Viva Las Vegas

 This was our view from our room at Paris Casino and pretty much set the scene for our four nights in this hyper-real oasis of consumption in the middle of the desert.  Where else can you get a cab from Paris to Luxor in 5 minutes and pass New York on the way? We arrived on a Sunday afternoon which happened to coincide with a major boxing match which had swelled the numbers on the streets enormously. After the orderliness and calm of Disney we took a little bit of time to adjust to chaotic footpaths and people drinking booze as they walked along the street as if it were soft drink.

 Luckily neither Steve nor us has the slightest bit of interest in gambling so not a cent was spent - that way at least - but the casinos were certainly fascinating places to walk through and watch.  Of course the only way in or out our hotel was through the casino - all the casinos are at ground level so that the punters can be swept into them easily - and in keeping with the Parisian theme, the entire casino was themed to look like Parisian streets right down to a Parisian summer sky.

 The Bellagio, probably the most upmarket and expensive of the casino hotel properties was just across the road from Paris. Every 15 minutes the fountains in front of the Bellagio would come alive and dance to music.

 This gives a bit of an understanding of the geography of Vegas and how close the city is to the desert.

 And to the desert we went when we took a helicopter flight to the Grand Canyon. This was fabulous. There were two other couples in our chopper - one young couple from Brisbane, the other from Montreal. Our pilot, Shane, was very friendly and chatty so he gave us a great commentary on the way out. It took about 45 minutes to reach the Grand Canyon from the airport we took off from which was about an hour from Vegas.

 I didn't mean to include this shot but at least it gives you an idea of the arid landscape.

 Flying along the Colorado River and seeing the weathered sides of the canyons like this was just awesome.

 Colorado River

 So part of our flight was a 30 minute stop at the base of the Canyon where we had a champagne lunch and had the opportunity to put our feet on the ground and get some sense of the massive scale of this place. It was very hot - around 40 degrees - but it can get much hotter.

 Then back on the street again at night. Although we didn't add to the gaming economy we certainly gave plenty to the live entertainment economy, seeing five shows in four nights, which isn't a bad effort. Donny and Marie (Osmond) was the first show we saw - they were great actually and had one the Best Vegas Show for the past three years running; we saw two Circe du Soleil shows: Mystere and Zumanity; Divas Las Vegas, a 'female impersonator' show which had been running 29 years and which was excellent; and Human Nature.

 On our last night we bought this monstrosity which was some kind of mojito filled with dry ice...but it was very delicious - and we shared it, as it cost close to $40.00!

 And so yeah, on our final night we had front row seats to Human Nature.  They were fine about taking pics provided you didn't use flash or filmed them so I took a bunch.  They were very very good...very slick but lots of fun.

We also took a four wheel drive trip to another canyon, Red Rock Canyon, which is about an hour or so from Las Vegas which was also a fantastic experience. So from a beginning when we were wondering how we would fill four days in Vegas, we found plenty to do and see. It's a crazy place and I couldn't cope with more than four days there at a time but yeah I'd go back.

Kamloops, British Columbia

 Kamloops is a city situated about 4.5 hours by car east of Vancouver, where our friends Dave and Cathie now live (they used to live in Alberta) so we took the opportunity to spend a few days with them. After a somewhat stressful exiting of Vancouver (i.e. getting lost for half an hour or so) we made it up to their place. The landscape here is of rolling hills which are governed not by trees but by sage bushes and other prairie kinds of vegetation. There are some forests on some of the higher peaks.  The photo above shows Cathie, Dave and Steve on the lookout for burrowing owls - and Cathie did find one for us! It was perched on a stump looking for field mice and what not.

 I can't disconnect the two pics above so the first is of another part of the local landscape where Dave and Cathie tools his walking one morning and the one above is us having lunch in their back yard. It was a lovely few days and we also visited the local wildlife park and saw a couple of young grizzlies playing ruff and tumble with each other; went to the local cinema to see Boyhood, which is an excellent movie; and checked out a couple of second hand bookshops as well as doing a number of walks through the hill country.

 After spending three days with Dave and Cathie we then spent the weekend with our other friends living in Kamloops (who would have though), Kathy and Harold.  I used to work with them at University of Newcastle in the early to mid 90s and indeed Kathy and I shared an office for a couple of years. They took us up to this lovely skiing village called Sun Peaks about 40 minutes from Kamloops, where they spend much of the winter skiing. It was a gorgeous sunny and warm day when we were up there and we had a couple of beers under the green umbrellas.

 Kathy and Harold also drove us about two hours or so to a provincial park (the name of which escapes me at the moment, and which is akin to our national parks) where we were able to walk through stunning forests in which many of the trees were starting to take on their fall colours and where there was also a good assortment of waterfalls.

 It was a brilliant day and although we didn't see any bears we loved spending time out in the forests and viewing the magnificent waterfalls.

 Kathy and I alongside one of the rivers.  It was wonderful to spend the weekend with Kathy and Harold and their two sons, Jonathan and Kai.  I hadn't seen them for probably 15 years or so...maybe a  bit longer.

Another river, this time with salmon leaping upwards. Well we saw a couple of salmon - it wasn't quite like the nature documentaries with the dozens of hungry grizzly bears, portray, but it was tremendous to see the salmon jumping out of the water in its attempt to get beyond the rapids and further up the stream where it hoped to lay its eggs (or fertilise them, whatever the case may be).

After our five days in Kamloops we drove back towards Vancouver but we detoured off the highway to Chilliwack, where our friend Ryan, who now lives in Cairns, comes from. We had morning tea at the Yellow Deli, which, we found out when we got inside, is run by a spiritual community and which has a number of locations in Canada, USA and also Katoomba, I just discovered when I Googled them. Anyway, the food was scrummy and provided us with sustenance for the journey back into Vancouver airport and then back into the city so we could spend the next three nights at an airbnb apartment.

Vancouver

Our arrival into Vancouver from Kamloops was a tad stressful.  The 4 hour drive down to the outskirts of Vancouver was enjoyable but once again we got lost trying to take the hire car back to the airport. We eventually managed to get back to the airport and then we easily caught the air train into Vancouver and then walked the kilometre or so up to our airbnb apartment. We arrived around 1pm but couldn't get into the apartment until 4 so we wheeled our luggage down to a harbour side pub and enjoyed a slow meal and drinks there until it was time to check in.  This was the night time view from our apartment which really was a beautifully appointed apartment really well located.

 We took a long walk up along English Bay to the beginnings of Stanley Park, a huge parkland on the tip of a peninsula and then walked back again just on sunset.  We only had three nights in Vancouver so it was a bit of a rush.  The weather had been beautiful and sunny for the previous week but by the time we arrived it had returned to typical Vancouver weather for that time of the year - cool and wet.

Our apartment was only a five minute stroll up to Davie Street which is where the Vancouver equivalent of Oxford Street is situated. Vancouver was able to cope with rainbow pedestrian crossings unlike Sydney.

 A fabulous installation of about twenty laughing men along the foreshore of English Bay.

 So what did we do in Vancouver?  Well I was a tad off colour and needed to see a doctor, so pretty much half of one day was waiting to get into see a doctor and then getting the antibiotics he prescribed; but other than that we visited the marvellous Granville Island with its incredible markets and arts and crafts shops: so much food but I wasn't in the mood to indulge; we visited Stanley Park; the Vancouver Aquarium; and generally strolled around the city

 We saw more wildlife in Vancouver than I think we saw in any other city: these were river otters we saw in the harbour - we also saw a sea lion as well - and orcas have apparently been known to venture right inside the harbour.  We had been hoping to go on a day trip to see orcas but unfortunately we ran out of time.

 While we were making our big walk through Stanley Park this racoon came right up to us, realised we had no food for it, and then continued on its way.

We pretty much spent a full day in Stanley Park visiting the Vancouver Aquarium and then going on this horse drawn carriage ride for an hour through the park. Really lovely way to see the park.

Some more pics of San Fran that really should follow the post below...sorry

 The afternoon after we arrived in San Fran we decided to walk from where we were staying near Haight Street to the Castro district - which didn't look far on the map - but of course the map didn't show all the hills we had to traverse! Anyway it was a great walk and we passed by lots of interesting houses and gardens and we marvelled at the weeping rosemary...in this example it formed this magnificent curtain

 By the time we got to the Castro it was just on dark. The giant rainbow flag was unexpected but welcome. We had a great meal here that night and then decided to walk back home again - although this route didn't take us over so many hills.

 The kitchen of the airbnb apartment we stayed in.  The owner or renter, Zach, was staying in NYC so he was letting both his bedrooms out - one to us and then the other to two different couples during our stay.  This apartment was beautifully fitted out.  Enormous kitchen.

 The National AIDS Memorial Grove is situated in the Golden Gate Park which was just at the end of our road. The Circle of Friends was a large area within which a giant circle made up of the names of people who had died of AIDS were inscribed.  Thousands and thousands of names.

 A fun thing that we did, among many, was to see Wizard of Oz on this giant screen, accompanied by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

 On our second last day we took a bus trip to Muir Woods.  This is a really nice pic of Steve on one of the bridges that we pass as we walked through the forest.

Homlessness is a huge problem in all the cities we visited but it seemed that there were more people living on the streets in San Francisco than any other city.  Some locals explained that this was because homeless people came to SF because of the milder climate and the more progressive social policies and practices.  Some people we spoke to reckoned that homeless people (and among them were a very large number of people with mental illness) were given one way tickets from other cities to travel to San Francisco.  So in this pic there lives a man underneath that sheeting. He sat in a wheel chair and covered himself up with the tarp etc and left his suit case next to him.  I took this pic a couple of hundred metres from where we were staying.

San Francisco

 Our final destination was San Francisco. We flew into a beautiful sunny afternoon and after taking the train and then taxi we managed to get to our airbnb apartment which was just a few minutes stroll from the oh-so-famous Haight Street, and within a minute or two from the intersection of Haight and Ashbury.  We had five days to explore this magical city.  As with our other destinations we hopped on an open top double decker bus and spent a few hours being driven through and around the city - including driving across the Golden Gate Bridge - which was sooooo cold and windy.  But stunningly beautiful.

 This is one of the groovy houses a few doors up from our apartment building in Oak Street. The wooden houses in San Francisco are simply fabulous and our wonderful guide on the open topped double decker bus was able to tell us all about the various genres of housing style including the classic 'painted ladies'.

 Lots of touristic cliche images in San Francisco - the bridge, a cable car like this one, Alcatraz in the pic below.  We took a cable car back to Haight Street one evening and though we didm;t hand out the side we still enjoyed it. Public transport in this city on the street includes buses, trolley cars (which have been sourced from all over the world and painted up to authentically resemble what they looked like when they were carrying people in New York, Milan, or wherever else, and cable cars. We had wonderful weather most days we were in San Francisco except one

 when it was quite overcast. This is a pic of Alcatraz - which alas, we didn't get to.  Next time, hopefully.

 The Golden Gate Park was just a few minutes stroll from where we were staying and we spent much of one day strolling through the park. We spent some time admiring the tropical plants in the Conservatory of Flowers, wandered more solemnly through the AIDS Memorial Grove and then spent several hours investigating the exhibits at the California Academy of Sciences.

 On our second last day we took a bus about 45 minutes out of the city to Muir Woods where we were able to walk amongst the redwood trees. This was a beautiful forest and the redwoods towered above us, although the giant ones with the huge girths are elsewhere in California. We managed to spot a black tailed deer though.

While we were in San Francisco we saw the touring version of Pippin (we  had seen it in Broadway a few weeks earlier but this version included among the cast the fellow who had played Pippin in the original 1970s version as Pippin's father; the daughter of Lucile Ball, Lucy Arnaz as the grandmother; and the fellow who originated the new Pippin in he revival - so we just had to go.  We also saw a hilarious musical review called Beach Blanket Babylon - see pic above, left...apart from being so funny and so musically brilliant, the show also featured the most amazing hats - check out that hat!  We also enjoyed The Wizard of Oz accompanied by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.
The other pic on the right is looking up Castro Street, dominated by the giant rainbow flag. This is the 'gay and lesbian precinct of SF and we had dinner on the street on our first night, lunch with our friend Andy who was visiting for work and we almost took a gay and lesbian history walking tour (expect I buggered up the day and we were waiting on the Sunday when it had actually taken place on the Saturday.  Stoopid me).
Anyway, we loved San Francisco. Our apartment was beautiful, the weather was fantastic, the city is glorious.

St Catherine's, Canada

I had such good intentions of blogging about St Catherine's a week or so ago and now here it is, my final night, before I leave tomorrow at 5.3am to get the shuttle bus up to Toronto airport to fly to Chicago.
So I shall do my best to do some catching up, now.
After I left Singapore I flew to Hong Kong where I transited, boarding my flight to Toronto.  Now this was a good moment because it when I was upgraded.  Seriously, Air Canada upgraded me to business class. All I had done when I was at the check in counter was simply ask for an aisle seat if possible and when the woman handed me back my boarding pass she said that they would try their best but couldn't guarantee that they could.  I thought this was a tad odd until I looked at the boarding pass and it didn't have a seat allocation. I was mildly disconcerted by this.
When I got to the gate I told them that I didn't as yet have a seat allocation and was told that they were working on it and to come back in 15 minutes. And then another 10 minutes.  Well all I can say is that it pays to wait patiently. Because when they did eventually hand me my boarding pass the seat as 10A (a window)...Now I was chuckling away to myself thinking how funny the whole thing had been and I still didn't have an aisle seat when it occurred to me that 10A seemed to be awfully far up the front of the plane. I examined the boarding pass more closely and this time saw the word 'Business'. OMG!  I thought of course that there had been some terrible mistake and as I handed the boarding pass as I was about to enter the tunnel to the plane someone grabbed it off me and took it away. 'Hmmm I thought' this is where they will come back and very apologetically explain that a working class lad like me could never fit in business class and that it had all been a dreadful mistake.  As the Air Canada person came back towards me I steeled myself for the inevitable anticlimax when she whispered to me 'we've upgraded you. Have a great flight'.
The smile was on my face until I was half way across the Pacific! 
I won't bore you with the champagne upon arrival and champagne whenever I asked for it...or the menu from which we selected our meals...or the comfortable full length bed that my seat became...or the amazing attention from the flight attendants....but it has definitely spoiled me!

Arriving in Canada almost three weeks ago, I was whisked off by shuttle bus to St Catherine's a city of about 120 000 people about 75 minutes south east of Toronto and located in the Niagara region.  Indeed Niagara Falls is only about 25 minutes down the road.  I visited these a couple of weeks ago.  What a strange, crazy place - with the stunning falls, the beautiful parklands and the tacky, kitschy, sideshow alley-like roads leading down to the Falls. 

I have been based at Brock University, in the Department of Tourism Management where I was given the title of Visiting Scholar and had my own office.  It's been a very enjoyable and productive time. I've been working on the analysis of some of my Singapore data as well as mapping out a couple of projects with a colleague from Brock.

I've been living in a lovely all, vast home which is a ten minute bus trip (plus another ten minute walk to the bus stop) from Brock and the neighborhood is full of interesting birds and squirrels.

The Canadian people are oh so polite and genuinely so and it has been a lovely few weeks.  On Sunday I caught a bus up to Lake Ontario which is at the northern extremity of the city and spent a few hours exploring an 'eco-park' and also Port Dalhousie.  I left Brock today at about 1pm, came back home, did my washing and then started packing before strolling into 'downtown' a 20 minute walk, to Gords, a bar with a lovely beer garden, where I had a couple of pints of raspberry ale and a California burger.  Life is good!

And it gets even better when I meet up with Steve in Chicago and we begin Our Great Big American Adventure!

Just some random pics from Singapore

 The male panda at the River Safari

 A small family group of wild boars on Pulau Ubin...once prey to the tigers that lived on this island and Singapore itself

 This little kid pushed his luck and got even closer to this long tailed macaque and the monkey charged him.  However, the monkey chose to stop his charge before he made contact with the kid....he could have easily bitten him had he wanted to. 'What's that on your face, Sharon?' 'Oh it's a monkey bite, Mrs D'

 amazing aquaria at the River Safari....this one had giant catfish in it

 Amazonian otters

manatee