From Niagara, we crossed the border into the USA and headed for Helen and Cas’s house in Liberty NY. The border crossing was rather relaxed compared to what it’s like arriving by plane, there were no forms to fill out and the border guy just looked at our passports, asked us what town we were…

We got here at about 5:30 am – plane to Paris leaves at 10:40 – still it’s a very nice airport. Anyway, from Peterborough we had to drive to a donut shop near Niagara falls as Simon was meeting a friend there and leaving us. So we had an interesting drive through the middle of…

It’s been a while since I posted but we’ve really been quite busy – on our last day in St John’s we had to go to the barber as it was a very nice traditional one, so Simon had his hair cut there. We also visited the Pharmacy museum, I’ve taken a few pictures. Naturally…

We brought our GPS with us, and in Montreal I downloaded the map of the US and Canada, and also the Homer Simpson voice, just for fun. He gives the directions but also puts in extra funny bits like “we’re going on the motorway, woohoo” and “you have reached your destination and can hold your…

We had a very nice 2 hour flight from Montreal, and the slower pace of life was apparent as soon as we left the plane.  St John’s is a famous port, and reminds me of Lyttleton except quite a bit bigger. The houses are mostly wooden Victorian terraced houses painted in quite bright colours, and…

We’ve had a great time in Montreal, Pauline and I went for a cruise on the Saint Lawrence river on Sunday, which took us past the old 1967 world fair monorail system, and the US pavillion, a geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller, which is now used as a biosphere which is  “an exclusive venue…

We flew into Montreal from Vancouver on Thursday leaving at 7am and arriving at our Montreal apartment at 8:30 pm local time, fairly well exhausted.  The flight itself was quite pleasant (although 4.75hrs) on an Air Canada 767 which was on it’s way to Paris, stopping at Montreal on the way. The first impression I…

Last night Pauline and I attended the Arts Club Theatre Company production of  LES MISÉRABLES, a musical by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel by Victor Hugo. Initially I expected the play to be about travelling economy class with Air New Zealand, just kidding, but my hopes were not particularly high as…

As you can see, we hired a modest vehicle  on Sunday, and took a trip to Whistler which is a ski resort 125 km’s north of Vancouver in the mountains. The drive was spectacular, and I enjoyed being passed by a group of 8-10 Lamborghinis on the freeway – several million dollars worth out for…

The flight from NZ was actually not too bad, immigration and customs couldn’t have been nicer except Simon’s bloke was pretty grumpy. We had a hair raising taxi drive to the hotel in Westwood, LA as the driver was busy talking on his cell phone and nearly tail ended a car in front of us.…