New York

Pictures L-R: view from the Empire State Building at night, Sculpture from the WTC foyer now burnt and damaged, Statue of Liberty, M&Ms world, Central Park, missing person tiles placed after 9/11, Wicked on Broadway,

New York

The last stop for the trip was New York where we spent 4 days. It is a really interesting city and I really enjoyed it. We did a hop on-hop off bus tour, went to the Statue of Liberty, up the Empire State building and looked in some of New York's famous shops. We went to a Broadway show called ''Wicked'' which was fantastic.

One highight was an audio tour of the World Trade Centre site (below). It was really sad and I felt I had never appreciated the size of the tragedy until I saw the site and New York City.

Central Park

Walking towards Times Square

Statue of Liberty

"The Cottage"

Our last stop in Canada was to visit Jeff, Lauren and baby Joe (friends from uni) at their cottage in Ottawa. The cottage is right on a lake which was frozen and had an ice skating rink made on it! We spent hours preparing the rink for a big day of skating and fun but it rained, snowed 1-2 foot and then semi melted! Jeff took us to a couple of local dairy farms where we saw cows in a tie up barn and cows out in the snow. Overall it was a great experience of living in the snow - where we had to dig out cars and build fires on frozen lakes!
Pictures L to R: Joe, cows, Joe asleep in his snow sled, Corinne, Matt, more cows, Kay, cows and Ben at the farm.

The Cottage with Jeff & Lauren

Here I am on the lake in an oversized snow suit! Looking pretty good and about 3 times the size!

Downy and Ben made a campfire on the frozen lake! It was pretty cool that we were all sitting around a fire on top of a lake and the fire didn't melt a hole in the ice.

The ice hockey game, Downy dressed up but not actually wearing skates!

The cottage at night.

Quebec City

We spent 2 days in Quebec city which I loved. The old town is surrounded by walls and is really pretty. There were lots of nice little shops with lights and christmas decorations (even though christmas was over a month ago). We basically just walked around the town and drank lots of hot chocolate! It reminded me of Salzburg in Austria.

Downy walking in the snow, once the rain stopped and it snowed properly it wasn't all that cold!

Montreal

We spent 2 days in Montreal - it was pretty cold (-10) walking around. The old town was really pretty, everything was covered in snow which seemed so strange in a city.

The river waterfront below the old town in Montreal

We just missed this ice festival which was on the waterfront in Montreal.

Skiing at Whistler

We spent 7 days at Whistler-Blackcomb, the biggest ski resort in North America. I had wanted to ski overseas for my 30th birthday and I was pretty happy with our choice. At Whistler you have 2 entire ski mountains to explore which are both massive. The runs are really long and wide and it is not crowded. Sometimes we would stop to look around and would be the only people on the run! It will be really hard to ski in Australia after this experience. The longest run we did was the Peak to Creek which was about 5km and I had a big crash at the start.
It was pretty cold, -14 on the first day skiing, we had to go home we were soooo cold. After that we wore toe warmers and double thermals!

Benny on the BBQ - probably about -15 degrees outside! We had an apartment for the week with a private outdoor hot tub! It was great. For my birthday we had champagne in the hot tub, followed by dinner out then back to the hot tub where we all fell asleep! (so much for the big night)

Whistler & Vancouver

Los Angeles

We spent 2 full days in Los Angeles, staying at Venice Beach. On day 1 we went to Universal Studios which was really good and we had no queues like at Disney world as it was empty. There were a few good rides and demonstrations of different movie making techniques. We went on a tour around the whole place but didn't see any famous actors. We saw Wisteria Lane from Desperate Housewives, King Kong, Jaws, etc.

Crash scene from War of the Worlds with a real 747 plane in pieces.

On the second day I was sick but the others went on a tour around Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive. The famous sign below.

More of Yosemite

These are Giant Sequoias, massive trees as you can see by how small I look!

Rocky Point Cabin where we stayed

There are bear warnings everywhere and you have to be careful with food. A bear had broken into a house near ours and eaten all the food in the fridge! It is important not to attract bears near houses etc as if they threaten humans they will unfortunately be killed.

Yosemite National Park

We drove from Las Vegas to Yosemite National park in California. It was a nice change from all the cities we had been in. We had our own house in a valley overlooking a meadow covered in snow. The picture below is of El Capitan, one of the 2 high peaks in Yosemite, the other is Half Dome, which are both famous for rockclimbing. The views and surroundings were unlike anything we had seen before. We saw deer, coyotes and a bob cat, along with many birds. We didn't see a bear but saw footprints near the garbage dump bin.

Mirror Lake - we went on a 2hr walk in the snow, some snow boots would have helped!

Las Vegas

We drove from San Diego to Las Vegas. It was a bizarre drive through the desert and then you arrive in a city of casinos in the middle of nowhere! We stayed at South Point Casino which is out of town and I would definately recommend staying on the strip in future. The strip is massive, 6 miles long and everything is very spread out. The casinos are unbelievable, especially the Bellagio, The Venetian, Caesar's Palace and The Luxor to name a few.

Outside the Bellagio - we went to see a Cirque Du Soleil show called "O" which has been showing in Vegas for 10 years. It was amazing - it is all done on or in water and the acrobats dive and do moves that are pretty scary. At night the Bellagio has an unbelievable water show to music which plays every half hour to different music.

Inside Caesar's Palace - the roof is actually a painting but looks so real. The Venetian Casino also had a painted roof. There is no sunlight inside so you never know what time it is!

Out on the strip - the fake statue of Liberty at "New York New York", with the roller coaster (Downy, Ben & Corinne went on) behind.

View from the car while driving through the desert to Las vegas.