Boston, MA & Hartford, CT

We are officially in the US of A!

Boston May 8th - 13th
Hartford May 13th - 14th

We arrived in Boston after a long, sleep-less night on a Greyhound bus from Montreal, of which a great deal of time was spent in customs where we ended up having to pay even more money for a visa that we already paid extra for! It did feel sad to leave Canada, where we had been for nearly five months but we were very excited to be in America and to experience the things we've always heard/seen and to see how it differs from Canada too. After arriving at the bus station we then went straight to our hotel that was in a suburb called Saugus and we were able to check in straight away and sleep for a few hours which was good. We woke up in the afternoon and checked out our local area. Unfortunately we weren't in the main downtown bit, but there was a shopping mall and some places to eat nearby which was the main thing.

The next day we headed into town on the local subway which was quite easy to get around on. We found a good 'hop-on-hop-off' tour of the Boston and Cambridge areas which included 2 days of tour and a 90-minute water cruise for a really good price. So we did the full loop of the tour to see as much as we could and then hopped off and saw some of the main city including Quincy Market, Boston Public Library and the U.S.S Constitution (an old navy boat that you could walk around on). We also enjoyed just looking at the architechture and the old buildings that made the area really nice.

The next day we took the tour to Cambridge and vistited Harvard University. The area and buildings were beautiful and everyone was very 'harvard' themed! There was a nice area to shop and walk around, and walking through the actual Harvard Yard was really lovely. We also did our harbour cruise that day that went around the main harbour so we could get a good view of the city, and it was fully-narrated as well. We had dinner at the 'Cheers' restaurant at Quincy Market too.

The next day we went back to Harvard and went on a free 2 hour walking tour of the university, run by actual students who were very funny and very good at the tour! We learnt a lot of interesting things and were told many things that you wouldn't otherwise find out! After that we went back into Boston and went to Boston Common Park and went on a swan boat on the pond (it was finally a nice day to this!) and we walked around the nice park for a while too. We then visited some old war graves that were so old you could barely see the writing on the headstones! We really enjoyed Boston as it was a big city, but the buildings and area were really nice and didn't feel over-populated and dirty!

The next day we headed back into town and boarded our train for an overnight stop in Hartford before heading into NYC. Unfortunately we didn't really get to see much of Hartford as we arrived late arvo and left at lunch time the next day and could only really walk to a small shopping area and not the main downtown area. We had a nice hotel room though and had a chance to do a whole heap of washing and sleeping!

We then hopped on another train and with a quick 10 min stop over in New Haven, we were on our way to New York City!

Sorry it's been so long since our last blog, I guess we've just been having so much fun! Stay tuned for our NYC blog in the next few days.

Hayley & Shaun xoxo

 Some of the city of Boston

 Boston Public Library

 View of city from water cruise

 Gates to Harvard!

 Swan Boat ride

 Old cemetary

 Our brief stop

 in Hartford!

Quebec City & Montreal, PQ

Bonjour French Canada! We are now in French-speaking Canada.


Quebec Apr 29th - May 4th
Montreal May 4th - May 8th

We arrived in Quebec City on Apr 29th after about an 8 hour train ride, at 7pm. We took a taxi to our hostel, which turned out to be pretty much right around the corner, meaning the taxi only cost $5 which is always a bonus! This was our first hostel for this trip so we were a little unsure of what to expect but we were greeted by a man named Steeve (yes two E's) who ran the hostel and he was very friendly and gave us HEAPS of tourist information straight away which was great. The hostel was a skinny building between two other buildings but went up quite high too. There was a big TV area and kitchen and laundry to use. We had a room to ourselves upstairs, however we did have to share a bathroom but it wasn't too bad. The only bad things about the hostel were the complete lack of pillow and a plastic mattress that was horrible and really hard to move on and the fact that our room faced a 24 hour bar that people liked to stand outside of every morning at 4am shouting stuff really loudly!

We soon found out the Quebec City was a city that you could walk all of, which was handy as we didn't have to pay for transport (or try and work it out in french) but it did mean that we basically dropped dead every afternoon from tired and sore-ness, especially as there were a lot of steep narrow areas of the city that we had to walk up. The city had a couple of different areas, the old quebec and the new quebec. The old Quebec was enclosed within walls and was very beautiful to walk through. Lots of boutique shops, cafes, small side streets with people selling their artwork etc. The houses and buildings were all very old and frenchy which you will see in the photos and it was nice to feel like we were somewhere completely different. It was interesting trying to decipher everything into English, but we found it a lot easier to read French than try and speak it to someone. Most people who worked in Restaurants and shops spoke English if you told them you couldn't speak French. But it did feel like we were in another country for a little while which was lovely.

We mostly spent the days in Quebec just wondering the old city looking at the scenery. They had a nice boardwalk area and a big castle that was actually a Fairmont hotel. We walked around the newer city a bit too but there wasn't really much there just a few office blocks. We had some yummy french crepes too at a really nice cafe where you could watch the girl making the crepes! We also managed to find a free day at the Civilisation Musuem where we spent one afternoon looking at some different exhibitions which was pretty interesting.

We left Quebec City in the morning of May 4th and took a 3.5 hour bus to Montreal. The bus station was just around the corner from our hostel there too which was good as we could walk. The hostel we had their was similar as we had our own room and a shared bathroom and could hear every noise on the planet, except the staff weren't as welcoming and helpful as in Quebec which was a bit disappointing. However we did have an advantage of having our own french montreal tour guide, a girl that we worked with at Nakiska who lives in Montreal, Marie. She met up with us the next day we we visited the Montreal science centre and saw a Imax movie, we went to a mall and saw her house in the suburbs which was nice, we went to a mexican restuarant for dinner and then went with her and her friend to the Casino which was a nice sight to see (although we didn't play, just watched, we are saving that for Vegas!).

The next day we walked to the old town of Montreal and saw similar to Quebec, lots of old buildings and streets and it was near the water which was lovely too. We ended up walking around most of the city and had lunch in Chinatown for about $5! Montreal had a bigger 'city' area than what Quebec did, and they had lots of long streets with lots of restaurants and shops that we walked around a lot too. Our hotel was fairly central which made it easy to get around.

We also went out to a nightclub, Radio, with Marie who got us in for free because her friend works there which was cool. It was a really cool club and it was packed with people by the end of the night. It had about 4 floors with about 4 bars on each floor! But it was fun to go out and see a club in a different city. On our last two days we just walked around and saw the sights, we also met up with Marie one more time before we left and saw a movie and did some shopping. We then caught a late (11:30pm) bus to USA and went through the border which took some time as we all had to get back off the bus and wait for ages to get our passports checked and we ended up having to pay more money to go through (it wasn't much but it was the idea of it!) and that was very annoying because we already paid $160 and went to sydney for the big ordeal that some of you know about and it seems like we didn't even need to do that now grrrrr.

We arrived in Boston this morning at about 8am and went straight to our hotel and were lucky enough to get into our room pretty much straight away so we could sleep as we both didn't get any on the bus. We are a little out of the main downtown area but have found a bus that should be able to take us in there. We are very excited to be in USA now and begin the rest of our travels, but we were quite sad to say goodbye to Canada after nearly 5 months there, where has the time gone???!

Check out our pics of french canada below, and stay tuned for our USA-goss!
Love to all
Hayley and Shaun xx

 Quebec

 Quebec

 Walls to old town

 Quebec

 Fairmont castle

 Quebec

 Quebec

 Quebec

 Quebec

 Montreal

 Montreal

 Shaun in Montreal old town

 Montreal

 Montreal

 Nightclub in montreal

 Swings in the middle of the city

Our street in Montreal

Toronto & Niagara Falls, ON

Apr 23-29th

So our last blog captured the last few months living in Canmore and told you that we had just arrived in Toronto by train. We stayed in Toronto for 6 nights at the Comfort Hotel near the Airport and unfortuantely it was a bit out of the way of the city and we had to take a bus and then subway to get in there which took over an hour each time (a bit longer one time when we took the wrong bus by mistake!) but the system was fairly straightforward which made it easier.After our first day where we basically slept after recovering from no sleep and food poisoning on the train, the next day we headed into the city to begin our hop-on-hop-off tour of Toronto. We had pre-booked this tour and it worked out good as we could use it for our whole time in Toronto so that was handy. We did a full north and south loop of the city tour to have a look at everything and then got off later in the afternoon in Chinatown and had some lunch. We then walked back through the city to the main square and had a look at various shops and buildings a long the way.

Over the next few days we used our tour to get around the city area and we visited Casa Loma (an old castle that people used to live in) and we could do a self-guided audio tour of the whole inside of the castle which was cool. There was also an underground shopping area called the PATH which we walked through a few times. We visited the Shoe Museum full of different shoes from throughout the year (luckily we went on a free day because it really wasn't worth paying for!) We also walked around an exclusive shopping area with brands such as Gucci, Tiffany & Co, Burberry and such which was cool and had drinks at a cool bar at the top of a really tall building. Unfortunately it was rainy and cloudy and we couldn't get any good pics of the view. We also made sure to have lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Toronto as we had eaten at so many of them in other cities in Canada, and this one was really cool, we got to sit at a table in an old streetcar in the middle of the restaurant!

The rest of our time in Toronto was spent looking at shops and just wandering the city. The weather made it a little hard to see some things as it was rainy and cold and windy on the day that we wanted to go out to the islands on a ferry and do outdoor stuff so that was a shame. Otherwise we did enjoy Toronto and what we saw of it, although we also noticed that people weren't as friendly as they had been back in Alberta.

Oh and we enjoyed picking up mistakes the tour guide was making with facts about various places, even in Canada which wasn't very good!

While we were staying in Toronto we took a Greyhound bus for a day trip to the canadian side of Niagara Falls as we had pre-purchased passes for some of the activities there. We arrived at Niagara at about 11am and were amazed at what we saw! The day was really beautiful too so that made it even better! It was very hard to believe we were standing in front of THE Niagara Falls and the amount of water going over was just incredible. It was a great sight to see! Some of the activities we took part in included a 4-D movie about Niagara where we had to wear ponchos because we got sprayed with water and snow and the room shook everytime they explained the erosion and creation of the falls! It was a really good movie with amazing footage of the falls. We also went on a 'white water walk' where you could walk down near the gorge and see lots of rapids and lovely scenery (this was a bit further up from the falls) and we took a cable car across the gorge to see the whirlpools down below. But the best activity we did was putting on our ponchos and taking an elevator down a few hundred feet to behind the falls where we could go out on a platform and the falls were literally meters from your face. You could also walk behind in these tunnels and stand right in front of the water pouring over the side. You will see more of what I'm talking about in the pics below. But it was absolutely amazing to be standing that close and seeing the amount of water from that angle. And we got soaked!

We had bought tickets for the Maid of the Mist boat ride also but unfortunately it wasn't running just yet so we have tickets to go back in May if we can make it as we both still would really like to have that experience. But we did get extremely close anyways with our 'Journey behind the falls' as well.

We had a lovely day in Niagara and arrived back to Toronto pretty late, about midnight so we were pretty exhausted after that, but its great to say we have seen it now and had an awesome day!

We left Toronto on April 29th at about 9:30am and took the train to Quebec City which took about 8 hours. We are now in French Canada which is very different, but you will have to wait for the next blog to read all about that one!

Speak soon
Love Hayley and Shaun
xoxox

 Toronto City

  Toronto City

  Toronto City

 CN Tower

 Casa Loma

 Niagara City

 Falls

 Falls

 Falls

 Look at that water!

 How close we got

 Shaun practically touching the falls!

 So Close!

The falls!