Writings from Canada (June 6th-14th)

June 6^th

We went to Montreal for 2 days after Pete’s birthday. Most of the first day was spent traveling, but we did go to the city and it was quite a generic city with lots of nice people in it. Everyone seems to be lovely in Canada! The second day was a free day, so me, Elle, Fiona and Kristen went to the theme park. We thought, as it was a school day, there wouldn’t be many people but we were wrong. It was infested with school children so we only managed to go on 3 rides, but they were amazing! We went on one which was the longest roller coaster in Canada (or maybe the world or something) and that was awesome. That night, we went out in Montreal. The night involved lots of walking and lots of sweets and ice cubes being thrown at each other in some kind of strange, cold, sugary battle. We went to a cool bar where there were sweet dispensers on the table and the bar was made out of Lego. They did cocktails which all came with some kind of sweet. It was great. At one point during the night we thought we had lost the Bulgarian bloke that was on our tour because he said “I’ll be back in a minute” and walked out of the pub. Half an hour later, we were all quite worried and went out to look for him. He turned up a few minutes later, and when we asked where he'd been, he told us that he had gone to get some food. When pressed, he told us that he’d been for a sit-down meal at a Thai restaurant.

We went to Ottawa the next day, which is the capital of Canada. It didn’t really feel like a capital city though; it was quite small. I spent the day drinking coffee and going to an Internet cafe. Very cultural.

June 7^th

We’re on our way to Niagara Fall – very excited!

Yesterday we arrived in Toronto. It feels a lot more like a city to any we’ve been to so far. I haven't seen much of it yet, but the parts I've seen are a bit like London. I think it should be the capital of Canada. Maybe I’ll tell them.

We went to the CN tower yesterday, which is the tallest free standing tower in the world. It cost $30 to go to the top, which I thought was a little expensive, but Pete persuaded me and I’m really glad we did. The elevator (lift to us proper English people) took just 40 seconds to go to the top, which resulted in lots of popping ears. When you got to the top you could walk all the way round the observation deck and see for miles. On the floor down there was a glass floor. It was quite scary and a few people couldn’t stand on it. Your body is shouting “THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE”, but I kept telling it “it’s probably fine”. Everyone walks across it very slowly and carefully as if they could fall off somehow. It was really cool.

We had a BBQ with the group at camp last night. They are all so lovely. We were sitting around the camp fire with Josh, our tour leader, last night and a raccoon came really close to us. All of us were saying “awww, how sweet – a little raccoon!!” and taking pictures of it and Josh just sat there and said “what a bastard” in his American accent. Poor raccoon! Apparently they are annoying things that get into your bins and food here. I still think they're cute. The most spy-looking animal there is.

June 8^th

Niagara Falls was awesome (I say this using the original definition of the word ‘awesome’.) I’d seen it on TV before, but it was just so much better in reality. Massive amounts of water gushing down creating a thick cloud of mist. It makes you feel so small because you can see all these tiny people with ponchos on and they look like ants. It’s the first natural thing we’ve seen in Canada and it was so beautiful. We went on the maid of the mist, which is a boat that goes right into the falls and into the cloud of mist. Very wet and very windy, as you could imagine. I wonder who first thought of doing that? They must have been brave (stupid). When you get to the falls, you go right in the middle, so the falls are surrounding you. Its fun but quite rough and a bit scary!

Me and Elle had frozen yogurt afterwards which was amazing (and OK because it’s healthy!) Pete played football and fell over a lot and it was lovely and sunny.

We are now on our way to Happy Hearts campground. Worryingly it is described as the wilderness. I hope it has showers and, more importantly, no bears.

June 11^th

We've mostly been driving these past few days. It’s been bearable though because the group is so good. We all get on so well and everyone is just lovely. Elle told us about a town she’d spotted on the first day called ‘Mianus’, which produced endless jokes. For example “there’s a big party in mianus” and “theres a congestion charge to mianus”. Very mature.

Between the driving, we went to a lovely lake and took lots of group pictures and we went on a ferry (or fairy as I keep thinking Josh says)

We stayed in a log cabin for a night. That night we had a bit of a party, with music and drink, accompanied by a few arguments and lots of tension with one particular person. Pete had his nails painted, which was a decision he regretted in the morning as he had no nail varnish remover and I wasn't going to give him any. We went canooing on Lake (the largest fresh water lake in the world) but it was a bit rough so we got pretty moist.

We then saw a giant goose. Not a real one, a very pointless and completely unnecessary metal monstrosity. It was in the town of Wawa (which is, clearly, as odd as it sounds) and it was advertised as the largest monument of its kind. Now I've never seen another large metal goose monument before, but I'm sure that that is quite an achievement. It is also the most photographed monument in Canada. I'm not too sure what is classed as a monument in Canada, but I'm pretty sure that this is the only one I have seen so far. But still, quite an achievement I'm sure.

Today, we went hiking. Me and Kristen decided to take the route labelled as the easiest, as we didn’t have the appropriate footwear. It was meant to have a wooden path, and there was one for about 20 meters and after that it turned into a path consisting of puddles, mud and slippery rocks, resulting in us getting lost, very wet and bitten to pieces by all the giant mosquitoes. It would have been bearable if it wasn’t raining or had nice views, but it lacked both of these things. The salt in the wound was when we discovered that the other apparently more difficult route which the others took was a lot easier and a lot less wet and muddy.

I’m enjoying camping – it’s fun! We are staying 1-2 nights at each place, so we have to set up the tents and cooking equipment when we get there and take them down in the morning. I am not very good at mornings (I do have an excuse; my medication completely knocks me out, so I’m like a zombie in the morning) so we’re always the last ones to put our tent away and get in the van. Hopefully the group wont get too annoyed with us!

June 14^th

We went to Winnipeg and I didn’t like it because there were no shops that sold backpacks. I probably shouldn’t judge it on its ability to provide a backpack, but I did. It did have a ‘Second Cup’ – a coffee shop which we have all become addicted to. It does amazing frappaccinos and these ice-blended strawberry lemonade drinks, which is the best thing ever to be put into a plastic cup. We went to a town called Moose Jaw yesterday, where there was another large animal-shaped monstrosity, only this time it was a moose made out of what looked like paper mache. Weird.

Moose Jaw was nick named ‘the little Chicago’ because in the 1920’s and 30’s, the underground tunnels were used to sneak moonshine into Chicago on trains. We went on a tour of the tunnels, which turned out to be more of a show with the tour leader being an actress called Fanny. We had to pretend to be Moonshine smugglers and I was re-named ‘Miss Touchy’ because I apparently touched something which made a secret panel open in the fireplace. She told me to look inside the fireplace and there was a passage. I think there was meant to be something inside the passage that was meant to make me jump because she asked me to look again, but there was nothing there. It was a fun tour!

The wonderful trek family

We stayed in a trailer park that night, which was so much better than it sounds. It had a swimming pool with a couple of flumes. It was so much fun (apart from when Pete came down the flume soon after me and we banged heads. Ouch for him – I have a skull like a rock apparently! The two Korean girls told us our names in Koren, which I have now forgotten and Fred, the crazy Frenchmen kept playing a game of knock and run on every ones doors and insisting it was me and Pete. We got him back though! (I will leave how we did it a mystery.)

We’re in Calgary now and we saw ‘the worlds largest tepee’ today (it wasn’t really a tepee though, just a few metal poles). The long car journey today was improved by the purchase of 20Q and the mystery of how it works and the wonderful sounds of The Beatles. Things are generally awesome.

Writings from America (June 3rd-4th)

June 3rd 


We were in New York for two days, which had a cool vibe. The first thing we saw when we got off the greyhound and into the subway was a man with a crooked neck, who had his eyes closed (maybe dead?) behind a keyboard and two meters in front of him was a toy baby doll, which had been made so its hips moved, wearing a Hawaiian skirt doing a belly dance to the music the man was playing. Very odd. We got out of the subway in the Middle of Times square after a 23hour bus ride with our suitcases, so we were pretty stressed out trying to dance around hundreds of people, but out of the mass of busy people and the maze of skyscrapers and billboards, a butterfly appeared and flew right past me - beautiful, it calmed me right down.

We went to Central Park which was lovely (although I did question why we were visiting a park when we were in the most famous city in the world) and we went to Ground Zero, which was quite odd; they are building a memorial on the site where the Twin towers were. We peeked through the fence and we were amazed at how small the site is - you would never imagine that two massive skyscrapers stood there. We also tried to visit the statue of liberty but it was closed for memorial day. Someone told us that they don't open it to the public much because they're so paranoid about terrorist attacks. I can completely believe that because all of the Americans that we have seen have been a bit paranoid. They seem to treat everyone like criminals. You are guilty until proven innocent rather than innocent until proven guilty.
The rest of the time in New York was spent looking for sleeping bags which we needed for the coach trip. Times square is not the best place to look for sleeping bags. We went to all the luggage shops and asked for a sleeping bag and they looked at us like we were insane and pointed us down a few blocks. Finally after walking about 20 blocks, we found a K-Mart which amazingly had a big variety of sleeping bags-hurray! Pete took us the scenic route home (Pete, "we definitely need to walk to 5th" me, "I'm pretty sure its the opposite way" Pete, "no it's definitely this way, I'm so sure, I'll pay for a taxi back if I'm wrong!" He never did.) New York is cool though, I may spend a bit longer here at the end of the trip.


June 3rd (again)
Two days ago, we joined the coach tour. We met at 7.30am in the most hard to find hotel in Newark, New Jersey. The taxi driver stopped three times to get directions. I was extremely nervous at first (meeting lots of new people scares me!) and had a bit of a panic thinking 'I can't do it, I want to go home!' but I prayed and it was fine - of course. Pete was absolutely great; he got on with everyone and made everyone laugh - very pleased to call him mine! And once I was a little less nervous, I talked to all the people and they are SO nice. So much nicer than I had ever imagined, so we're very lucky. Our first stop was the Ben and Jerry's factory - not the best stop for someone who's allergic to dairy and an ex-anorexic, but it was very fun! Jason Miraz was on the tour with us. I didn't know who he was but everyone else did and they were very excited. Pete played me his song though and I do know it and I like it lots. We stayed in a campground in Vermont the first night- beautiful state. The only things that ruined the beautiful scenery in the campground was a big sign saying 'dumping site', which i thought was a water fountain. I'm quite glad I was told otherwise.
The next day we travelled to the border of Canada. I think I should re-name this post to;


Writings from Canada:


June 4th
We got through the border surprisingly easily and quickly considering we had 6 different nationalities travelling with us. We travelled to Quebec and wandered around the city. Beautiful, there was a massive castle-like building at the top of the hill that the city was built on. It looked like a fairy-tale village. It poured down with rain. I was not prepared for rain. Not wise. Very wet shoes. Very steep hill. Lots of slipping.

Some art above the streets of Quebec

It was Pete's birthday, so we went out for a meal and blew up balloons, popped party poppers and drank Sangria. Me and Elle (a lovely girl from Surrey) sneaked around Walmart to buy them. Good day.

Writings from America (May 20th-28th)

May 20th 

I'm sitting in the same spot as before and its still lovely, although I lost my sunglasses so I'm having to squint to see the page. We're in the same hotel but we're leaving for Miami on Saturday. We're going to stay in dorms with other actual people! Hopefully there will be some people who speak English and not Spanish because there are lots of non English speaking people in this hotel which is fine for them but it means we haven't really met anyone yet, which also means that it's just me and Pete all the time-quite a test on a 3 months relationship! But we're doing surprisingly well.

We do seem to have switched genders though. Odd but true. I go on all of the scary rides and Pete wimps out. We went wake boarding at Wet n Wild (an amazing water park) and I managed to do it before Pete which resulted in the instructor teasing Pete. We went for a meal (at Bahama Breeze where Pete discovered his love for Strawberry Daiquiris) and I had the same meal as Pete, who thought it was way too spicy. I couldn't taste any spice in it. And to top it all off, Pete had a cold at the start of the week. He didn't make any fuss and passed it off as 'the sniffles. He passed it on to me and I feel like I'm dying. Classic case of man flu.

Here are the things that we have done in Orlando and my expert review:

Sea World- I guess its quite a bit better than the Sea worlds in England, but saying that, it is about 10x more expensive. $72. And most of the things you can do there cost extra. It's so big and commercial that you don't really have a good day. But the animals were lovely. (apart from the Manatees which I still think are quite ugly) The dolphin show was amazing, but the same cannot be said for the killer whale show. The actual whales were amazing, beautiful, scary animals, but most of the show was focused on a man who supposedly fashioned a whale tail necklace out of wood when he was a boy and followed his dream and everything was amazing and wonderful in his life because he followed his dreams and is now a whale trainer. He was very obviously an actor too. All of this part of the show there were no whales. I didn't like it. Pete did.

up-side down building

Wonderworks aka the upside down house- This was cool. It was a building that was built upside down, which looked awesome and inside were lots of games and optical illusion interactive exhibitions. The first corridor you walked through made you feel like the room was slowly turning upside down. There were big bubble wands which you could make a bubble go round your head and a bed of nails which I did. (hurty elbows!) At the end, there was an arcade in the dark with UV lights and there was an indoor ropes course above the arcade. I really wanted to go on it and when we did, I got to the first platform and stood there for 20 minutes saying "I can't do it!" with Pete saying "you don't have to do it" and me replying "yes I do!" I got over the first rope and up the second, but I had to turn back after that because my hands were all sweaty so I couldn't grip the ropes properly.

Wet n Wild- the amazing water park. This was the best thing we've done so far. It was a lovely sunny day and there were lots of great rides. They were mostly rides which you were on an inflatable boat with another person. There were some in the dark like brainwash, which had a massive drop at the start and it dropped you into a giant swirling dark bowl with lots of strange lights and music. And our favourite, Disco, which was similar to Brainwash but the bowl was a mini night club playing 70s music. We did wake boarding which rounded up a winning day.

Universal Studios- I thought it was going to be a theme park, and Pete wasn't looking forward to it, but I was sort of wrong because there were a lot of rides, but the aim of the rides wasn't for a thrill or focused on the daring aspects that a theme park generally is, it was more focused on the film that it was portraying, which was good for both of us. There was a Jaws ride, which I would have been terrified of when I was younger (there was at least three children crying when a giant Jaws head attacks the side of the boat) and there was a Men in Black ride, where you had guns to shoot the aliens with (I got 26000 points. Pete got 111000 points, as he keeps reminding me) and my favourite- The Mummy ride (a roller coaster in the dark with fire and stuff.) All the streets were filled with movie scenes and old cars. I liked it lots. We went to the Hard Rock Cafe afterwards.

Joannes- we visited Pete's cousin and her boyfriend and two girls. She picked us up from our hotel and took us to a place called "Christmas town" to show us a chunk of American history. It was a place where the Americans kicked out the natives on Christmas Day. I didn't enjoy celebrating this fact but the wooden shacks were nice. We got to Joannes house in the lovely suburbs and met her family who were also lovely. It was nice to have a change from the fake touristy view that we had of America from being in Central Orlando. We met Pat's (Joannes boyfriend) friends; a few middle aged men who Pete told me would class as 'rednecks'. They were cool and we sat in their yard talking about the world and its people. A car pulled up and one of the men said to me "you're gonna meet Elvis now." I was slightly confused and even more confused when in the middle of this mundane setting, a man fully dressed in Elvis costume with a quiff and a grin stepped out of the car. Apparently he was called Steve and he had a normal job by day, but by night he became Elvis at a downtown bar. Odd. We got a picture with him.

All in all, I have loved Orlando. Even so, I will be glad of a change of location because there is only so much of the Disney, fairytale, 'anything is possible if you follow your dreams crap' you can take.

Miami here we come.

May 23rd 

Oh dear, we're in Miami.

It's 'just awful' as Pete would say. It's like a seaside town that's gone a bit wrong. Well, a lot wrong. There are a lot of drunks and lots of places to drink and eat for stupid amounts of money, but no supermarkets and absolutely nothing nice. We're in a hostel which has somehow been voted the best hostel in the USA. Why, I have no idea. It's dirty, the rooms are tiny and the staff are horrible.

We walked into the hostel after just having got to Miami by greyhound bus. We had just shared our cab with two lovely girls from Norwich (it's not their fault) and so we were in an optimistic mood about the journey ahead. We thought we might stay for a week in Miami. Oh how our minds changed when we walked into the hostel. It was a bar with lots of drunk people to step around and over and we went to the reception at the back and a rude polish woman hurriedly took our details and gave us a room card key and linen. We went into the room and it was a tiny room with three bunk beds crammed into it. There were clothes and towels everywhere and it was quite obvious that I was the only girl. A man came in and said hello. He was probably the scariest and creepiest man I've met. He was from Texas and looked a bit like an alien in a mans body. I didn't want to stay there, but we had no choice as we had already paid.

We met the other 3 boys who were nice, but they went out all night drinking and came back to the room at 5am talking very loudly and turning the light on (which resulted in me swearing at them quite loudly in my sleepy anger) The boy in the bunk below me brought a girl back and the less said about that the better.

The beach was the only good thing about it.

I payed $1.50 for an apple, $5.99 for a bottle of water and Pete spent $10 on a phone card that didn't work.

We are now waiting at the greyhound station for a bus which will take us 9 hours away from Miami to Daytona Beach.

Bye bye Miami. Good Riddance.

May 28th

On the greyhound to New York now, 23h 15m. The greyhound isn't as bad as I though it would be; it's air conditioned and doesn't smell funny-what more can you ask for? Pillows maybe. More leg space maybe. Nicer staff maybe, but all of that is more that bearable for the cost and convenience.

Daytona Beach was beautiful. So much better than Miami! It was a small town with a massive beach. The sand was the softest sand I've ever seen or felt. The sea was slightly rough with lots of wave breaks- perfect for surfing, or body boarding if you can't surf. We also went para sailing which was really cool. It was a parachute with a smiley face on it suspended on a boat which pulled you along so you went really high. You felt like a bird and you could see for miles. We sun bathed and swam and managed to spread cheerios and spaghetti-os all over the room. Fun fun fun in the sun sun sun. I could have stayed in Daytona for a lot longer but we've got to move; We have booked a coach tour across Canada which will start in New York in a couple of days.

writings from america (May 14th)

May 14th


We landed in Orlando, Florida two days ago at 6pm local time, which was actually 11pm in England. Our flight was 9hours and left at 1pm, so somehow we lost those 5 hours thousands of feet above the earth. I don't really understand it, all I know is that my body doesn't like losing 5 hours in the atmosphere-I'm tired! But the beautiful sun takes the edge off the jet lag. I'm currently sitting on a sun bed by the pool, the only thing that's not perfect about this setting is all the black bugs that seem to have taken a liking to my sun screen. They all appear to be mating too.
I have just realised that there is a big tree above me which is attracting the bugs. Maybe it isn't my sun screen. Maybe I'll move.
Oh dear they seem to have followed me. Oh well I'm sure they don't bite. Or maybe they do. One of the set backs of being an alien in a different country is that you know absolutely nothing (what is a dime??) You don't want to ask anyone these questions because you know they will just look at you as if you have said 'what is picnic?!'
Our hotel is AMAZING. For $22 a night we get two double beds, en suite bathroom, coffee maker, fridge, television and free breakfast. And this lovely pool :)
I'm so glad Pete invited me!
He's been great and I'm pretty sure we're not sick of each other yet which is a good sign!
Its a very bipolar city, Orlando. Everything seems to be taken to the extreme. People are either incredibly lovely or incredibly horrible. and they don't do things half-heartedly here. there are massive theme parks and water parks, they definitely wouldn't have a Pleasurewood hills here. Even the Sea World is so much more extreme- you can actually swim with the dolphins! And obviously the food is taken to the extreme and excess, For breakfast there is a make-your-own-waffle machine and bacon and eggs and bagels and cakes and horrible multi-coloured cereal etc. Almost every restaurant is an all-you-can-eat. Great if you don't have an eating disorder! I'm so glad that my anorexia is not in full flow because I would NEVER have been able to do this this time last year. I'm SOOOOOO lucky.