This Week In Camping

Welcome to another exciting Tuesday! Well, exciting for me anyway; I'm pretty wound up to go camping this weekend! For those of you who haven't already been informed, I'm heading up to Killarney with Dad, Gray, and Jay on Friday. We're staying in town for the evening and then heading into the park on Saturday for some camping. We're departing from our usual approach by leaving the kayaks at come and opting for some rented canoes. It could be quite the adventure getting off the beach, since in this group only Dad has any canoeing experience. I'm quite confident that we'll be able to get the hang of it though. Dad's pretty keen on not having to load the kayaks by himself before meeting us up here, and there should be some advantages to the canoes for this particular trip. While a kayak is generally much better if the weather turns foul, and probably the vessel of choice if you're on your own, a canoe has a LOT more open space for gear. When we kayak everything ends up in small dry bag bundles to fit in the small holds. This makes it a nightmare for unloading the boats when you need to portage. With the canoes we can load all of our gear into boundary bags (think a huge dry bag with a backpack-style harness on it) so that when we hit a portage we just throw our gear on our backs, grab our canoes, and walk. I'm picturing the portages being a lot less annoying than previous they have been on previous excursions.

Speaking of camping, I've been directed to another great camping opportunity! A friend of mine recently returned from a two-year stay in Australia. He successfully avoided running afoul of Australia's legion of poisonous snakes, spiders, rocks, mammals, etc. and returned to tell the tale. And his favorite destination in Australia? Tasmania, giving a big eff yu to mainland Australia. I kid. Anyway, he really did love Tasmania for it's pristine wilderness and abundance of wildlife. Obviously this has piqued my interest. He'd mentioned that one of the things to do in Tasmania is to walk the Overland Track, a 6-day journey through the Tasmanian countryside. If you check out this website I think you'll see why I've become quite enamored of the idea: http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/index.aspx?base=7771

Apparently the Track has become quite the popular destination, but they're doing their best to manage the flow of people and keep the crowds down. Still, given their description of the weather I don't think that the off-season could throw anything at me that a good hearty Canadian lad couldn't handle. I hate crowds when I'm trying to enjoy the great outdoors. Actually, scratch the postfix there; I hate crowds. I'll do just about anything to avoid them. That includes braving a risk of snow.

My next trick will be to attempt a few long-distance hiking/camping trips around here to ensure that I'm up to the challenge. I may find that I'm not as keen on camping when I don't have a boat handy to carry all my gear for me. Fortunately this area abounds with opportunities to test myself, and I intend to do so at my nearest convenience. After that I need only face the challenge of trying to find some friends who are willing to fly half way around the world to exciting Tasmania for the privilege of sleeping on their dirt. Wish me luck with that one.

Special Announcement

Okay, it's not Tuesday, but this one takes precedence. My very good friends Steve and Tinea just welcomed their second child into the world. Keaton Collins was born 1:41 this morning at a weight of 10lbs 12oz. Mom and baby are doing well. Young Master Parker now has himself a younger brother! Congratulations to the entire Collins family. Welcome to this fine world of ours Keaton, may you see much of it and may it treat you well.

Travel Advisories

Happy Tuesday everyone!

I was really happy to see the number of people who were keeping up with this blog while I was away in Iceland, and it was great fun reading all of your comments while I was there. That's inspired me to keep this blog alive, even while I'm not abroad. I really abandoned it after Japan; I think there were about half a dozen posts between August '07 and my Iceland trip in August of '09. Obviously since this is a travel blog it's a little more difficult to keep it going when I'm not travelling, but I've got a couple ideas about that. First, I need to travel more. I'll see what I can do about that. However, in the meantime I'm going to set up a schedule. This blog will be updated every Tuesday. That will give me a week between each post to find something travel related to discuss, and it will hold me to a schedule to keep me inspired and on-track.

This week I'd like to discuss travel advisories. This actually came up quite organically in a conversation I was having with some co-workers. We were talking about governments issuing travel advisories to their citizens, but realized that we'd never gone out of our way to find these advisories. It didn't take me long to find the Canadian Government's travel website, but what really shocked me was the quality of it. That's a really great page! If you navigate to www.travel.gc.ca you'll find loads of tips for travellers as well as tips and warnings pertaining to specific countries. Just look up the country you're planning to visit and read up about any potential hazards that may await you.

Another great feature there that I was unfamiliar with is the traveller registration process. Just look to the links along the left side of their website under "Planning a trip" and you'll find a link labelled "Registration of Canadians Abroad." This allows you to let the Canadian Government know where you'll be so that they can contact you in case of an emergency back home, or make you aware of an emerging threat to your safety in the region that you are visit, should one arise. I thought that was a great service, and wanted to share it with all of you since that was new to me.

Well, that's all for now. I recommend that you all check out www.travel.gc.ca, and while you're doing that I'll be coming up with next week's topic for discussion. Please feel free to make suggestions if there's something in particular that you'd like me to research or discuss.

Montreal: By Land, Sea, and Air

Montreal!

This trip was a bit of a last-minute decision, and was largely initiated by Graydyn's desire to go there and eat all of their food. He actually booked the whole thing while I was still in Iceland, which was a real treat for me since I was still on vacation while getting updates via e-mail about my next trip. I think I need to ensure that I've always got something being planned while I'm away...

We (being Graydyn, Susan, Jay, and myself) just went for the Labour Day long weekend, and in order to make the most of our time we decided to fly. Porter airlines runs short-distance flights on smaller planes from the diminutive Toronto City Centre Airport. This option is extremely convenient for us since we were able to take the subway down, catch a ferry (hence the travelling by sea portion of this post's title) and then jump on a plane. Since it's a smaller airport you don't need to leave as much time to get through security and all that. Also, you get to wait in the hippest departure lounge I've ever been in! The flight itself is a piece of cake, weighing in somewhere around the one hour mark. It goes a little something like this: take off, gain altitude, level off, get served snack and red wine, eat snack, chug red wine since you are beginning decent, descend, touchdown. Yeah, not exactly a taxing way to travel.

Upon arrival at Montreal we grabbed a cab to our hotel, which is probably a better bet than relying on public transit if you've got enough people to split the cost. We then did what anyone should do immediately upon getting settled in Montreal; this:

That, ladies and gentlemen, is my first ever genuine Quebec poutine, served at the world-famous Dunn's restaurant in downtown Montreal. Beside it you will see the edge of a smoked meat sandwich (the well deserved source of Dunn's fame) and above it a beer. There can be no better way to spend an evening with your friends than this.

We didn't get in till the evening, so by the time we'd had our food we were ready to wind down for the evening.

The next day we had breakfast at the hotel and got our tourism well and truly underway. We were going to start with the Botanical Gardens, but on our way stopped to check out this impressive structure:

No, not Graydyn. That's the Olympic Stadium in the background. It's a great landmark since the Botanical Gardens are across the street from it, and the Biodome is beside it. Both of those are things that you should check out by the way.

The Botanical Gardens feature a very nice Insectarium, with cool things like this on the wall:

There were also some live insects, but they don't let them wander about as freely as the metal ones, and they didn't photograph well through their glass homes.

The gardens themselves were very nice with great features like a Japanese garden:

A nice pond:

And a very cool heron:

After touring around there for quite awhile we jumped across the street to the Biodome. This building encloses a variety of distinct ecosystems, kept separate from each other at their ideal temperatures.

You can wander around freely through these various forests and admire their denizens, sometimes quite close up.

It was a bit crowded in there and I really wouldn't mind taking a look around again sometime when it's not the Saturday of a holiday weekend.

By the time we'd finished wandering about the Biodome it was time to head back to the hotel and get ready for dinner. Graydyn and Susan had dinner plans, so Jay and I just wandered about until we found an appealing looking restaurant. We picked a rib joint called Bofinger which I highly recommend for their pulled pork sandwich and great poutine, but ironically not for their ribs which Jay reported were a bit lackluster.

The following day started out with a breakfast of crepes at "Crepes 2Go" which I HIGHLY recommend. They've only got one guy making the crepes on a pair of griddles, so it may take awhile if there's a crowd, but it's well worth the wait.

After that we took a trip down to Montreal's historic "Old Town" to have a look around and the nice architecture:

Another great example being:

We made our way down to the shore of the river and followed it for awhile, taking in the nice views:

After spending the morning wandering about we were ready for a big lunch. We made our way to another world-famous venue for smoked meat sandwiches: Shwartz's. This place can be easily identified by the clear sign, and the 465,000 people lined up outside waiting desperately to get in and have a sandwich. If you happen to be in the area and notice that there is a full legion waiting to get in, try the door to the left, which leads to their take-out-only restaurant. You'll have to find somewhere else in the city to eat your lunch, but at least you'll get it before dinner time.

I, for one, was pretty beat by the time we were finished lunch. I should have brought my hiking boots on this trip, but I neglected to do so, and my poor choice of footwear may have lead to my lack of enthusiasm for further walking. We just chilled out in the hotel pool for the afternoon so that my various appendages could recover from their trauma.

That evening we headed to Au Pied De Cochon (I believe that's literally "The Pig's Foot" and I hope I spelled it correctly) which was really the focal point of this entire culinary adventure. This epic restaurant has an entire section dedicated to the lovely Fois Gras, and features numerous wonderful duck dishes. If you are dining with a vegetarian I strongly recommend finding another venue unless they feel like making a meal of bread and water. Actually, given the state of their menu I imagine that there's some duck somewhere in the bread as well.

Needless to say we had a wonderful meal, which capped off a great weekend. There wasn't much more to the weekend, since we just got up the next day, had breakfast, and made our way to the airport. I'm somewhat ashamed that it's taken me this long to make my way to Montreal, and I really wish that I'd had more time to enjoy it. I can say with certainty that it won't be the last time I find myself in that truly lovely city... I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

Montreal: Ready To Go

Hi everyone! It's Friday morning and I'm just taking a moment to write this before I head to work. I'm all packed up and as soon as work is finished I'll be making a quick dash home, grabbing my luggage, and jumping on the subway down to the airport. After a mere one hour on the plane I'll be in Montreal! I'm really liking the sound of this short trip.

To confirm, my laptop is indeed dead. I'll still do my best to get a post or two out this weekend, but the pictures will have to wait until next week, probably Tuesday. With my machine in the shop for the third time (with the same symptoms) and having very little life left in its battery I was VERY tempted to just get myself a new laptop. Unfortunately the more I researched the new line of netbooks that are out right now the pickier I got. I've figured out what machine I was (Asus Eee PC 1005HA-P) but wasn't able to procure one in time for this trip. Having missed the mark for my Montreal trip I've just put a hold of any computer shopping for now. If it's even three months before I need a laptop again the entire face of what's available to the consumer will have drastically changed and I'll have to re-educate myself on what's out there.

Okay, I have to keep this brief, so I'm signing off now. Remember to check in this weekend as I will hopefully be able to find internet access somewhere along the line. Failing that I will get all my thoughts up in one massive post on Tuesday. Talk to you later!