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In our own backyard

We spent this long weekend only about 4 hours from home. Maybe some of these sights will tempt some of our international friends to come visit us and our beautiful Rocky Mountains!

The Baker parents had a condo in Banff for the week, so we spent our first 2 nights with them, waking up in the fresh mountain air. I’ve been wanting to cycle the Legacy Trail from Banff to Canmore, so we set off, pedalling about 25kms to Canmore, stopping for a mocha, then 25kms back. I was riding my mom’s Canadian Tire cheapy tank of a bike, but my dad’s bike had broken down earlier in the week so Rob had to rent one. He was obviously very disappointed in his road bike, which he aptly named ‘Flash’.  I’m pretty sure he pedalled 1 revolution to my 20!
On Sunday we drove to Emerald Lake in Yoho National Park to start a backcountry camping trip. According to RobO’s Rules of Order he will do 1 ‘sleep on the ground’ trip per year, so I cashed in. We hiked up to Yoho Lake, stayed the night in the on and off rain, then packed up and went the loooong way down. We were too lazy to bring our camp stove and fancy gear, opting to bring pizza for supper instead. I think our BP’s bag hanging amongst the nylon, bear proof bags stuffed with dehydrated camping food was the subject of envy from the other campers. Or maybe laughter!
Smiling before we set out!
Not quite so smiley.
Now we’re resting up our tired legs in the airport lounge in Calgary, waiting to board our (of course, delayed Air Canada) flight to Portland, Oregon. We’re looking forward to a couple of days of biking, brew pubs, and food trucks!

 

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Niceland!

Our final 3 days in Iceland have been spectacular!  On Thursday we drove our little rental car (which we’ve named ‘Silver Fox’) up island to an area called ‘The Snaefellsnes Peninsula’, which is filled with colourful harbour towns, lava fields, black sand beaches, and very impressive mountains.  I think we could be categorized as ‘mountain snobs’ given that we frequent the Alberta Rockies, but these Iceland peaks are a must see if you’re coming to Iceland.  There are no trees so they are raw beauty, and the contrast between the sea and the peaks is stunning.  We enjoyed a mostly sunny day driving the loop before tucking into the fishing village of Stykkishólmur.

The next day we saw the views a second time on our way back to Reyjkavik.  For the afternoon we went to a place with a 360 degree view of the city then took an enjoyable walk down to the beach below.  I guess hot dogs are a ‘thing’ here, so I had to try one!  Our evening consisted of trying some Iceladic beer, Thai food, and seeing some of the sights lit up.
We spent our last day relaxing in the Blue Lagoon. A perfect end to a really great vacation!
One last thing…
What a change from the Alberta gas prices we’ve been used to!  Conversion is kroner:dollar 100:1, which means we paid about $55 for 29 litres of fuel!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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When life hands you a lemon, paint that shit gold

  KA-CHUNG KA-CHUNG KA-CHUNG!! 

  That was the sound that kept repeating in our hotel room this morning after we had a solid two hours of sleep.  It sounded like someone was banging on our wall with a pipe and there was no stopping it.  After calling the front desk it managed to fade away, only to return again an hour later.  This continued for the rest of the night until our alarm went off.  We felt like the walking dead as we made our way to the front desk to ask for a new room.  Luckily they could switch us so we went about our regularly scheduled day like a couple of champs.  

  First we rented a car and proceeded to take a few wrong turns…  This wasn’t going to stop us though.  We recalculated our route and began our golden circle tour.
  We started with the Geyser which shot its payload 30 meters into the air around every 5 minutes.  It was pretty impressive and it always got cheers from the steady crowd of tourists who were watching, cameras in hand.

The next stop on the tour was the Gullfoss Waterfall.  This is where our day started to turn around.  The sun finally made an appearance so we ended up taking a lot of beautiful pictures:

  We even managed to make it back to the Geyser and get a video of the event against a blue sky.  It was at this point that we realized that we could have called off the trip, stayed in bed, yelled at the hotel staff, or any combination of the above.  Instead we sucked it up, acted like calm human beings and were rewarded with a beautiful day.  By mid-day we were awake, happy, and had all but forgotten the sound of KA-CHUNG, KA-CHUNG, KA-CHUNG.

  Here are a few more random shots from our self guided tour:

That’s all for now, time to get a good night’s rest in a room on the other side of the hotel…

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The Scandi-native and his wife-sicle!

When we walk into shops here, locals start speaking to RobO in Icelandic! RobO says, “It must be my steel blue eyes and rugged jaw.”. He was joking, but I think he’s right!  I, on the other hand, am clearly not at home here with my chronic toque head and blue lips!

On our Edmonton to Iceland flight we used the ‘life hack’ of selecting the window and isle seats, hoping that no one would pick the single in the middle. High five for us!

We arrived in Reyjkavik at about 8am, which was about 1am our time. In true Olson fashion we tried hard to counteract the jet lag by spending time outside exploring the city and (in desperation) drinking a couple of coffees. Unfortunately it was really cold and we didn’t see the sun, but we were well prepared with our long johns and toques. We made it until about 3:00, when we crashed for a short nap before forcing ourselves to stay up until 9:00.

Today we woke up fresh and did some more exploring. When the sun peeked out for about 10 minutes we rushed up to the steeple of the church and caught some great views. Our next views were at the, um, educational phallological museum.
Tonight we went on our ‘warm baths, cool lights’ tour, which was a visit to a hot springs, a dinner of traditional Icelandic foods, and views of the Northern Lights. Before we left the forecast showed a 100% chance of cloud cover, meaning we wouldn’t be able to see the Aurora Borealis, but amazingly we got to stop twice on the way home to see them dance across the sky. Almost as amazing was the amount of tourists who were trying to take iPhone photos with the flash on. Our pictures aren’t awesome, but you can get the idea!

 

 

 

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Chichen Itza, chicken pizza

We did it!  Another successful holiday that include checking something off our conjoined bucket list.  A new wonder of the world has been visited, which makes it 5 for DawnO and only 4 for me.  I can now say I have been to Chichen Itza, but I can’t say I climbed it.  We got there a few years too late for that.  My mom reminded me that she got to climb the stairs before they banned tourist from reaching the top of the temple.  I wonder if she ever got a picture without any tourists on it…

We were quite happy with our tour.  It included a trip to the cenote, Ik Kil.

We also got to eat a buffet lunch and stop at Vallidolid, a small town near Chichen Itza.

Have you ever seen the old SNL commercial about the love toilet?  We found some chairs in the town square that reminded us of it.

Today is our last full day in Mexico.  We spent our time cooking authentic Mexican dishes, going to the beach, and most importantly, eating authentic Mexican dishes.

We hope to bring home some sunshine and warm weather, but until then we have some rum to finish off before we leave our place tomorrow.  We will blog again in March from Iceland!

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If you like piña coladas, getting caught in the rain…

It’s the end of day 3 in Tulum and it has been action packed!

After a very long travel day we had a good night’s sleep in our little condo. The next morning we walked to check out the sights and ended up walking for hours to get to the beach. If getting a sunburn was on the list I checked it off on the first day! We found an amazing local seafood place for dinner that night.
We were a bit smarter on day 2 and took a cab to the Tulum ruins, followed by some beach time. The beach here is beautiful, but very windy every day so far. A definite highlight was drinking piña coladas at a beach bar.
Today we rented bikes and rode out to a cenote, which is an underground river cave area where you can swim and explore.  This one, Gran Cenote, had little turtles swimming around in it. We rode back to town, lunched at a taqueria, then rode to hotel row along the beach. It was cool to see all of the kite surfers until a freak rainstorm had us cowering under trees for shelter.

We are definitely enjoying the hot weather and the chance to practise speaking Spanish. Hasta luego!

 

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When in Wales, wear your wellies!

I’m in Northern Wales, in a national park area called Snowdonia.  This area has the highest levels of rainfall in the UK. For that reason, I spent the last 3 days patiently waiting for nice weather. I hiked up the mountain of Snowdon (highest peak in England and Wales) and it was so cold and cloudy I couldn’t see anything. I did get to see a helicopter mountain rescue and warmed my freezing self with a hot chocolate at the mountaintop cafe. I also spent time relaxing with Netflix and fuelling up on Welsh curries!

 

Today my patience was rewarded with a perfectly sunshiny day. I headed out to do a challenging hike called ‘Crib Goch’. There are about 6 different paths to get to the summit of Snowdon and this one is the one they call ‘the scary one’ for good reason!

Basically I climbed up to and walked along a ridge that’s like a knife blade with steep cliffs dropping on either side of it. Though I’m not afraid of heights I have to admit I had moments of panic. I was pretty jello legged after doing the whole loop.

 

 

Tomorrow I’m off to London to spend 2 nights with friends before flying back home!

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See no evil, hear no evil, do ALL evil!!

I’ve just completed my week of volunteering on the coast of Wales. I spent the week visiting an amusement park, a farm park, riding a steam train, going on a funicular railway, and dolphin spotting in a boat. But really I spent the week chasing after a profoundly deaf and mostly blind, fiercely independent, on-the-go, 14 year old boy. I think I have some awareness of how RobO must have felt during our first holiday together because this little guy and I have some things in common!

To be very honest, the week was very challenging for me. I expected my ‘holiday maker’ to be able to communicate and make choices much more than he was able to. Being a 14 year old boy but unable to ‘act out’ in the way typical 14 years olds can, he demonstrated his dislike by either bowel or bladder behaviours or biting his left wrist to the bone. There were times when I was counting the hours until the end of the week.
But there were also glimmers of rewards: seeing his proud face after riding the biggest, scariest roller coaster at the amusement park, seeing the joy in his eyes when holding a baby goat or bunny, and watching his world open up when he independently swam around in the pool. Having him wrap his arms around me, not wanting to leave at the end of the holiday, gave me the positive reinforcement that I met my goal of helping him to enjoy his week.
And now I sit, alone in a cafe, feeling a bit like I’m missing something!
I also feel very thankful for my ability to see, hear, and move around a room independently. There are a lot of things that I take for granted, especially when on a 6 month trip across the globe.
Here are some pictures of the week, though for obvious reasons I can’t post the ones that clearly show my little friend!
This was how I spent most of the week. The little guy lead the way!
Loving the bright lights at the arcade!

I’m now awaiting my bus to head up to northern Wales. I plan to spend my last week in Europe hiking in an area called Snowdonia.

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Spanish Flies

It has been a great 5 weeks vacation for me, but sadly I fly home tomorrow while DawnO heads to the UK.  We are spending our last stop together in Madrid, Spain’s capital.  We’ve done our best to explore this international city which included a trip to a museum, a tour through the Palacios Real, and sampling food at a local market.

Palacio Real/Plaza de la Armeria (indoor photos were taken incognito):

Museo del Prado (incognito):

This was the best part of the museum for us.  Throughout the gallery, other artists had set up their own easels and were either creating their own replicas, or were making their own versions of the painting they were studying.

Cathedral de Nuestra Señora de la Almudena:

 

 

 

Crystal Palace/Parque del Buen Retiro:

 

Other random pictures:

I’m pretty sure children were crying at the sight of this headless Mickey.  You can’t really blame the guy when it’s 37 degrees out.

DawnO will be blogging soon about her Sense holiday.  We will be reunited mid-August.

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Alhambra and Graffiti Streets

We keep visiting these historic landmarks and we are beginning to see a pattern in their histories.  Each place’s story has some combination of the following occurrences:  If it was not built by Romans, it was most likely conquered by Romans, the Christans/Catholics take over and add their own flare to it (usually this cheapens the original), throw in some mass murder, maybe the area is abandoned for a century or two, Napoleon probably conquered it, more murder, eventually things get unearthed/restored, and when it’s all said and done you can avoid long lines if you buy your tickets online for a few Euro extra.  Obviously that is a gross over simplification of what are very significant and rich histories, but I don’t think the point of this blog is to tell you what you could read in a guide book.  I hope that we give you a taste of what we have experienced in order to inspire you to visit these places yourselves.

With that in mind, yesterday DawnO and I went to the Alhambra, one of the most visited spots in Europe.  Though it has nothing to do with Romans, this Arabic palace/fort was conquered by the Christians who believed it was so beautiful, they could not destroy it.  Over simplification?  Yup.  I’ll let the pictures tell the story.
The Alhambra:
Inside the Palicios Nazaries:

Views from the Fort:

Notable favourites:

We are staying in the heart of Granada in an apartment where we are close to everything.  One of the highlights of this city is all the amazing graffiti that is on display.  Today we did a walking tour of the most impressive works of street art.

Tomorrow we are heading to Madrid.  It will be my last stop before heading back home to Canada.  DawnO still has a couple of weeks to spend in the UK before she comes back home.

I will leave you with a picture of DawnO’s churros that she had today.  They are basically fresh doughnut-like sticks born from a play-dough fun factory.  They are then dipped into the provided cup of steaming hot liquid chocolate…  and are consumed with a shit-eating grin.