Waiting in Seattle

I am in Seattle, waiting, waiting, waiting for a baby to arrive. Alan is in Sydney having a health review - all good news- and planning a trip to Western Australia in August. Zoe is well, but tired - of waiting, but also of the endless round of checks and hospital visits. The weather here has been nice. It's often slow to start to warm up in the mornings, but by about 4 pm, it's quite pleasant. We haven't seen the mountains as clearly as we did the very first weekend we were here in May, but I am sure they are still there. Zoe is hoping the baby will arrive in the next 10 days ( its due on 6 August). I will keep you posted.

Across Canada by train

We left Ottawa at noon on the train on Tuesday and arrived in Vancouver on Saturday, only an hour late. I say "only an hour" as we were 4 hours late into Winnipeg and 7 hours late into Edmonton! I think the time change helped! What a fabulous way to travel though. Both Alan and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The train was very comfortable, the staff all friendly and informative and the meals really nice and huge! As well, the scenery was stunning. I hardly read anything as my eyes kept being drawn to the views outside the window. It's further from Toronto to Vancouver than from Sydney to Perth. Most of its Ontario, which seemed to be thousands of small wooded lakes on either side of the train. I looked in vain for a moose, but did see deer, beavers, bison and mountain goats - oh and prairie dogs. Manitoba was rolling hills and canola fields, Saskatchewan flat with silos, and Alberta green grassy fields with undulating hills. Until Edmonton when we started into the Rockies. Actually we were climbing since we left Toronto according to the informative, if not manic, attendant in the observation car. But it was near Jasper that we really got amongst the Rockies and it was hard to tear your eyes away from the windows. Once we crossed the Alberta/ BC border and the continental divide, we followed a river all the way to Vancouver. It started off as tributes, but eventually became the Fraser River. I would absolutely recommend this trip to anyone: it was fantastic.

Ottawa and Canada Day

It was a beautiful day yesterday for Canada Day in Ottawa. Alan and I started early to avoid the crowds on the bike path and were there in time to watch the flag raising ceremony and the changing of the guards. We saw the Governor General arrive with a mounted escort from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and also saw the Prime Ministers cavalcade whizz by in a stream of black cars with tinted windows, so I guess he saw us, rather than us seeing him. We saw the snowbirds perform arial feats in their super sonic jets and parachutes drop from the sky as well as hearing lots of Canadian artists and buskers. We went to a free concert in the evening with Unisong, combined children's choirs from all over Canada accompanied by a wild Cape Breton Island fiddler with her 6 year old daughter dancing a jig. And then we saw the fireworks over Parliament House and the Ottawa River. Aw ! We got home about 11, cycling madly on our bikes to avoid the thousands of walkers after the fireworks. It was a really good day. I forgot to mention we spent a couple of hours in a pub watching Spain win the Euro12 soccer championship. The other night we met with my former flat ate, Pam, who now lives in BC who was visiting friends and relatives over here. We met up here at the RCMP musical ride which was a great spectacular and free at their training grounds. We had a great catch up and then we met for a pancake breakfast on Saturday at her friends house and really had a good time. We hoped to meet up with them yesterday for the fireworks, but it was too much in a big crowd and they were going in a different direction to us afterwards, so it worked better for us to stay on our side of the crowd. We have really enjoyed our visit to Ottawa. It is a very comfortable city and appears to be very livable, certainly staying where we are where it's a simple bike ride into the city on a dedicated bike track along the canal. They say you have to cycle for 30 minutes to work off a beer and I have been making sure I have got the beer, especially seeing it has been nice and hot here! Tomorrow we board the train, heading for Vancouver and we get off on Saturday. Should be good. I am sorry I cannot put photos on the blog from my IPad. You can view them on Picasa.