The past revisited

A couple of days ago, Alan and I visited Fredericton, New Brunswick, where I spent some months of my life in 1974. It was winter and very cold with an unusual amount of snow that year. My memories of that time revolve about drinking lots of beer, snowshoeing in the woods and working at a small rehabilitation centre where I was the only OT. I shared a house with a bunch of other strangers to the city, one of whom we will be visiting in California later this trip. It was a funny place back then and not much seems to have changed. I easily found our old flat, on the ground floor of a run down old house on the riverbank. Apart from a change of color, it looked pretty much the same - in need of TLC and a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Strangely, while looking at the old place, the owner came out and started talking to me. He would love to fix it up better, he told me, but just getting the place to meet current regulations - fire standards etc, had taken about all of his capital. He lived on the top floor and was forced to change the configuration of the flats due to safety standards. My old room, for example, was accessed by the old servants stairs ( very narrow and windy) which are no longer considered safe, so that room now belongs to what was the upstairs flat. I found it hard to remember the downtown area and could not find the pub where I spent so much time, but probably it needed so much spent on it too, and there are new houses along the river there now. The old rehab centre has been incorporated into the new hospital and is no longer in existence. It's still a very pretty city though and the weather was warm and sunny.

Niagara Falls

You all know about Niagara Falls, so I needn't go into descriptions about how much water flows over every minute etc - but I have to say, it's a bloody lot of water - a bloody lot! Of course it's amazing. The falls themselves don't seem to be any different than when I was last here 36 years ago - there's still a bloody lot of water going over every minute - but the built environment has changed enormously. There are now lots of "attractions" to enhance your visit. Those of you on Facebook will have seen that Alan did the "behind the Falls" visit, where he had that corny photograph taken. We both went up Skylon - a tower which does have a fantastic view from the top. We also visited the Whirlpool ( thankfully still free) and then drove down to Niagara on the Lake - an old town which was rebuilt following the war of 1812 - not Napoleon, but the Yanks. It's full of beautiful graceful houses and lovely gardens. Our exchange house in Toronto is actually not in Toronto itself, but in the "greater Toronto area", which means we are an hours drive out of town. It's a newish suburb and we are in a very big house, with a nice garden, so it's very relaxing. Today we will go into Toronto downtown for a bit of a look around. They appear to have a festival like Sydney's Vivid on at the moment.

Exploring Seattle

Alan and I have been doing a bit of exploring this week and have been downtown and also to Pioneer Square and the amazing Smith Tower, the first skyscraper not in New York, built in 1914. You get a pretty good view from up there, but it's been cloudy, so Mt Rainier is still not visible, although we did see it briefly one morning last week. Since last weekend, we have hardly even seen the Olympic Mountains. We haven't been up the famous Space Needle as we are waiting for a clearer day. Today we went on 'the Duck', a 1942 army duck which does a land and water tour of Seattle. Zoeluma had been looking forward to it and we all ended up having a lot of fun in an American sort of way - ie lots of 'woo-hoos' and shouts and waving to strangers, and singing loudly to songs like 'Hit the road Jack' and 'All shook up' but it was all fun. We did learn a lot about Seattle and its history and its famous residents like Bill Gates, Ben Boeing, Starbucks owners and many movie producers and directors. After a hotdog from a street stand for lunch, Alan and I went to the Dale Chihuly Glass Garden, a new art installation by this famous glass artist. It was just fantastic and we were so impressed. Yesterday we went to the Seattle Art Museum and saw among other things, an excellent exhibition of Australain Aboriginal Art. We are off the Canada on Wednesday.