Toronto - Apr 23rd - Apr 29th
Well we have officially finished living and working in Canmore, Alberta and sadly we had to say goodbye to a beautiful town and a lot of wonderful new friends. We had a fantastic three months living in Canmore and working at Nakiska Ski Resort. It was a lovely small hill which meant it was easy to get to know everyone and make friends. There were quite a few social events that were great and we had people over to our place every now and then to make the most of our lovely outdoor hot tub! There were lots of cheap wing nights and parties at the Nakiska staff accommodation, which led to some not-so-pleasant morning afters!! We ended up heading out to Fernie Ski Resort (a sister resort to Nakiska) in Brisish Columbia, about three hours away for about 3 days to experience skiing at a different resort and we also got discount accommodation and skiied for free! Shaun enjoyed skiing there quite a lot as it was a very big resort with a lot of fresh powder and a steep runs for him to explore! He also got to go on a day trip to Kicking Horse Ski resort with some people from work which was great for him to experience some more back-country skiing with better skiiers than me!
We also eventually made it to an Ice-Hockey game which was on our list of things to do! It was in Calgary and it was the Calgary Flames vs the Anaheim Mighty Ducks which was pretty cool. We ended up having pretty good seats and the game was really good, pretty exciting in some parts and the atmosphere and effects were really awesome and made the experience very worthwhile!
On our 2nd last day in Canmore we also managed to fit in a dog-sledding tour which was a lot of fun! We went out to the back of Canmore where there is a big frozen lake and still lots of deep snow and we both sat in a sled while 6 dogs pulled us along and the driver stood behind us. We also got to have a turn of driving the sled too! The dogs were very excited and friendly and we stopped for a nice view of the lake and got to help set the dogs up on the sled as well! Very good experience and it was perfect weather too!
There was an end of season staff party at Nakiska the day we finished work and it was very sad saying goodbye to everyone and very sad to think it was all over! Shaun also had a ski-school staff party a few weeks ago where he won an award for being a great employee who never complains and is always up for extra work and puts in a lot of effort, so that was really nice for Shaun to get.
We have now packed up all of our stuff again and said goodbye to our little apartment in Canmore which was beautiful and we drove to Edmonton with two girls from Nakiska who bought our car off us and drove it back to Canmore with them. We then boarded the Via Rail train to Toronto at 11:30pm. We had booked Upper and Lower berths for sleeping and seats for during the day and the area where our beds where was very quiet and we pretty much had the area to ourselves with was great! The train took 3 nights and 2 full days with a few stops in between. There was a dining car where we had 3 full meals a day and a park car with a sitting area and a skydome car where you could see out of the roof for a better view of the scenery. The train ride was long but a good experience doing something different than flying. Unfortunately though I (hayley) got food poisoing on the last night and that wasn't very pleasant and put a dampner on the end of the trip :( but other than that it was really good!
We arrived in Toronto at about 10am on Saturday 23rd April and went straight to our Hotel to try and catch up on some sleep seeing as we'd had about 10 hours total for 3 days! Our hotel is a little out of the main downtown city but we managed to work out buses and trains which was been easy to get in and out of downtown. Today (sunday) we went into downtown to begin our hop-on hop-off tour of toronto city. It's a good tour as it lasts for our whole trip so we know we have transport to the main attractions around the city while we're here. We saw some cool things today and tomorrow we plan to go back and start going into some of the attractions.
Toronto reminds us a bit of sydney or melbourne with many sky-scrapers, but there are many different areas and cultures making up the city which add a lot of variety. There is one main street called Yonge Street that runs through the city but is actually over 1500kms long through the province of Ontario! Don't think we can walk the whole thing! But the rest of the city looks really cool and we look forward to exploring some more!
We are heading to Niagara Falls on Tuesday as well which is about 1.5-2hrs from Toronto for the day. We have purchased tickets for the Maid of the Mist as well as many other activites which should be fantastic!
Have put some pics up of the last few things we did in Canmore and of the train...soon will be Toronto and Niagara Falls. Keep an eye out for the next blog coming from Quebec City!
Love to everyone
Shaun and Hayley
xoxo
Hockey Game
Hayley at Hockey
Just a bit of the crowd!
Last day at Nakiska!
Dog sledding
Dog sledding
Dog sledding
Shaun in the sled!
Day time seats on train
Lower bunk on train
Upper bunk on train!
