Whole Lotta Ottawa

More photos:

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You learn a lot of different things when you're travelling. Like, for example, that Ottawa is the capital of Canada. Many people may already have known this, I did not. In fact, apart from having heard that Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are really nice places, that they have lots of maple syrup, moose and mounties, before I arrived I didn't really know much about the country at all. Having spent a bit of time here now I can report the following:

• Canadians are definitely the friendliest people I have met on any of my travels so far. Everyone from bus drivers to people on the street have been lovely and helpful, without exception. Even the customs officials were nice.

• In between the major cities we visited, there is a lot of space. Some of it has really impressive mountains but a lot of it is mainly space. (Editor's note: Rich is unhappy with the use of the term "space" so to clarify, the space consists of flat farmland with the odd house every few miles). This is not a criticism, merely an observation. It has the whole rugged wilderness vibe going on, is quite appealing actually.
  

• Canadians call soft drinks "pop". This endears them to me as that's what I used to call soft drinks when I was little. Don't know why I stopped really, am thinking of reintroducing the term to daily usage.

• Canada's news channels are much more sensible than those in the US (sorry the US). In fact (and perhaps unsurprisingly) Canada is very English in many ways. Rich was delighted to be able to purchase a Fry's turkish delight bar and a can of irn bru. I was delighted they knew how to make proper tea.

• Canada has a lot of very large black squirrels. See photos for example.
  

• This may not be Canada specific, but in North America generally I've noticed that movie trailers are excessively long and always give away the entirety of the plot, in quite substantial detail. Pack it in, North America. I might want to see those movies.

As for Ottawa itself, Rich and I were both impressed with it - looked a lot like Edinburgh we thought, and we spent a couple of pleasant days wandering around the Parliament buildings, markets and shopping streets in the Autumn sunshine and marvelling at the giant spider poised to attack the art gallery. As the photos show, the Autumn leaves were still in full force, and outshone even some parts of New England. So far then, big thumbs up for Canada. Next stop, Toronto and a big famous watery thing.

Oh, Canada!

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Our visit to the second country on our travels did not begin well. The first day started with a manic drive from Augusta, Maine to Burlington, Vermont which for some reason we had decided would take 3 hours. Unfortunately when we actually looked at the printed directions 10 minutes down the road we discovered it would take at least  4 and a half. Oops. Situation not helped by the fact that we had to drop off one hire car and pick up another halfway in to save having to pay ridiculous drop off charges. We made it to the Greyhound station with minutes to spare, and finally arrived in Montreal where we were supposed to meet the guy we'd agreed to rent an apartment from. Unfortunately he turned out to be either incredibly stupid or a fraudster - either way, we found ourselves in the middle of Montreal on a Friday night with nowhere to stay. Not ideal.

Refusing to be beaten, Rich got us a room at the HI hostel for the night and I tracked down a rather amazing apartment for the rest of the week, if I do say so myself. Owned and recently renovated by an interior designer, it was huge and had everything from a walk in closet and wet room shower to DVD projector, satellite TV, fitness machines and a hefty stash of food and alcohol left behind by the business folk who usually stayed there. 

We made the most of our luxury surroundings by doing a lot of cooking and lazing around. In between, we sampled the culinary delights of poutine (chips, gravy and cheese curds - sounds grim, tastes great), made the pilgrimage to Rich's favourite smoked meat sandwich emporium Schwartzs, took in a Halloween lantern competition at the botanical gardens, took many photos at an amazing Chinese lantern festival, wandered around the now slightly forlorn Olympic stadium, listened to stories at an international storytelling festival, looked at creepy crawlies at the insectarium, watched a Montreal Canadiens ice hockey game, cried profusely at Where the Wild Things Are at the IMAX (me, not Rich) and visited the second pirate museum of the trip, proving that pirate museums are, in many ways, like buses.

And so it was we eventually spent a very happy week in Rich's former university city. Well, I was happy until we had to leave. I loved that apartment...

Marvellous Maine

Photos photos:

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From Vermont and New Hampshire we headed over into Maine to stay with Peggy and Paul, two of Rich's new Appalachian Trail friends. We had a great weekend - Peggy and Paul were excellent hosts, feeding us pizza and beer and taking us to their beautiful beach and to see the local sights. These included George W Bush's summer house just down the road and the excellently named seaside towns of Kennebunkport and Ogunquit. In the latter I had my first Maine seafood - clam chowder and a crab roll at Barnacle Billys.  Yum.

After a trip to the local microbrewery to meet up with some more of Rich's fellow AT-ers Becky and Matt, we set off for Bar Harbour and Acadia National Park with a stop at the pretty maritime town of Camden along the way. Rich was very excited about hiking in the park, which lived up to expectations. We got some great weather the day we went hiking, which was just as well considering there were some tricky sections of scrambling around on rebar (iron rungs embedded in the rock face for the uninitiated) to get to the top of some of the trails. We climbed the Beehive, which was a lot of fun (as long as you didn't look down at the scary bits). After lunch we stopped to sample popovers, a local delicacy that had been described to us as big sweet pastry puffs served with cream and jam. Given this description, I was a bit surprised when what landed on my plate was in fact a large Yorkshire Pudding. Silly Americans. 

We'd planned to end the day with a hike up Cadillac Mountain, but the weather and daylight were against us so we cheated and drove to the top instead. Which was just as well really as when we got there I thought we'd taken a wrong turn and ended up in the Arctic. I think there were some great views of lakes and mountains, but my vision was obscured by the icicles on my eyelids...  Next stop, Canada.

New England in the Fall

Pretty pretty leaves:

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As luck and careful planning would have it, we found ourselves in New England just in time to see the famous fall foliage display. I say it's famous, but having now seen it for myself I don't know why even more people don't make the trip: it's amazing. Sure we have trees in England, but because of the climate and wider variety of species in New England, the autumn colours there are a million times more spectacular. These photos don't really do it justice - we spent 7 days driving through Vermont and New Hampshire (where the tree-clad Green and the White Mountains provide the most impressive viewing) and after every amazing view we found we'd round a corner and find another one.  Definitely a big highlight of the trip so far.

The Other Salem

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Just outside of Boston is the more famous of the two Salems I've visited this trip, namely the setting of the infamous 1692 Salem witch trials. Having studied early European witchcraft at A-level (not literally, sadly) I was interested to see how the most well known example of the witchcraft hysteria was commemorated. Unfortunately, modern day Salem is a bit of a bad taste bonanza full of haunted houses, Dracula's castles and spooky fancy dress shops, which jarred a bit with the grisly reality of what the town is actually famous for. Saying that, there were a couple of credible attempts to simply tell the story, even if they were a bit hokey. The one we went to tried to teach visitors about tolerance by making a hamfisted comparison between victims of the witch hunts and people with AIDS. Points for trying, I suppose...

Just as we were giving up on the place we happened to notice an old map in one of the museums that showed the locations of several of the victims' houses, the old church and village hall where many of the witch trials took place. It was only when we tried to find these on our new map that we discovered Salem isn't really Salem at all - the place that was called Salem in 1692 is now a village called Danvers several miles away. Turns out the original Salem is actually a quiet slice of suburbia with only discrete informative signs to identify the historical locations and a tasteful mermorial to the victims on an unassuming side street. So I suppose it's not all bad after all.

Boston

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I knew I was a backpacker again as I lay awake at 2am in a bunk bed covered in graffiti in a room with 5 fairly smelly men (I'm sure Rich wasn't one of them, of course...) contemplating whether throwing something at the unfeasibly loud snorer in the bunk opposite would be socially acceptable behaviour. After a couple of nights I was back in the swing of things though, largely due to the excellent decision to end each evening with a trip to the pub.

Boston was fun - I got a really good feel for the place. We went to Fenway Park (and looked at it; the Red Sox had already qualified for the playoffs and so the games weren't worth seeing, I was reliably informed). Wandered around the city taking in the sights, tried Boston baked beans (bit too sweet I thought), checked out some blues at the Boston institution Wally's Cafe, went to Harvard and took advantage of $6 meals at a nearby Mexican restaurant. God bless students.

Obviously no trip to Boston would be complete without a pilgrimage to my fellow lawyer Ally McBeal's offices and the courthouse. Sadly, the Biscuit was not in residence.

Bogs, Frogs and Cranberries

Beautiful cranberries:

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I expected to be impressed by lots of things when I started travelling - the Taj Mahal, Niagara Falls, American portion sizes, etc. Cranberry bogs were not one of these things. In fact, I didn't even know cranberries grew in bogs; if pressed I probably would have guessed they grew on bushes or trees somewhere, but I hadn't really given it much thought. Turns out, cranberries are amazing. They grow on bushes in huge bogs, mostly in Massachusetts, Wisconsin and other northern US states and parts of Canada. When the berries are ripe, the bogs are flooded and a special harvesting machine is driven through them to knock the berries off the vines. The berries float to the surface of the bog, creating a spectacular sea of bright red, before the farmers corral them into a corner and more machines suck them up and spit them out into the back of a truck waiting to take them off to market.

The cranberry harvest takes place in late September/early October, and as soon as I saw a photo of the flooded bogs I knew I had to find one and take many photos, as well as get my hands on the brilliantly named Cranberry Bog Frogs, the local chocolate/cranberry/caramel/cashew nut taste sensation. We had expected to see bright red bogs all over Cape Cod, but as our trip went on and the cranberries were stubbornly refusing to need harvesting I took matters into my own hands, hired a car and booked a tour which guaranteed a trip to a fully operational bog. It was great. Pouring with rain and freezing cold, but great nontheless - the plant kingdom's version of the Christmas Island crab migration (well, there were lots and lots of small red things all in one place; you get the idea). See a bit of it for yourself courtesy of Youtube and Good Morning America: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENaPmfJtdcE Crantastic.

Cape Cod

Piccies:

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After a week of sleeping in our own room, eating at nice restaurants and hanging out with people we knew Rich and I realised that this wasn't really travelling and we should probably hit the road before we became too comfortable. So we bade farewell to Regan and Rhode Island, home of the worst drivers in the world (bar none) and boarded a bus bound for Cape Cod.

Before we arrived, I knew two things about Cape Cod: it was the place where Tom Hanks first encountered Madison in "Splash" and it's where wealthy Americans from New York and Boston go to spend the summer in their mansion-like second homes. Given the latter, I was looking forward to seeing some top notch beaches and seaside towns. I was, sadly, disappointed. The beaches were there, but most of them were out of bounds to commoners, as the numerous "Strolling Rights Only" signs in the sand made clear. The beaches I did see were underwhelming at best - the whole peninsula is flat without a single cliff or cove to break the monotony. One spot that is meant to be a particular gem looked exactly like the beach at Coatham (see photos, all that's missing are the Teesside industrial works in the background). Even the towns were uninviting - character-less main streets full of expensive seaside themed tack and Barbour shops. Compared to the (significantly cheaper) highlights of the north east coast back home Cape Cod was sadly lacking.

Nantucket, a small island just off the Cape, was slightly better. We took a bike ride out in search of cranberry bogs (more of them later) and lighthouses and enjoyed pottering round the small town centre which I thought looked a lot like Cheltenham. It was all a bit eerie though, as we had arrived out of season and so many of the shops and restaurants were closed and the enormous houses would stand empty until next summer.

Finally we moved on to Provincetown, which thankfully was a world apart from the rest of the area. Renowned as the best gay summer resort on the East Coast, the town was a vibrant hub of artsy activity, even out of season. The weekend we were there it also played host to the 13th Mates Leather Weekend (sponsored in part by the Provincetown Tourism Fund) which explained the large number of leather clad men we encountered in town. Had a great couple of days there, enjoying the laid back, fun and friendly vibe that was completely lacking further down the road. They even had a pirate museum, home to genuine pirate pieces of eight and other loot that was found on the Wydah, the only authenticated pirate shipwreck ever recovered. Ooh Argh.

Divine Providence

Photos, photos, photos:

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And so, dear reader, my time in Winston-Salem came to an end. Sad as I was to leave, the end of the North Carolina experience was also the beginning of The Great Adventure as Rich and I picked up our backpacks, boarded a plane and jetted off to our first stop, the city of Providence, Rhode Island, and the home of my good friend Dr Early.

We spent a week with Regan, relaxing and exploring the city by day before going out to play at night. We managed to cram in a trip to an open mic night at the Everyman Bistro, blues at a biker bar in Pawtucket, dinner in the Italian Quarter, a gig at local arts venue Firehouse 13 and a movie about the wildcard Republican Congressman Ron Paul who ran for President in 2008. The gig at Firehouse 13 was about as good as the open mic acts were abysmal (points for trying, but some performances should not be inflicted on the general public). The headliners were Tallahassee, who use fiddles, double bass, guitars, banjos and piano to create gorgeously mellow indie/country/folk songs you wouldn't expect to hear from a band fronted by a former NFL linesman. For a sneaky listen, follow this link, although it doesn't quite match up to them live: http://www.myspace.com/tallahasseeband The Ron Paul film was fascinating - a documentary showing how his outspoken views on US foreign policy in Iraq, national security, the US Constitution and role of the President gained him an incredible grass roots following in the 2008 election campaign. This footage from a debate between Republican presidential hopefuls broadcast on Fox News (a notoriously right wing US news channel) pretty much sums up his position - if you didn't know better you'd think it was a parody sketch rather than a real televised political debate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BB3NrSpRGE

Perhaps the highlight of the week, however, was the day we spent visiting the New England Carnivorous Plants Show (home to a wide array of plants that trap, devour and digest creepy crawlies), before taking waltz lessons at the local Jewish Community Centre. Despite some initial reservations, Rich was soon in his element (well, he smiled a few times) and after a couple of hours we were definitely not completely hopeless. Following our success I'm thinking perhaps some tango lessons in Argentina, maybe a bit of salsa in Brazil... Maybe best not to mention that to Rich just yet though.