So today has been freaking crazy. I woke up this morning pumped and excited to start the journey. I had a shower. The only reason I mention it was the fact that the hot water was broken and would not turn off, leaving me with a steam room.
Then I caught the bus to the ferry in Dover. The three most notable thing about Dover was the castle on the hill, that I missed a good 35sec window to get a picture of. Second was the famous White Cliffs.
I always thought of the white cliffs as a tourist trap like the reversing falls but it was actually unbelievably amazing like seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time.
The third amazing thing was this is where I learn that people actually pay for packets of ketchup. Later on I came to a McDonalds in Belgium or the Netherlands (it was near the boarder) that had a guy taking payment for the public washroom. Now I am in Amsterdam. This city is awesome just walked down the street drinking a Heineken. Beer is actually cheeper here than water.
Also avoid the Greek Mac at McDonalds it is really crap.
On the Contilki website it lists the travel from Canada day as day 1. As such I will start my travel log with today.
So this morning I started packing and then when fitting stuff in the suitcase I realized 2 things. 1. I have never packed myself for a 3 week trip before. 2. There is no way this is all going to fit. (possible 3. I should not have procrastinated it to 1 hour before having to call a taxi to the airport.)
Well then next, I called a taxi to the airport. As the taxi arrived I realized I was missing my shirt and belt and did not have everything 100% packed. It was a quick ride to the airport except we hit a piece of firewood on Loch Lomond Rd. near Lakewood. (I wonder if it is still there?)
Then I flew to Toronto, I love the seseme seed dessert things that Air Canada Jazz serves. Then I headed downtown for a bit. I ran into 2 types of crowds the September 11th “educators” and movie fans. (I love movies)
Then after hanging around 10 Dundas East and the Eaton Center , I headed back on the TTC to Pearson where I am typing this now waiting for the boarding call that is now 17 minutes late. TTYL.
After twelve and a half long hours on a bus I have arrived in Montreal for WordCamp Montreal. This is my 5th WordCamp which I will do a post about sometime later.
I took a walk earlier today and walked through the historic McGill University campus. One sweet sign that the orientation for the new students coming to university this year will have a better orientation than the three I’ve go to is the size of the beer tent. There must have been thousands of bottles of Boreale Beer and lots of kegs too. Anyone who has been to Montreal knows that is good beer.
I have been trying to post a lot more lately. But one thing that greatly concerns me us the lack of good comments lately.
Practically everything on this site is open to commenting even the photos and the albums. What’s better is that if you see someone in a photo that you recognize you can even tag them, and they get a custom album automatically about them.
I’m working on integrating twitter feeds at the moment with these custom albums. Also I have run into a big hiccup with a problem in WordPress 3 that breaks the paging of an album. It is almost as if they did something that taxonomy pages only work for a post type rather than an attachment.
I have also decided that I will be going to WordCamp Montreal again this year. I was thinking that I could show off how I was able to pull of my photo album in an advanced theming tutorial.
That is one thing that I found dry about technical lectures at past WordCamps where they show off code but not put it together, to demonstrate something new. I think I would call it “Media and your Theme… Where can you take it!”
As we progress into the year 2010, the only New Year’s resolution that I haven’t broken yet is my vow to only see 100 movies in the theatre this year (yet) I’m currently at number 10 as we speak, and I have my annual Toronto trip ahead of me next month, and the beautiful AMC Theatre on Dundas Square.
While on the topic of travels, my first ever passport arrived by courier two weeks ago. I can now leave the country again and am so excited about the upcoming plans. Before I announce where I must point out that despite my love for History in university non-Canadian History seemed somewhat less interesting. The more I reflect on the topic, it may be just that it seems so distant, therefore why not going to see it in person. This is where I announce that in September I am travelling to Europe. I’ve decided to go on a guided tour with Contiki Tours. Now I just have to decide on the exact date and trip. Currently, I am leaning to the European Whirl from September 11th – 30th, but that may change after discussing with a Travel agent.
If you notice this is the first post in the new Travel category, this will become my Travelogue however you don’t have to wait until September, next up next month is Toronto.
At long last I have finally arrived in Victoria. Five hours on a plane is really long much longer that I had really imagined. During the longest lag of the journey I got to see “My Sister’s Keeper” for the first time. I found it to be really an enjoyable movie, in the respect that you did not know who to feel sad for. Then it throws a huge twist that make the plot even more intriguing.
Upon first impression of Victoria is that it has an appearance of a fairy tile that has come to life especially now that its the holidays and the lights of colour in and on everything.
Over the weekend I rented a car and took my aunt Rena out to King’s Landing. While I was there I took this picture of the water pouring from a horse water feeder. This has got to be one of the best depth of field close-up pictures I have ever taken.
I really like King’s Landing there is gust something about history, especially social history that just totally fascinates me.
Again on the way, we stopped at the Boyce Market in Fredericton. The absolute best feature of the market is the German bakers. There is absolutely no better makers of really good foods than the Germans.
Getting here to Montreal, I had decided to get the bus. (Orleans Express/Acadian Lines) Thus it presents this opportunity to write this long detailed encounter as I have the remainder of the 13 hour bus trip to finish.
After arriving here in Montreal I took a nice stroll down Ste-Catherine to the train station. It was on this trip through the eerily quite streets of the jazz festival site that I ran across the first image. Although to is common to think of those in the financial services industry as “wanks” someone thought it would be a great idea to draw one on the two sided of the corner of the building.
After the fist day of sessions at word camp there was this crazy man that started yelling at me in french, I think he though I took a picture or something. The funny part that is so not like me is the fact that I started yelling back at him in English and he did not seem to understand me at all. That make id kind of funny then he ran off and I went off to catch the subway to the hotel.
The subway in Montreal seemed to be quite different than Toronto. Especially the automated stalls after paying the guy handed me a little card, and I did not get originally how the doors opened, then he started yelling the what I think are the instruction in French. After looking further at the stalls I give the yelling guy the “I have no clue what you are saying look. Then he explains the put the card in the slot in English. I then proceeded to the hotel.
On the way in one of the Subway stations there was a sign in French only that part of the platform was closed for constriction bit it was graffitied with “Montreal is supposed to be Bilingual” to which some one wrote; “We wish!”
Me at the after party. Eva Blue Photo.
I thought it was amusing. One can tell mush about a society by the appearance of the graffiti. Especially, considering the prior instance of “art.”
One great thing about my iPhone is the fact that it really saved me from the being lost. Well kind of. The Google walking and transit directions are really good for Montreal. It was still a difficult city to find things in. I missed the first subway stop without realizing, thankfully my GPS on the iPhone found me the next one just in time.
The last tale before I finish is the tale of the pigeon. After the final sessions of WordCamp, we went to an outdoor patio bar that had some of the most amazing natural and architectural design of any patio bar. While standing outside talking to some interesting people like Kim Valee this word pigeon was doing a bizarre dance on the windowsill across the street and everyone mentioned the crazy pidgin was about to top itself as the guy pass is the bird flies into the bar right behind them and everyone starts chasing after the bird. Classic comedy movie scene.
While it has been such a long time since an update so this one might be a little longer than normal. And the full blame of this goes to www.facebook.com and www.youtube.com I have spent most of my Internet time on those two sites. Some of you might be even reading this from the notes section on Facebook.
Okay so let us start with Toronto, I took lots of pictures that I will add to my gallery soon, and some very interesting ones at that. The greatest story was the one where I was sitting in the Glenn Gould Studio in the CBC Broadcast Centre as the marble tile fell off of the 60th story of First Canadian Place it shook the ground and nobody really noticed that is Toronto for you. And I went to see the show at Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament www.medievaltimes.comit was defiantly one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my life something that I would for sure go see again, and the food was amazing. I’m not sure what the soup was but my mouth is watering just thinking of it.
I also took a trip up the CN Tower again it was kinda boring I was not the same as my first time the highlight though was watching from the Sky-Pod a truck trying to make an imposable backup turn 142 stories below. But later that day I saw lightning hit it and it was cool wish I could of had a picture of that.
Oh, and I stayed at the Days Hotel on Carlton again, I was really lucky since I had reservations in another hotel and they were sold out. I was very fortunate to be on the very first WestJet flight out of Saint John, even though I had to suffer the ear piercing horrors of a Bag-Pipe farewell WestJet is soooooo much better experience than I have has in the past with either VIA Rail or Air Canada.
Cabaret
This is one of the most culturally uplifting shows I have ever seen. The performers were amazing beyond belief. This was definitely the type of show that you could go back and see many many times. There are not many words that can describe the greatness and hard work put forward by the performances of all the actors, and musicians.
25 other warm fuzzies
25- May 9th was my 25th birthday, and by tradition, I spend most of it including dinner alone. 24-My next movie is in the filming stage right now, some of it was even shot in Toronto. 23-I’m still addicted to FaceBook.com 22-Hi to the Goonz @ hiredgoonz.ca 21-I went to Elwoods a few weeks ago and it was good. 20-I went to O’Leary’s after Elwoods and at was still good. 19-Gulping half a bottle of Jagermeister before Elwoods and having it come back up and re-swallowing it was “not” a good thing. 18-Hitting the town with Tony was a good time. 17-I need to meet-up soon with Tony to revise my script for another project. 16-Walking against the crowd at Union Station at rush hour was not a good thing. 15-Sunset at Nathan Phillips Square was breathtaking. 14-Curry Chicken from the Bay will burn off all your taste-buds. 13-Daytime is one of the Best TV Shows Ever. 12-I’m tired so I guess you can use the comments to give me the rest of the fuzzies. 11-I will write more I swear.
