For our vacation this year, we decided to take a week-long road trip to Vancouver to visit our friend and indulge in the food! We chose to drive the highway between Vancouver and Calgary, which was a drive shy of 1000 km and 11 hours driving time, and only made a stop for gas as [...]
Category Archive for 'travels'
I’ve had a wonderful opportunity to spend the last three months living and working in Melbourne. Melbourne started as an unknown place to me, going from “Where is that place and is it real?” to “I can imagine myself living here.” Before we jump into the best parts of the Melbourne experience, here is a [...]
Melburnians like grammatical laziness
Posted in travels on Jun 26th, 2010
The barista quickly slurs: “Howyagoinalright?” My face quickly twitches into a “Huh?”, as I draw a blank face. Panic! Did a lapse of time just occur? Did I completely zone out for a second? I missed a key word that would make that sentence comprehendible and complete! Was the question “How are you going somewhere”? [...]
To Melburnians, Sydney and their citizens Sydneysiders are the Americans of Australia. Naturally, this amuses me, as we Canadians refer to the USA as Canada’s underwear. Michelle and I arrived a Saturday morning to rainy Sydney, where we were immediately wooed by an expensive $15 AUD train ticket from the airport to the city. By [...]
After spending two months in Melbourne, I figure I’d get out and see the rest of Australia. Michelle and I (along with my other fellow imported workers Lindsay and Ruby) went to Cairns in Queensland. Cairns (Australians pronounce this as “Caans”… the ‘i’ and ‘r’ is silent) is a little tropical wonder in Australia. Its [...]
Paul (Australian coworker/parma affectionado) – By definition, it can’t be a good pub if there is no decent parma. And having a great Parma is serious business. Better known as a Chicken Parmigiana in North America, Parmas are big hit amongst pub eaters in Melbourne. Given Melbourne’s heavy Italian inspiration and roots, a Chicken Parmigiana [...]
For the first weekend in Australia, we (being the North American imports working in Australia) decided to head north east to Yarra Valley. We opted to go on the Epicurean tour, consisting of food and wine pairings in addition to the winery visits – while it was steep at $180 per person, it was worth [...]
If you saw a picture of something you’d immediately recognize as Melbourne, what would you expect the picture to be of? If you asked this question for other cities, the responses would be fairly quick and unsurprising. When you ask Melbourians this same question, it yields a whole spectrum of answers, including: The skyline The [...]
I arrived very jet lagged to Melbourne on Saturday, March 13th after spending 18.5 hours over four flights from Calgary! I’ve been fortunate to get an once-in-a-lifetime three month work assignment in the city, which is a mixed blessing since while I get to travel for work, I’m also going into another busy season and [...]