a 12 hour bus ride is a long, long ride.

i arrived in New York this morning at 7AM after sitting all night on the bus next to a large woman with no sense of personal space. guess i better get used to it. found my way to Olivia's place in Manhattan and immediately passed out for another three hours. now i'm awake and ready to hang out in the city. i swear.

New York, New York

in two hours, i'm taking a break from my life and am taking off to New York City for a few days. there i'll have the chance to do my favourite thing when i travel, which is not museums galleries shopping but FOOD. and also reuniting with some friends that i have not seen in a very long time. friends are also important.

stay tuned!

revisiting my childhood stomping grounds: upstate new york

Saturday we went shopping at the giant famous outlet place in Waterloo, New York (not to be confused with my Canadian birthplace of the same name). I don't know how my family knows about these things; I guess Asians know how to sniff out a bargain. It was huge, and at 11AM the gigantic parking lots were full, absolutely full. Everyone came out. Even the Amish came out. I saw a couple of Amish ladies pop into the lingerie store. Bras have snaps, not zippers. Lots of shopping to be had.



In the evening we headed out to the New York State Fair which was a crazy experience - one of the biggest fairs my parents had ever been to. When we lived in New York, we used to go to the Ulster County Fair every year and I guess that's what my parents expected but the place turned out to be huge - basically everyone had driven there from everywhere in the state. there was a lot of awesomeness. sheep. sheep wearing bathing suits. llamas. cows. butter sculptures made from the milk of the cows. rainbows.









my parents wanted to go to the International Tent (or rather, Barn), and i suspected it wasn't out of multicultural curiosity, but rather because they hadn't eaten any Asian food for nearly forty-eight hours and were probably dying inside. can't say we were totally impressed by the international choices though; we had German, Italian, Mexican, and Tim Horton's (Canadian!). we did try some American beer (it was not that good).

Sunday morning we went to downtown Syracuse, solely for the purpose of getting my dad a Starbucks. we actually saw more Tim Hortons in upstate New York than Starbucks. it was weird. Downtown was really nice. much larger and happening than i expected for a city only a bit larger than St John's, Newfoundland. I put it on my list of "Places I should try visiting for a weekend to go drinking".


Dad says seriously what's with the lack of Starbucks






You can't visit Syracuse with a shopaholic family without hitting up the Carousel Center. I have fond memories of this mall, even if no one else in my family remembers shopping here. I was sixteeen. There was an Old Navy. There were 50 cent bikinis. It was instant love. These were the times before Ottawa got its first Old Navy, you see. And Ottawa still doesn't have a Forever 21, or H&M or Victoria's Secret.


i vaguely remember the carousel. but i definitely remembered the fifty cent bikinis.

My parents made attempt #2 to have asian food at the food court. They decided to go for Chinese. We went for Japanese. Turns out the food came out the same.


some days, you take what you can get

afterwards we drove up to Alexandria Bay, which is so close to Canada that you get reception from Rogers. AND THEN WE WENT ON A BOAT.






That boathouse...is not doing so well.



it was a pretty good way to spend a Sunday afternoon, cruising through the many islands on the St. Lawrence. it would have been even better if there had been a working toilet on the boat (too much watery American beer)

we went to the castle on Boldt Island. I usually have a lot of cynicism for North American castles (ooh, Casa Loma is ALMOST A HUNDRED YEARS OLD) because historically they are nothing compared to some of the European castles i've seen. but this one was pretty cool, mainly because it was unfinished. Go find out the story sometime. it's kind of neat. People find it romantic. Me, it definitely made me feel like I should try to go and make friends with some rich people so they could invite me to their castles in the summer.




beautiful...


and unfinished

after a sweet dinner at a diner-pubby kind of place that America is great for, that we drove back up to Ottawa, where I realized that I had eaten nothing but junk food all weekend. Good old American fried junk food. McDonalds' burgers, pizza, beef stroganoff, ships, fish and chips. my body is still struggling to recover.


eating a sausage breakfast wrap from Dunkin Donuts

in small town USA, feeling like a Bruce Springsteen song

We've been staying at a roadside inn off the highway on the outskirts of the tiny town Galeville, New York. I'm not sure why we chose this particular spot on the map, but it suits my taste for adventure and love of small towns. Plus when you work your 12 hour days, you're just glad to get out of the office to travel anywhere.

What I've always appreciated about the United States is that there are little towns like this all over the country, like the ones I grew up in, in Upstate New York. When you drive through enough of them, the names of places start to melt together...Watertown...Waterloo...or they start sounding familiar in a way they shouldn't be...Mexico...Liverpool...

It's the minor cultural differences that amuse me whenever I visit the states. The pharmacies open 24 hours, selling beer. All the toll charges. Really bad infomercials. No French. Things sponsored by Senators (like Canadian Senators would ever sponsor anything).

I've always marveled at the way you could only be a couple of hours from home and be in another country where things look like they should be familiar (there's actually a Tim Hortons here) but just aren't. I love subs, for example, but I've never heard of Blimpie's. Or to add to the confusion, realizing all the things are not big in Canada, like Twinkies, Yoplait, or Friendly's Restaurant, but because I grew up with them in New York, I didn't quite realize I was missing out with them in Canada.

More driving today. Today's destination is going to have some sweet outlets

labour day weekend

you haven't heard from me in a while because i've been working. a lot. but it's illegal to work on Labour Day (i work at the courts, i can say so) so i'm looking forward to some time off doing some traveling. This weekend we're getting into the car and driving to some American cities I've never heard of. I've been told what cities they were; I just don't remember. It doesn't matter to me. long weekend adventures!

stay posted.

arriving at the end of the road...for now

I've started developing this strange love for roadside motels and greasy spoon diners that play bad francophone country music. which is pretty good if you're on a road trip, because you'll probably see a lot of it. it's a whole culture of its own, and is pretty universal across North America, wherever you go. the only thing that changes is the accent of the waitress that serves you, and the brands of beer that they've got on tap.



totally awesome quebecois diner food: poutine and smoked meat sandwiches.

i grew up in a household where we ate Korean food every meal, so diner food is actually pretty exotic to me. and there's something comforting about its consistency across the country. No matter what province or state you're in, if you're craving homemade spaghetti, chances are you'll find it on the menu at the diner. And without pretentious prices of a downtown King Street restaurant in Toronto.

it's the same thing with roadside motels. sometimes you're just tired from driving all day and you just want to find a place where you can curl up in a warm bed and watch a hell of a lot of TV. roadside motels provide that comfort. located in the middle of nowhere, there's no pressure to make the most of your visit and go outside and productively sightsee. you can go ahead and drink a beer in bed and watch medical dramas and have a wonderful sleep that will leave you looking forward to the next ten hours of driving tomorrow morning.

last night, we pulled into Kamouraska, which we had heard was a lovely place. it's been named one of the top 20 most beautiful villages in Quebec. i know there are more than 20 villages in Quebec, so I guess it's saying something. certainly other folks seemed to think so, because every quaint motel and inn along the St Lawrence River was completely full, leaving us to feel a bit like Mary and Joseph (minus the immaculate pregnancy part). so we kept on driving down the highway till we came across our next roadside motel attached to a greasy spoon diner. On this side of Quebec City, nobody speaks English. luckily, rob and i speak just enough French to conduct our business (rent rooms, order dinner), and not enough French for the locals to want to carry on a long conversation with us, so we were allowed to eat our diner food in peace and without saying anything. which was just what we were looking for, after a long day of driving.

it had been a challenging day. New Brunswick seems to get bigger every time I cross it, and it just seems to take forever to get through it. we had a scary moment when we almost ran out of gas - we were stuck driving with the gas light on, for what seemed like forever, during what seemed to be the longest stretch of highway without any rest stops. when that happens (and that has happened to me before), all these thoughts start popping up in my head: i have no cell phone reception here. has my CAA expired? i wonder how far i can run in this heat. are people here going to be friendly because they're rural, or unfriendly, because we're from the city? where are we exactly? maybe i should call my parents. are my parents going to think i'm a total idiot for having this happen again? i wonder where i can get some free wifi, because i haven't checked facebook in like two hours.

but we made it to a gas station, where a man asked us in a slow drawl where we were from. Ontario, we said. Ah, the man replied, he'd lived in Toronto for forty years, but was awful glad to eventually move back out here in Perth-Andover, because "ain't nobody trying to shoot at me here." I'd say it was the gospel truth.

and then once you leave New Brunswick, you've got Quebec, which actually is the largest Canadian province. miles and miles of farmland and purple loosestrife, seeming to extend way past the horizon. the occasional gigantic church in a tiny town. All these road signs posted in French, a weird French, because we've all learned French in public school, and yet these signs don't make clear sense, because instead of saying something simple like, "Maximum speed limit: 100 km/hr", they say something more complex and poetic like "You should consider how there are limits to your hurry; The roads are not a race track. 100 km/hr." Or instead of saying "Right turns on right lights are now permitted", they say "I think about pedestrians" with a picture of a red light. Oh well, it's all part of the adventures of French Canada.

today we took the rest of the trek home, and have finally arrived safely back in Ottawa. i'm a little sad about my road trip ending...but then again, i leave for Toronto in a few days, so i'll have plenty of chances to get tired of being on the road, if that could ever happen.


good-bye to the East Coast, the land where McDonald's serves McLobster burgers.

off on the road again

yesterday was a hot and sunny day, so we headed off for Prince Edward Island National Park to soak up some sun at the beautiful Brackley Beach. at least I did, anyway. my poor boyfriend with scandinavian genes spent his time hiding from the sun trying not to get burned.



it was a beautiful beach, very different from the west coast ones that i have grown used to. it was a white sands beach, instead of the usual red dirt, but there where these magnificent grassy dunes everywhere, and boardwalks set up to lead you through them. it reminded me a bit of Zandvoort on the North Sea in Holland, but this time the beach wasn't empty, but instead full of families and teens and children. and jellyfish, unfortunately, lots of jellyfish. the water was so full of them, i couldn't swim very long. the only people staying in the water were children who made a game of trying to poke the jellyfish with a stick while avoiding getting stung. they were much braver than i.

we drove through the rest of the national park which is full of shoreline beaches and quiet lakes, but not a lot of trees, in contrast to Ontario parks. for lunch, rob and i stopped off at the Dunes Gallery, which featured arts and crafts from various PEI artists as well as exotic stuff from all over the world, especially Buddhas. someday, someone can explain to me why non-Buddhists have such a fascination with keeping statues of Buddhas in their house. i mean, i rarely see atheists carrying around crosses or prayer beads. anyway, it was full of neat and interesting stuff, and it made me want to own a house so i could fill it with this stuff.



they also had a cafe in the gallery with an awesome menu of locally-grown meat, gigantic servings of salad, edible flowers, fruity cocktails, and sinful dessert. it was obviously really popular with women. i have this thing against eating flowers, but i really enjoyed my meal anyway, which consisted of PEI turkey burgers and half of Rob's steak and cheese sandwich.