The Canadian - Winnipeg, Canada
Winnipeg, Canada
Again it has been a very busy 10 days since I last wrote in my blog. We have travelled to many different places, Portsmouth New Hampshire and Portland Maine, were both lovely seaside towns, with great restaurants and sea views. The people are always friendly and helpful. We love pulling into the local diners in small country towns for breakfast or lunch, you just never know what you might find. We have tried where ever possible to stay off the beaten track and stick to the smaller country roads to experience as much of the country as we can. It has not let us down, we have seen some beautiful fall colours, gorgeous homes in magnificent settings, lovely architecture in the towns we have visited and met some interesting and varied people along the way. We travelled to the White Mountain area and stayed in an historic mountain in, called the White Mountain Hotel. It was absolutely lovely, the food was great, the other people staying there were mostly return visitors who went there on a regular basis. It had a very picturesque golf course, and stood majestically at the foot of Mount Washington, I have attached a photo, but it does not do it justice. We then headed west back into New York state and spent 2 nights in Watertown just east of Lake Ontario. We used these 2 days to just relax from driving, catch the movie "Last Vegas", which we loved, couldn't stop laughing it was so funny. Did a spot of shopping and just generally chilled out. Caught our first really cold day and awoke to a heavy frost on the morning we were heading for Niagara Falls. Headed to the falls (about a 4 hour trip), arrived and went up to our suite (we had booked The Niagara Suite), a treat for ourselves for our 10th wedding anniversary. Our suite overlooked both the American Falls and the Horseshoe Falls. The view was spectacular and we could not have wished for a better vantage point, have attached some photos from our room. We had dinner that night in the Terrapin restaurant overlooking the falls, it was a lovely end to the day. On Tuesday Nov 5th we headed to Niagara on the Lake, a beautifully picturesque town about half an hour from Niagara Falls, it is surrounded by vineyards & wineries and the town is full of little boutiques etc. We drove around the town which boarders Lake Ontario and drooled over the mansions that are built there, magnificent is all I can say...........no other way to describe them. That evening we headed back into the USA to drop our hire car off and pick up our transfer to Toronto Station to catch The Canadian. We had a lovely white stretch limousine, that would have accommodated 10 comfortably. It was a very pleasant 2 hour trip to Toronto, just kicking back and relaxing. We boarded the train around 9:30pm that evening. The train is somewhat a disappointment, our room is very, very small. We have our own toilet, wash basin, 2 seats that can be moved around and these fold down and are slid under the bunks when they are folded down. The bunks are comfortable and we are not having too much trouble sleeping. After the first night we decided that we would not have the bunks put away during the day, as we do not enjoy sitting in the room, instead the bunks stay made up (we can take a nap if we wish), and the rest of the time we spend either in the dome observation car, the bullet lounge/bar or the dining car, a much more civilised arrangement. On saying the above, the trip itself has been wonderful. I am at present lying in my bunk typing this, it is Thursday night Nov 7. Yesterday we saw our first snow and i have attached some photos, it was really lovely and we were very surprised to see the snow well before making the Rockies tomorrow. Today we stopped in Winnipeg and did a 3 hour guided tour of the city, it was interesting and a very enjoyable way to spend the stopover as Via Rail change over staff etc here. This afternoon, we have been crossing the prairie country, lots of cereal cropping, hay, cattle etc and very flat, bit never the less interesting to see the differences as we travel across Canada from east to west.