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PAGE 4 OF HOLIDAY DIARY

PAGE INDEX OF TOUR IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
Click Page 1 for our journey to  Vancouver, Victoria, Campbell River, Port Hardy, Inland Passage, Prince Rupert, Telkwa and Prince George in British Columbia

Click Page 2 to continue on through Jasper, Lake Louise, Kaslo, Vernon, back to Vancouver, onto Québec City, Rimousky and Parc de Gaspesie in Québec

Click Page 3 to pass on to Percé, down to New Brunswick, Bathurst, P.E.I., Charlottown, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island, Cabot Trail, Cheticamp, Baddeck, Halifax, Peggy's Cove Lunnenberg and Shelbourne

Click Page 4 for Yarmouth in Nova Scotia, CAT ferry to Bar Harbour in Maine, Acadian National Park, Portland, Toronto in Ontario, San Francisco in California thence home to Nambucca Heads via Sydney Australia.

SUNDAY 27TH JUNE
We attended the service in the local Shelbourne church this morning. By sheer coincidence, thus far we have always attended services in large churches or cathedrals since arriving in Canada. Today was more to our liking however. A small white clapboard church (like most of the churches throughout Canada) with only room for 150 people. Unpretentious but very neat with clean lines. Even the small cemetery at the front door was ultra neat and tidy. They still have plenty of space if you're interested.

After Mass we continued down the coast to Yarmouth at the southern tip of Nova Scotia. From here we are catching the Cat ferry to Bar Harbour, some 230 kms away in Maine U.S.A. This will be the ninth ferry trip for our cars and ourselves.

"The Cat" is an incredible vessel; the largest catamaran in North America.
It carries 900 passengers and 248 cars. "The Cat" travels at up to 80 kilometres per hour and swishes the equivalent of two swimming pools worth of saltwater out of its two turbines every SECOND! Surprisingly this vessel is an Australian designed and constructed piece of machinery from top to bottom. This even includes all the liferaft canisters, the control software and even the video safety messages... (great to hear an Australian accent again). It's a very fancy bit of gear which cost the Canadians about CAN$70 million. You can see what it looks like at

http://bayferries.com

The Tasmanian company which builds these vessels has been enormously successful in selling them around the world. If you'd like to see more of these vessels and read about their operation you can visit their own site which is listed below.

http://www.incat.com

After a three hour passage we were delivered to Bar Harbour in the U.S.A.

Brian has often complained about the high incidence of 50 kph speed zones in Canada (in places where such a low speed seemed unjustified). Taking the road out of Bar harbour towards our motel really got him going however. "Bloody 30 kilometres per hour" he said, "this is REALLY bloody ridiculous!"

Lynn the peacemaker said, "it's not far to go, so just obey the rules. You don't want to be booked this late in our holiday.

"Well I've got a heap of cars behind me" said Brian "if we were home in Australia they'd all be honking and flashing their lights."

"Well they're obviously used to the local rules and more polite", said Lynn. Just settle down and don't worry about it."

Several hours later it suddenly dawned on Brian that the signs saying 30 referred to "miles" and not "kilometres". Of course.... we're now in the U.S.A. We both felt pretty stupid and those American drivers behind us most certainly were extremely tolerant of our 30 kilometre speed through the suburbs of Bar Harbour! The only comfort was that as we're driving a Québec registered automobile the blame was no doubt leveled at the innocent Québecois!

We were expecting a motel which was a little bit tired and frayed around the edges but built for our pocket (wow, when you turn those greenbacks into Aussie prices you get a rude shock). Anyhow, we were delighted with the quality of our motel which was exceptionally spick and span without being elaborate.

Want to look? Ok, here it is:-

http://www.acadia.net/w95005/index.html

MONDAY 28TH JUNE
Awoke to a bright sunny day. Took a shower, dried then looked out again to discover a smothering fog blanketing everything. So much for today's planned site-seeing! Gee the weather can change quickly around here.

On the way to the internet cafe we passed a Dexter shoe factory outlet with amazing bargains we couldn't resist. The baggage implications of this serious breakdown in our resolve will no doubt come home to roost in a week's time when we start boarding multiple air flights.

Once again there are people lined up waiting for this computer. It really
piles on the pressure. That's why some of our instalments have not been
checked for typo's or spelling errors. Please forgive us for not checking
through the text before sending our messages out.

PREAMBLE
Many thanks for e-mail messages from Mum, Luke, Anna, Elliott Family,
Hayward Family, and the Peacock Family.

You Nambucca folks must be joking suggesting we save some money for the opening of the new Woolworths supermarket in Nambucca Heads next week. We've even worn the printing off our Visa cards so there'll certainly be nothing left for frivolous purchases like groceries!!!

Here's a few things we forgot to mention in the last Newsletter instalment.

Believe it or not, McDonalds have Lobster Burgers on their menus in Nova
Scotia, Canada and also in the U.S. state of Maine. The lobster is really pervasive in all walks of life in the Canadian Maritime provinces and the USA New England states.

It was just a joke of course but the other day we saw a very authentic
looking mustard yellow and black highway sign beside the road with a black lobster silhouette and the words....

"Warning - Lobster Crossing"

Another humorous moment was when we were on the CAT Ferry. We'd
listened to a safety drill announcement along the following lines:-

"If you hear 5 bells, go to your muster station. If you hear 11 bells, go to
your life raft station. In the unlikely event that you hear continual bells,
stand by to board the lifeboats, etc etc"

An hour later, Lynn gabbed Brian's knee in a vice-like grip and said, "can
you hear that sound? Is that what they meant by continuous bells?"

Brian listened and pondered for a few moments. "Nope, that sounds more like a poker machine jackpot. Look, there's the guy over there starting to scoop the coins into his cap as they cascade into the tray!"

MONDAY 28TH JUNE (continued)
The fog was still pretty thick after leaving the internet provider's premises but as this was our last day in Bar Harbour we decided to go ahead with our planned tour of the Cadillac Mountain and Acadian National Park.

Fortunately the fog was lighter and although we couldn't appreciate all of the beauty we could still appreciate most of the attractions of this glorious Park which was a personal donation to the State by the late President Roosevelt.

There is one beach in the park which was considered really special because it had a sandy beach!!!!! It looked like a really typical beach to us. Except in one important respect.... a sign warned that swimming was unwise because the water temperature never gets above 12 degrees celsius (wow)!

Later that night we decided to treat ourselves to our last lobster dinner. We chose an unfortunate restaurant for the purpose. This joint should be  commissioned to write a book entitled "99 ways to ruin a Lobster". We won't go into details. It was just terrible.

TUESDAY 29 JUNE
We left Bar Harbour (Maine) in yet another fog and made our way along a
tortuously slow coastal road towards our destination in the city of Portland. The traffic is much thicker since arriving in the U.S. and Brian has to be a lot more vigilant. Too much rubber necking on his part and we're bound to prang.

We stopped for a look around a typical New England harbour village called
Camden. It was indeed cute but there were tourists everywhere, no parking to be found, rows of tour buses etc etc.

As we were about to leave we spotted a tiny Indian Restaurant (pretty rare
in North America) where they had a lunch time Special on the menu for $4.95 (that's also pretty rare in Australia). We wouldn't normally eat Indian food for lunch (a bit too robust for us) but we were craving something spicy and exotic so we decided to make an exception. Let's treat it like having lunch with Anna and Anton, we thought. And let's hope it's better than what they've been  getting, according to their e-mails.

Well we couldn't understand a single word the little Indian man was saying... maybe it was Indian with a New England accent. Nevertheless we allowed him to "guide" us to a couple of menu items which actually turned out to be a tiny vegetable curry, a small lamb curry, sambals and rice. We shared them and they were surprisingly very good. Well worth US$4.95.

We arrived in Portland (Maine, not Oregon) and found our hotel without  difficulty. Here it is:-

http://www.innbythebay.com

Our room here is sort of a suite apparently and it was the size of a small  football stadium. This is fortunate as we have a lot of sorting out to do here before we leave town.

Even though it was a only a small meal our lunch curry was still sitting
pretty heavy so we improvised a tossed salad from out of our Esky. For New Zealand readers that's a "Chilly Bin" or for American readers we mean a "Cooler". Yes, we carried one with us on this trip and have done so on all previous overseas trips. We like to think ours is the most travelled Esky (Chilly Bin, Cooler) in the whole world. It sure makes it possible to have simple roadside picnics or hotel room picnics as a rest from interminable cafe and restaurant meals. That doesn't mean that we don't sometimes curse the damn thing but provided you're travelling around in your own car having such a piece of equipment has more advantages than disadvantages on long, partially self-catered holiday tours.

We spent a number of hours trying to shrink our baggage. Somehow we're now up to five check through pieces plus a small backpack. This is two more than we left with and it's a worry because tomorrow night we have to board an airline flight. Five pieces is three more than we're strictly allowed. We're sure to be way overweight too (bagwise we mean..... actually "everywise" when you come right down to the full facts of life).

WEDNESDAY 30TH JUNE
Based on the Weather News and a first hand account of heatwave from a friend near San Francisco we called our Frisco hotel and found out that this little boutique hotel on Union Square did NOT have air-conditioning. With Frisco temperatures running up to 107 degrees F, Brian was in a panic. He hates really hot weather. A half dozen phone calls later he had a different hotel lined up, one with air-conditioning but a pretty terrible location out by the Airport. Things are complicated because we'll be there on Independence Day and the city is pretty booked out.

Brian then spent several hours going through all our receipts for Canadian
purchases and organising them in a way which allows us to claim a rebate of the GST we paid on certain types of transactions. This is a whole story in itself which we won't try to cover here. Lynn got sick of waiting and took
herself off to see a Picasso Exhibition which was showing in a nearby
museum. Brian persevered with the paperwork and in the process it was
impossible not to notice how many Diners Club and VisaCard vouchers we have in our possession. Folks, the situation is absolutely horrifying. Bankruptcy is staring us in the face. Any chance of our friends doing a quick "whip-around" with your hat (gold coins and folding money donations only please).

We decided to go on a mini adventure called "Chilling and Unusual Theatre Cruises". This part of the Maine coast was notorious for Pirates and Privateers. Our adventure will comprise a cruise on a small boat accompanied by a costumed actor who will recite poems and narrate blood curdling tales of pirates, shipwrecks and bloody murders. We found out about it on the Web before we left Australia.

We called the company, paid by Visa and got directions to the boat. We were informed that it was just a 20 minute drive down the coast from Portland to a village called Kennebunkport. Two hours later we still hadn't found the place. If we hadn't shelled out US$58 for the cruise we would have turned back. Typically, as cruise departure time got closer and the the stress grew larger, some serious arguments broke out twixt the Buick's driver and the Buick's navigator. Nothing serious mind you.... nothing which couldn't be patched up with a bottle of antiseptic, a few stitches and a half dozen Band-Aids.

We eventually made it and joined only a dozen other passengers on this
theatre cruise aboard a converted lobster boat. The costumed actress was
great, the sun shone, the sea was almost dead smooth, the Skipper had a
head full of the corniest jokes and we enjoyed the whole thing a great deal.

After the theatre cruise we walked around Kennebunkport. It was a perfect
stereotypical quaint New England fishing village. Brian took a huge number of photos and hopefully some will be great (we're up to 24 rolls now would you believe).

During the course of our cruise we sailed quite close to the George Bush family's 40 room waterfront holiday home. We were surprised that neither George senior or junior threw us a line or even deigned to wave.

Returning to Portland we searched for a nice place to eat dinner. Can't give you the details because Lynn says there's been too much food talk in these Newsletters. We'll just have to finish this day by saying that we bid the waitress "domo arigato and sayonara" as we finally called it a day and left to make our way home (whoops).

Lynn performed a miracle of packing. She managed to empty the car's trunk, back seat and glove compartment into our bags in preparation for tomorrow night's flight.

THURSDAY 1ST JULY
Happy Canada Day. Actually we have a long drive up to Québec City in Canada today in order to turn in our Avis Buick. It will be a long day and we have to catch a flight when we get there. So we got up at the crack of dawn feeling extremely seedy indeed.

As we headed west from Portland the traffic got much lighter and it was great to be back amidst lakes and pine forests again. We were lucky to come upon our second moose of the trip.... a small female this time. Unfortunately we still couldn't get a reasonable photo.

We stopped at a roadside cafe out in the sticks. Chatting with the bubbly waitress we were talked into ordering a bacon pancake. At only $2.10 a pop Brian said he didn't think it would be enough for him. "It WILL be enough, said Lynn, "just behave yourself"

Well friends, the $2.10 pancake was 12 inches in diameter and contained four rashes of bacon. This pancake was fully an inch thick.... and consequently semi uncooked inside. Having said that, it was rather tasty on the edges and notwithstanding a huge dose of indigestion, it was excellent value for money!

We crossed into Canada, then back into the USA and back again to Canada. It was all to do with us getting a rebate of our Canadian GST payments but it confused the Frontier Guards and made them suspicious at first. We'll explain it all at another time.... nothing illegal, just unconventional.

Arriving back in Québec City we turned in our Buick having added 5,260 kms to the odometer. This means we drove a total of 9,860 kms in North America, a figure we shall henceforth finesse up to a round number like 10,000 kms.

No trouble checking in our obscenely grotesque array of luggage. Brian went into a bit of a routine with the check-in clerk who then failed to look at the scales. Our flight to Toronto on the Great Lakes was uneventful and we were glad to hit the hay after a very long and tiring day.

FRIDAY 2ND JULY
Another early start but we made a 7.00am shuttle bus and eventually boarded our flight from Toronto to San Francisco.

We arrived in San Francisco five hours later to be greeted by blizzard winds and a temperature which had fallen to 51 degrees F. "Just as well you changed our hotel for us" offered Lynn, "that was a stroke of pure genius!" Brian hung his head and said nothing.

A jet flys over our hotel every 30 seconds, the freeway is just outside, factories fill most of the nearby streets, the wind is freezing but at least our room has excellent cooling facilities! We'd been told that cooling is rarely needed in breezy San Francisco and that's why most of the hotels don't have it. We now understand what they mean!

SATURDAY 3RD JULY
Got a strange e-mail from Anna in which she claimed to have been married to Anton by some cave dwelling Indian guru on the side of a mountain somewhere in Northern India. At the end of the message she owned up to not being actually married but being genuinely engaged. We think this is a serious announcement and we are very happy for them both. If you want to send them a message you can do so to Anna and Anton's e-mail addresses which appear  directly below:-

Anna's annatonkin@hotmail.com     Anton's a_juodvalkis@hotmail.com

Anton and Anna in March 99 on
night of departure from Sydney

We travelled by bus into downtown.... only $1.10 for a 40 minute ride. We then caught a rapid transit BART train out to a city called Concord (the locals pronounce it "Concd" without the "or" sound we use when pronouncing its  Sydney namesake. We paid just $3.85 for a journey of about 70 to 80 kms.  Good value, eh?

We met a couple who Brian is slightly related to and had a very enjoyable  luncheon and get-together which lasted all afternoon. Our friends insisted on running us all the way back to our hotel in South San Francisco and on the way we went over the Bay Bridge, along the Embarcadero and past Fisherman's Wharf.

As this is Independence Day Weekend there were heaps of tourists down by the wharves looking at a number of tall ships which had arrived in port for the celebrations.

As we slowly inched along past the wharfs in thick traffic we were suddenly surrounded by a flamboyant marching band from one of the ships which stopped all traffic whilst it did a series of very showy numbers right there beside our car. What a lucky break. By the way, if you've never seen a guy doing somersaults whilst wearing a big bass drum you aint seen nothing!

SUNDAY 4TH JULY
Went down to breakfast and discovered that we'd lost our Vegemite! Horror of horrors, we must have left it on the table yesterday. None of the hotel staff could find the bottle... probably thrown out. This is the most serious mistake of our entire holiday... thank goodness it didn't happen earlier.

For the benefit of uninitiated non-Australian readers, "Vegemite" is a uniquely Australian breakfast spread which has the appearance and consistency of axle grease and has a flavour like 50% yeast and 50% salt. Definitely an acquired taste which you must be trained to from birth!

Independence Day in the USA. We won't be able to come downtown for  tonight's fireworks because our flight home leaves at 11pm. Nevertheless we are presently down by the Embarcadero and after we sign off we'll probably have some lunch followed by a look around Union Square.

Our holiday is virtually ended and we will be home in Australia by Tuesday afternoon. We vote our holiday a success and it's been really beaut to have you all along with us. We really do feel that we've had the benefit of your company and your frequent e-mails have helped mitigate our occasional bouts of melancholy and homesickness.

Will e-mail a wrap-up and some photographs of the trip after we get home.

SUNDAY 4TH JULY
After completing the 13th instalment on a computer in downtown San Francisco, we decided to spend our afternoon in Chinatown. San Francisco's version seems somewhat larger than Sydney's Chinatown and seems to be a greater tourist attraction than the Sydney version. The crowd was pretty thick on this day, perhaps because it was both a Sunday and American Independence Day as well. The usual range of restaurants and Chinese style emporiums ran up and down the streets and the atmosphere was further enlivened by the passing of cable cars which drag tons of tourists up the steep hill to Chinatown from the financial district below. Fortunately the freezing winds were not in evidence on this day and we enjoyed a nice lunch followed by a relaxing stroll around the nearby streets.

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