It's a huge place
Its like the US but without the extremes. (A Canadian would probabaly hate that description though!)
You get the feeling there are good career opportunities here
Standard of living appears far greater than the UK. Accomodation & food is certainly cheaper. ( eg. Two steaks for BBQ - $3.70 (about GBP 1.70)
Public transport is pretty desperate - good job we have our bikes!
It has its oddities though:
- All the roads are dead straight. That means that if there is a hill in the way, the road just goes up and over it. There appears to be no question of going round it!!
- You can only buy alcohol from Government run shops. And there is 'The Beer Shop' for beer and 'LLBO' for wines and spirits. Therefore, you can't buy alcohol at a supermarket and if you want beer & wine , you have to go to two seperate shops to do so.
- Every fourth or fifth vehicle is a 'Pick -Up'. Are the Canadians the biggest removal folks in the world? I can't work out why most people would want a great big vehicle, with room for only one passenger but have a great big open air space in the back!! Added to that, when you have a look in the back it is invariably empty!!
- Every TV progamme is either 30 mins long or a multiple of that. All programmes start at either on the hour or the half hour. The one exception appears to be the news on BBC World that sometimes is 15 mins long. The schedulers in the papers have great difficulty with this!
Carolines Diary Extracts:
1st August 2001:
"Got up early today (ate half a banana each) and left our motel at 7:45am, making our way to Barrhead, not the one in Scotland!!. The plan was to get to our first town (15 miles away) and have breakfast, unfortunately the first town consisted of three houses!!!!!!!. So we ate some peanuts and dried fruit (emergy rations) and had soml water (the water was horrible, all slimy). We now had to travel another 9 miles before the next town, the only good thing today was that the roads where much better than yesterday. I was not happy today, I was hungry, it was hot (40 degrees) and my legs ached from the 2 previous days hills!!."
We finally reached the next town and we found a restaurant which served good breakfasts, made up your sandwiches and fed us lots of cold water, it was freezing - this was all for $15. The day was getting better. Finally we arrived at our accommodation and it was wonderfull. It was a 3 bedroom house in 7 acres of land, with its own large pond. The owner was in Toronto, so we decided to stay for 2 nights, all for $75 per night. The main bedroom had an ensuite witha bath the size of a swimming pool and a huge kingsize bed - HEAVEN!!! Got some food and wine in and relaxed!!
2nd August:
"Had a long lie in our vary large bed. Dave got up and made tea and yhen we watched TV and had breakfast in bed".
3rd August:
"The weather feels like it is getting hotter".
4th August:
"Got to our accommodation to find it was double booked!!!. Had a chat with the manager and he found us another room. We had a chat about the price amd he knocked $10 off and gave us 2 beers on the house!".
NEXT