shops there when she is in town [no kidding- they have a picture of her in one of their outfits and a letter saying how fab they are!]. I figured if Dame Judy can appear in these outfits, so can I. I guess we will see when I enter the dining room.

I can't believe that I am only 1/5 of the way through my trip. It's been one month since I left home....more to come, so stay tuned. I am hoping they have internet onboard the ship- if not, you are all getting postcards.

Cheerio til then
Genie