Week XXXV

USA – New York, New York

New Yorker are ‘children of excitement’ as I will call them from now on. They like morning TV, stars, talking about stars, police with machine guns (at least they don’t mind them), fast food and flags – especially stars and stripes (what better way to describe the flag?). Despite the feeling that half of the cars were taxis and the other half emergency vehicles the city felt quite clean and save. New York is quite a big apple with over eight million people. In some parts it seems like most of them are tourists and the rest policemen – but honestly, NY was a great experience without any troubles.

There are thousand things to see: Central park, Times square, Staten Island, the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn bridge, Rockefeller centre, Empire State building, Flatiron building, Guggenheim museum (among hundred others), Chrysler building, Battery park, Grand Central station, the whole financial district and many more..
I tried the NY hot dog, but in my opinion it tastes kind of artificial and can’t possibly compete with one from Vienna. The soft ice cream and pretzels were surprisingly good though.

But risk a look at: Times square, Manhatten as seen from the Staten Island ferry, Chrysler and Empire State building from the top of the Rockefeller centre at night time, and Brooklyn bridge – over to Brooklyn – just before sunset..

After a week I crossed the Atlantic ocean over to Ireland, Dublin where I stayed till yesterday.

Week XXXIII – XXXIV

Canada – Ontario

Canada was awesome or – to revive the British English – brilliant!
Unfortunately, my backpack is a little too small to take one of those black bears or some moose with me. After Ottawa, Toronto and a trip to the Niagara Falls, I took a 12 hour bus drive to my new location.

I present: Ottawa church, mounties in front of the parliament, Ottawa locks, Niagara Jump and the best shrimp and chicken burrito ever.

Location update: New York, New York.

Week XXXI – XXXII

Canada – Ontario and Quebéc

Toronto is the biggest city in Canada with something like 5.5 million people all around the area. I stayed right in downtown, with lots of people, skyscrapers and a nice little lake nearby. Although, it is the smallest of the five big lakes, lake Ontario would cover about half of Switzerland. Except of one really bad thunderstorm during an hot evening there weren’t any annoyances. I went around markets, Chinatown, the university, docks, parks and museums. On my last day in Toronto, I went to practice a little climbing and jumping in a Parkour training court, called the Monkey Vault, I found somewhere north-west in the city.
On the next day, I was off to Montréal. Quebéc seemed to me mostly French, so it was quite different for me. Somebody told me that it’s far less French than it used to be. Mainly, because English is just the language when you want to make it in any job here, but I’m not so sure. It seems like the people were proud of their strange (as told by several French guys) quebecian French.

So that was around Toronto with the CN tower and Yonge-Dundas square. And around Montreal, Biosphere on Île Sainte Hélèn and the skyline from mount Royal.

After my stop in Montréal I took the bus back to Ontario, where I’m currently stopping in the country’s capital named (who knows?) Ottawa.