Ottawa

On Sunday, we found a cache in Toronto, then headed to Ottawa. We took the scenic route. The speed limit was 80 km/h, but we soon found that they were kidding.

We stayed in a fabulous hotel, the Arosa Hotel & Suites, about 3 blocks from Pam & John's and just a block from a street with lots of shops. The hotel was formerly an apartment building and we were in a one bedroom apartment. Want to see what it was like?

This is the living room.


This is from the living room. The kitchen is behind Pam and the bedroom is behind Rich.



Pam and John met us for dinner that evening. We went to a Chinese place just up the street. We scoped out the bakery for breakfast the next morning, the pharmacy for headache pills, and the candy shop. Here is dinner. It was really good.



I'll make a new post for the next day's adventure.

Niagara Falls and Toronto, with pictures

Here we go!!



The Falls look just like they do on TV. And they are big. What's really cool is the that the road follows the river before it falls, so when you drive by, you can sort of get the feeling of going over.



Two sets of falls for the price of one!


We found a geocache at the Holocaust Memorial in a neighborhood in Toronto. This central obelisk was surrounded by walls carved with names. It was very moving. We had other caches on our list for the morning, including one puzzle I had solved back in Texas, but water was falling from the sky, so we moved on.



This is the house my Dad and Mom lived in when they lived in Toronto. It's now a yoga studio. In the late 50's, it was broken up into apartments, and they lived in the upper left part of the building. Just a block away are high rises.



Water fell on us most of the day as we drove on Hwy 7 to Ottawa. The speed limit was 80 km/h, but I think that really means at least 95. This was confirmed by Pam and John when we took a tour of Ottawa after dinner tonight. But you'll have to wait for tomorrow's post to hear about that.

Niagara Falls (no pictures yet!)

Yesterday we crossed the border and saw The Falls. The cost of parking offended my sensibilities, and I've seen The Falls before, so I dropped the boys off and drove around in circles until we met up at the police station. I'll post pictures tomorrow.

The boys described The Falls as "neat" and "a lot of water" and "really good" and "wet." They said it felt like a rainstorm when the mist came around them. Richard saw a show on TV where they said the high rise hotels have caused the wind patterns to change so there is lots of mist around. I drove around the touristy section of the hill for fun while waiting, and there are lots of high rise hotels!

Then we were off to our friends in Toronto. We've had a wonderful time taking advantage of their hospitality. The boys and I went to a park with a playground and a waterpark. We didn't change out of jeans before we went, so they got pretty much in pretty much no time at all. The sun was bright enough to bring color to our faces, but the air was cold enough to need to change out of wet clothes.

Today we are off to see Toronto, do some caching, then on to Ottawa to see Pam and John.

Total Drama Airplane

I really hate to start out a trip blog on a downer, but...

"Why does anyone fly United" - quote from US Airways nice lady in Rochester.

We were diverted from Dulles to Harrisburg, PA (Hi Deb!) due to a thunderstorm over Washington. We got refueled and were back in the air within a half hour. Then got to Dulles late, so the connection to Albany had already left. So we rebooked to Albany, found a hotel, and slept. (Hi Jane!) This was about 2am, got up about 5am to catch a taxi back to the airport.

The rescheduled flight, which we were lucky to get on, was United to Rochester, then US Airways to Albany. Go look at a map.

You know how you think you've seen people before, but they aren't wearing the same clothes, so you don't know if you really recognize them? Not a problem on this flight. About 6 of our fellow passengers were still in yesterday's clothes.

Got to Rochester with no problems. Great airport. They had a playground for the kids, even, right next to the gate. Problem was, the idiot the night before had printed a "needs paper ticket" ticket for the US Airways flight, so they couldn't let us on the plane. With 10 minutes before takeoff, the nice man and lady from US Airways called United to get a number so they could let us on the plane. United didn't want to give them that number without doing "research." We all protested. I got on the phone and gave them what-for. He accused me of yelling at him. I almost said, "if you think this is yelling, you should wait until you make me miss the flight." At that point, the nice lady got on the phone and gave them what-for. At the same time, the nice man took our boarding passes from the last flight and figured out the number. He said "go" before he had finished the transaction. I like those people. I'm going to write a letter to US Airways about them. And another letter to United explaining the great "opportunity" to increase customer relations. "Opportunity" is code for "big problem" in the corporate world.

Ok, then it turns out that the plane to Albany stops in Buffalo. Look at the map again. Yes, it's about a 20 minute flight from Rochester to Buffalo. Faster to drive, but ok, they can stop there, it's a nice day and I'm going to make it to my 7:30pm meeting in Yorktown Heights. Problem is, the copilot for the second leg is over his hours for the week. So the nice pilot from the last flight has agreed to fly us to Albany. Pilots? Check. Passengers? Check. Paperwork? Uh oh. We sat on the ground for another hour waiting for paperwork. I should have got emotional on them like I did with the United guy. The good news is the kids got to go up to the cockpit like we did when we were kids. They both think it looks a lot like the flight simulator video game on Granny's computer.

Made it to Albany. You think the drama's over, do you? Not yet. We had called the car rental place to make sure we'd have the minivan the next day. They had then changed our reservation and the new price was $600 higher. I booted up my laptop and showed her the original reservation (we didn't have a print copy because the printer died just before we left) and everything turned out ok.

Oh, and the bags made it to Albany before us, on the early direct Dulles-Albany flight, the one that the nice man in Rochester said that United had booked us on without telling us. sigh.

And we made it to Yorktown Heights without falling asleep at the wheel. And I made my meeting. And the last day of the conference. And my session went well. And we slept. Oh, how we slept.

We are now back outside of Buffalo and I need to get the kids up so we can go see Niagara Falls. I'll take pictures for you. No more drama.

Lots of drama getting here, but we are now officially on vacation, fed, gassed up, and on the way to Niagara Falls.

First trip of Summer 2009

We've got a great trip planned out for the next couple of weeks. I'll be at QPRC in Yorktown Heights, then we're going to drive a circle around through Niagara Falls, Toronto, Ottawa, and somewhere out eastern Canada, and back through all the New England states to Albany for an ISMI meeting.

We'll get to see friends, icebergs, and family.

I haven't figured out how to post pictures to this blog from my cell phone yet. If following the instructions doesn't work, then I'm pretty much lost. But I'll try to upload every night or two. Do they have internet in the wilds of Quebec?

Testing!

Richard's meme

Richard finally read this blog. It was late and we were having fun finding his pics on the web...

Rules:

1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page of results, pick one image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic picture of the answers.

Questions:

1. What’s your first name?
2. What is your favorite food right now?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. What is your favorite drink?
7. What is your dream vacation?
8. What is your favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. What is one word that describes you?
12. What is your flickr name?

Richard's:

Pinewood Derby

Derby day yesterday! Andrew came in 3rd in his Wolf class with "Candy Apple." Connor came in 6th in the sibling race with "The Brick."

The boys show off their cars!


Here is one of Andrew's races. His car is in the far lane.

Video test

I got a new Flip Video for Christmas...just testing...