Two Wanderers

Llama
Photo by Wil Macaulay.

We’ve long been talking of a trip to Ecuador, but I had serious doubts whether it would happen. But as of last Friday, we have tickets. These are probably the messiest set of tickets I’ve ever had to book. I was buying one ticket with Aeroplan points, and they won’t make arrangements for a cash ticket, nor will they sell tickets for any airline outside the Star Alliance. So I had to book a ticket to Bogota, Colombia on points, and then seperately booked a flight to Quito, Ecuador through Expedia. Kathy’s ticket was booked through Air Canada all the way to Quito. We’re on the same flights, though, just possibly not sitting together. And I never before realised how much of a pain online booking can be. I think they go out of their way to make the process complicated.

But it’s done now, so its official. January 24 to February 15, 2009, Kathy and I will be in Ecuador. I, for one, am really excited. I’ve started looking up things I’d like to do and see while we’re there. I really want to get off the tourist trail a bit, so that makes it a little more difficult to research. So far, the coolest thing I’ve found is the Santa Lucia Cloud Forest, which looks like it’ll be loads of fun.

Seagull at the Door

For the closest thing we’ve had to a real holiday since we got back, Kathy and I are in Victoria this week. I’m not on holidays, but have taken a few extra days around a business trip to enjoy myself. Kathy gets a holiday. Anyway, so here we are, and we’re loving it. We’ve often toyed with the idea of moving out here…I think given the opportunity, we’d jump at it. The grass is literally greener. Things may be budding in Edmonton, but this is a city already in bloom. There are flowers everywhere, and things just grow. Not just in the designated places like they seem to at home. The people also seem to be friendlier. The service industries seem to be well staffed with people in good moods, and we have had random strangers on the street stop and give us a hand - recommending a place to eat when they saw us puzzling over a map, and directing us to a bike rental place when it was nowhere near where the tourist information people had said it would be. I just have a hard time picturing the rushed Albertans taking the few minutes to point a tourist in the right direction, let alone if there were as many visitors as Victoria gets.

We’ve had a whirlwind couple of days so far. We arrived on the early flight Saturday morning, and were downtown by around 10. We stuck to just walking and exploring around the harbour in the morning. All the walking took its toll, combined with the early start (had to be at the airport by 6:30), and the heat/humidity combination, so we slept for almost two hours in the afternoon. After our sleep, we did a bit more walking, just wandering around the shore south of downtown, watching the cruise ships come in, and trying to get some pictures of the gulls.

Sunday was even busier. Our BnB was a bit slow on breakfast, and we spent much of the wait watching the seagull, pictured above, who just hung around on the balcony making noise. He gets fed for his trouble.

Then it was biking time. Despite the misdirection from tourist information, I think this has got to be the most impressing thing about Victoria. They have some old railway bed that they’ve converted into a biking trail - the Galloping Goose trail. Not only is it a nice, pleasant ride thanks to its flatness (trains at the time it was built couldn’t handle more than a 1.5% grade), but also very green. The railway cutting sometimes placed us in a fairly deep canyon, the sides of which were just covered in ferns and living things. We took a trail that spurred off towards Sidney, and took us past some farms and semi-rural acreages. We couldn’t help but think how this was about as ideal as suburban living can get, with a flat bike path providing a 1/2 hour of easy riding to downtown Victoria.

Again, nap-time, and then on to the ghost tour. It’s something we like to check out in different cities, since ghost tours tend to provide great story telling, and sometimes a good average-man point of view on history. The Victoria version is certainly memorable as one of the best. A good ghost tour depends a lot on the guide’s delivery, and our guide here certainly has good delivery. Interesting stories about the floating heads at Gatsby Mansion, the hanging man at the Empress, and a trip into some creepy alleyways. Loads of fun.

Anyway, more to come. We’re certainly having a great time…I just wish I didn’t have to spend most of the week working.

View from our Window

Well, we’ve now been home for quite a while now - longer than we were away. So, how have things been progressing?

I’ve landed a great job with a local engineering and land survey company, working in the Health, Safety and Environment department. I’d be lying if I said it was the most challenging work, but when I’m busy, it’s really enjoyable, and moderately rewarding. What’s most important, though, is that it feels like something that could develop into something resembling a career. Hard to say for certain at this point.

Kathy had a much harder time finding the job that she wanted, but eventually she landed a spot in the circulation department at a magazine publisher. It’s a lot of work, but she seems to be enjoying on it.

Anyway, on other things:
Early in October, we snagged a great apartment - we’ve got a beautiful view overlooking the University farm. It’s not perfect - like most apartments, it has cheap appliances, cheap floor coverings, doesn’t get the same kind of care and attention that resident-owned units do, and it gets pretty toasty on hot days, thanks the large windows that were so attractive when we picked it, but for apartments it’s pretty good. We’ve bought a place that we move into in late August…really looking forward to that. It has a big kitchen, has been recently renovated, and is within walking distance of my job, just a little too far for Kathy to walk.

We’re still thinking about travelling. It’s funny…after about 4 months we started thinking longingly of home, and were really looking forward to it, but it took less than a month of home time before we were thinking it would be so much nicer to just get going again. But we probably won’t do a long trip again, at least not for a good many years. Much as we might enjoy it, if we’re going to get the most out of life, a certain portion of it needs to be dedicated to working, buying property, and accumulating some wealth. So, for a few years at least, we’re on paid vacations only.

We had toyed with the idea of going to the Yukon this year, but, between accelerating our plans to buy a condo, and Kathy’s long job search that means she doesn’t have access to vacation time yet, that didn’t happen. But we are committed taking some sort of trip next year, and the Yukon will probably be it, so that’s something to get excited about…heading up into the land of the midnight sun.

Further away, we’ve been thinking about a trip to South America. Kathy wants to go to Ecuador, I want to go to Peru. Since I picked the last destination, we’ll probably go to Ecuador. And we long to go back to Turkey. It’s etched in our memory as just one of the most perfect countries for travellers, and, despite spending a full month there, we feel like we didn’t even scratch the surface.

It’s been about two weeks since we’ve gotten home, and it’s maybe been a little difficult getting back into the swing of things. At first we under a fair bit of stress, as while we were gone the already booming economy went crazy, and finding rental accomodation in Edmonton has proved to be a challenge. We were lucky enough to find a place we’re happy with, an apartment accross the street from the university farm. It’s not exactly what we’d wanted - we’d been hoping for a main-floor suite in a house - but we do have a dishwasher, some included utilities, and the cost of using the laundry facilities didn’t sound too outrageous.

Neither of us is working yet, but we’re taking this opportunity to be picky about what jobs we take. We still have some savings, and, most importantly, there’s a shortage of workers, so you know that if you turn down one offer, there will still be more in the future.

Not much else to say, I’m afraid. Maybe we’ll post some more once the travel bug starts to stir again.

-Neil

We spent a couple more days in Paris after my last update. We took the time to visit Versailles and the Musee d’Orsay. Versailles, naturally was overpriced and packed, but I enjoyed the Musee d’Orsay, though Kathy seemed less interested in it.

Quite aside from the sites that we went to see in Paris, it was the experience of staying there that was interesting. Staying at Andrea’s apartment was a very different experience from staying in a hotel, as I’d done on previous trips to the city. It was quite a cramped apartment, and the kitchen consisted only of a 2-burner hot plate and a bar-sized fridge, equipped with a few utensils, and for cooking in, a kettle, one pot, and one small frying pan. Obviously with those tools, the cooking potential is limited, and I get the impression that Andrea eats out most of the time, but we did make a couple of attempts - a stir fry one night, fried chicken another, and fried beef on another night. It was fun to go out and get groceries…Paris is jam-packed, the second densest capital in the world, after Tokyo, and there were several food stores within a few blocks, but none completely stocked the way we’re used to in Canada. So we would take a trip to the baker, the butcher, the produce stand, and the ingredients all seem to be much higher quality (and admittedly more expensive) than what we could buy at Safeway.

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Once again, a busy few days. After spending a not-so-restful night at the Budapest airport, we continued our journey at much increased speed, hopping in just a couple of hours over half of Europe, and landing in Paris. Quite a change after four and a half months of slowly winding our way over more than 6000km. It was quite fun, really. I always forget how much I like flying. And despite our worries and going crazy making sure we packed everything that might be considered a liquid into our checked baggage, they didn’t even ask us to give up our water bottle.

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The Rain Breaks in Budapest

Arriving in Budapest after a long, sleepless night on a train from Romania was quite an experience. Budapest is much more like Western Europe than other parts of the former communist bloc that we’ve visited. It’s a city of only 2 million people, but seems to have the foot traffic of a city 5 times its size. Arriving at rush hour, and being very tired, we had a tough time following the directions to our hostel. We ran into trouble because trams here don’t actually indicate what direction they’re going, so if you’re not sure about the orientation of the city relative to where you are, you don’t know which direction to get on. Also, we couldn’t figure out where to buy ticket. This problem ended up having to be solved by taking a taxi.

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What an Ass

Sorry for the delays in posting; at first we were feeling a little lazy (and under the weather), and then internet proved to be a difficult find in the rural parts where we’ve been hanging out for the past week or so.

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Our time in Romania has been pretty good, thus far, but there have been a few frustrations, mostly because it’s high season, and trying to do anything results in lineups.

We’ve realised that it’s impossible to know in advance what’s going to be a major tourist attraction. We visited three castles in the Basov area. The first was Bran Castle, which had recieved the Dracula treatment from the marketing department, despite having no relation to either the book, or the historical king Vlad Tepes (the Impalor), commonly referred to in the guidebooks as the “real” Dracula (His only relation is the name “Draculea,” meaning “Son of the Dragon,” since his father was a knight in the Order of the Dragon). So, unsurprisingly that one was pretty busy. Despite the marketing treatment, though, the castle didn’t pretend to be anything it wasn’t, it was a museum of old artifacts, furnishings and the like.

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Warning: what follows may come accross as a bit whiny. Sorry. If that bothers you, stop here. The fact is, it hasn’t been the best week, so most of it’s just recounting all the various problems we had.

We’ve spent the past week or so being very frustrated. It started in Veliko Tarnovo, which was a beautiful city, where the hostel we were staying in claimed to offer day tour to the surrounding area, but couldn’t take us because they “needed to car for pickups (from the bus station),” something they do most days, and we didn’t actually see the car move all day anyway. Then we went to Varna, which isn’t the most interesting town, but we’d wanted to see a bit of the Black Sea coast. (which we didn’t actually do in the end - the beaches were waaaay too crowded). Again, day trips were advertised, this time offered by a third party, but the trouble was that only one person did them, and had a repertoir of probably 20 or so tours. He was booked until Thursday, and we’d only booked accomodation until Tuesday. Even if we’d wanted to wait, we couldn’t stay longer because everything was booked up in advance. Also, because the Black Sea coast is a very popular destination for Europeans looking to party it up on their 2 week vacations, the crowds were really not our type, indeed some of the other hostellers were almost rude. So even though we stayed in a fairly nice hostel, with a bar and community atmosphere, there wasn’t much socializing for us.

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