The last leg.....

Last seen in Montreal, which I loved, I moved on to Quebec and, virtually for the first time, it actually rained!  Squally, nasty stuff while I was on the top of the Heights of Abraham - sheer cliffs which the British army climbed in 1759 to take Quebec from the French.

The rain came and went so sometimes I could see the St Lawrence river and sometimes I couldn't.......

The other predominant memory I have of the city is that it's pretty steep!  Very French, as it's the capital of Quebec province, which some great buildings:-

And then, in a De Havilland Dash-8 plane, I flew back to Montreal as part of my flight to Halifax:-

And very cosy it was too!!  Two short flights and I made it to the East coast and the Atlantic ocean at Halifax, Nova Scotia.  In the 19th century it was the major British Naval port in North America, until the Navy moved to Bermuda, and today it is a Canadian Navy base.  Home to many of the Atlantic Convoys in World War Two, it has a very good Maritime Museum.  There's also a graveyard dedicated to victims of the Titanic and, more cheerfully, it has "Pier 21" which is the old immigration shed for people arriving in Canada in the early 20th century.  Gotta like it, because there's also an Archives office there!  Alas, I don't have any ancestors who passed through Halifax at the time but it would be a godsend for anyone who has!!!!

A couple of days in Halifax and, having completed my Coast-to-Coast trip, it was time to board the red-eye flight (2345 from Halifax) to return to dear old Blighty.

Fabulous trip and I shall start saving for a return journey!!

More soon.

Eastwards.....

So, I left you in Ottawa and here's a photo of the Canadian parliament to prove it! I also spent three hours in the Canadian War Museum - a well-laid out, and very moving, display of Canadians at war from the 17th century to the present day. Well worth a visit.

Horseshoe Falls.....

....Niagara, which I missed out from yesterday's post.

Still going.....

.....and, ten days on, I've made it as far as Ottawa.

I left Vancouver on The Canadian train which took me, in four days, across the country to Toronto. Through the Rockies, over the prairies and through verdant, fertile Ontario. Cloud in the mountains meant that the views were too lacking in contrast for any decent photographs but there were some stunning views.

The prairies, really the bread-basket of the country were vast; coming from our small island, I'm still struggling with the vastness of this astonishing country. Until we turned south towards Toronto and Lake Ontario there was snow and ice on every river and lake we saw, to remind us of the harsh winter they endured here.

Although the journey by train was relaxing and enjoyable, the majority of the line is single-track and we had to keep moving onto the sidings to let the freight trains past. There were a lot of these going to the port at Vancouver and they were spectacularly long - I counted 99 wagons on one! These delays added ten hours to our trip and rather took the edge off it.

After getting off at Toronto, I went down to Hamilton to stay with a friend who I originally made contact with though our shared family history (I knew I could get genealogy in this post somehow!). She took me out and about, most memorably to Niagara (photo below, hopefully). A few days with her and now I'm in Ottawa, prior to moving on to Montreal in the morning.

More soon.

If it's Friday, it must be......

So, physically rambling now, rather that just with words...... I'm currently in the awesome Vancouver Public Library.  Or VPL as I keep seeing everywhere around me; those initials mean something else entirely where I come from!

Having arrived in Vancouver on Wednesday after a ten-hour flight, and with an eight-hour time difference, I'm beginning to feel somewhat jet-lagged - particularly as I didn't sleep much last night - so my powers of observation are fading slightly and I shall content myself with whiling away the time on this entry and then, quite frankly, trying to stay awake.

Having been blessed with a couple of days of beautiful weather, and a nephew who works well as a tour-guide, I've seen a fair bit of the city.  I also took a two-hour Trolley Bus tour yesterday afternoon which just hinted at the attractions of the place.  I'm not normally a fan of high buildings but Vancouver has many of them ..... the streets are so wide, though, that there's no feeling of being crowded.

Although not a great fan of heights, I went up the Lookout Tower this morning.  Can't say I enjoyed the elevator (40 seconds in a glass-doored lift) but it was worth it for the stunning views at the top.

All for now; photos next time.  Shall now be working my way east across the country towards the atlantic.

More soon.