Tuesday, 25 June 2013
Oh, Canada...
So, as well-travelled as I am, in an interplanetary sense, it's only occasionally that I get to visit the more accessible parts of this great planet of ours.
In my more recent role, it's been trips to Clark's place in the Arctic, mystical cities in the Himalayas (there's dozens of them, all apparently 'lost' - but try finding Nanda Parbat on Google Earth...) or the most remote parts of the larger deserts. However, aside from the inevitable secret lair there's usually little to see from a tourist perspective, although there was that one time when Helena and I were hunting Count Vertigo, wound up without transport (not my fault, honest) in the middle of the Lost Jungle of Doom (again, a Google Earth 'Fail') and discovered a ruined temple where we found - but I'm not supposed to mention that...
Anyhow, now that I'm on, ah, sabbatical, as it were, I've decided to do a bit of traveling, and this time I'm going to see a bit of Canada.
Beginning with five days in Toronto, during which time I'll also attend my first live baseball game in Rogers Centre, I plan to take some tours and see as much of the city as possible before traveling on to the fair city of Vancouver, BC - by rail.
There's a trans-continental train service run by Canadian national rail company VIA Rail, that goes between the two cities in just three and a half days.
The train, a refurbished 1950s-era model known as 'The Canadian', makes the almost-4400km trip between Toronto and Vancouver twice a week and takes three-and-a-half days to do it. There are no less than 63 stops along the route, of which the longest is 4 hours in Winnipeg.
Here's Via Rail's video:
In my more recent role, it's been trips to Clark's place in the Arctic, mystical cities in the Himalayas (there's dozens of them, all apparently 'lost' - but try finding Nanda Parbat on Google Earth...) or the most remote parts of the larger deserts. However, aside from the inevitable secret lair there's usually little to see from a tourist perspective, although there was that one time when Helena and I were hunting Count Vertigo, wound up without transport (not my fault, honest) in the middle of the Lost Jungle of Doom (again, a Google Earth 'Fail') and discovered a ruined temple where we found - but I'm not supposed to mention that...
Anyhow, now that I'm on, ah, sabbatical, as it were, I've decided to do a bit of traveling, and this time I'm going to see a bit of Canada.
Beginning with five days in Toronto, during which time I'll also attend my first live baseball game in Rogers Centre, I plan to take some tours and see as much of the city as possible before traveling on to the fair city of Vancouver, BC - by rail.
There's a trans-continental train service run by Canadian national rail company VIA Rail, that goes between the two cities in just three and a half days.
The train, a refurbished 1950s-era model known as 'The Canadian', makes the almost-4400km trip between Toronto and Vancouver twice a week and takes three-and-a-half days to do it. There are no less than 63 stops along the route, of which the longest is 4 hours in Winnipeg.
Here's Via Rail's video:
Not having been aboard, I can't comment, but I've got to admit I'm very excited about this...
More news as it, er, transpires...
Tuesday, 11 June 2013
And I Don't Feel A Day Over...
Today is my birthday, and at the risk of revealing something important to any of the three-letter agencies who may be reading this, I'm cough-fifty-cough
The sunshine we've enjoyed here for the past week switched off this morning, and it is now p***ing down outside.
I searched for an internet radio station this morning but it no longer exists, so I clicked an old bookmark in my browser that opened a site called RipRock Radio.* Tuning into their playlist, the first track to play was
"As Long As I Can See The Light" by John Fogerty, followed by Boston, with "Don't Look Back".
"Changes", by David Bowie and "Better Days" by Bruce Springsteen are up shortly.
Someone's trying to tell me something...
*Where the spirit of early FM rock radio lives on...
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