this year we visited canada for another time, this time concentrating on it's east. we began with exploring newfoundland. some very beautiful places can be found on the port-au-port peninsula, in particular the hidden falls in sheaves cove and cape st. george. also, the peninsula houses felix cove, which we had to pay a short visit :)
on the east side of canada, we began our journey in toronto. from there, we directly continued to the town of niagara falls, ontario.
in niagara falls, we saw the niagara falls. they are quite impressive. less impressive, though, is what was build around the falls. the town is essentially a big amusement park with two casinos (a third on the american side). no place i’d like to stay long at.
from niagara falls, we continued to kingsville. from there, we saw lake erie, and went on a trip to windsor, from where we could glance over to detroit.
finally, we ended up in toronto. my third visit. we spent one day exploring toronto by bus (hop-on hop-off) and boat (around toronto islands). it was somewhat cloudy, with a lot of wind, so the view of cn tower changed between a large stick ending up in the clouds and seeing the full tower up to its tip. eventually, we went up the tower (we had a great dinner there). it was still cloudy, and most of the time we couldn’t see anything of the city. but the view was great, nonetheless: we experienced a wonderful sea of fog! (almost like in the swiss alps. yay!)
on one day in toronto, we chose to visit its zoo. the zoo itself is quite nice, and they currently have panda bears as visitors!
what’s not so great is actually getting to the zoo. from downtown toronto, you have to take the subway (if you’re not at the main west-east line, you have to change subway lines) and then continue by bus. we went to union station and tried to use a ticket vending machine, but it didn’t offer the zoo as a destination. so we lined up, and were finally told that we need two tickets: one for the train and another for the bus. turns out, union station is used both by subway and train, and obviously, we tried to use the wrong vending machine and lined up at the wrong counter. and obviously, why should two different transportation companies cooperate and make travelling accross the borders of the two systems easy to use (especially for tourists)? this isn’t switzerland (or germany), after all. yay. eventually, we arrived at the zoo (with still two changes, but fifteen minutes earler than we should have been there with subway and bus).
well, that was everything. in three weeks, we saw quite a lot of canada, and there’s still that extremely much more to see! for the next time we will be in canada (eventually; will still take some time :) ) we plan to explore the east somewhat more, in particular the parts not so densely populated as the area around toronto, like newfoundland and labrador and nova scotia. and of course also quebec, and also canada’s capital, ottawa.
during the second half of september and the first few days of october, we were roaming through canada. we spent two weeks in the west and one in the east. revisiting some places i’ve been earlier, and visiting a lot of places i’ve never seen before.
we started in vancouver.
next, we set over to vancouver island and crossed the island to its west coast.
on our way to the west coast, we stopped at the little qualicum falls. (our first waterfall on this trip, but definitely not the last.)
on the west coast, we stayed in ucluelet.
ucluelet is a nice place placed directly at the pacific ocean. the following pictures are from a nice walk near the lighthouse.
from ucluelet we continued northwards in the direction of tofino and stopped at long beach. after somewhat cloudy weather in ucluelet, the clouds opened up here and we had nice sunny weather. obviously, we put our feet into the ocean.
later, we continued to victoria. the last two of the above photos were taken near port alberni.
from victoria, we set back to the mainland and continued north. we took a tram up a mountain near squamish, had a little stop-over in whistler, and then continued north-east until we arrived in clinton.
from clinton, we headed north to prince george.
barkerville is an old gold-mining town not too far from prince george. on our trip to the latter, we did an excursion to barkersville.
from prince george, we continued north-east to dawson creek, from where we continued to Grande Prairie and then headed south to jasper.
from jasper we travelled along the icefields parkway. or at least its northern part. it was a very nice trip, with one exception: the so-called glacier skywalk. despite its name, it has not much to do with glaciers. the landscape you can see was formed by glaciers, and you can see glaciers from far away – but that’s it. you can get way better views of still-alive glaciers (like the columbia icefield) for free and not far from there.
don’t get me wrong, the construction of the skywalk is great (from a technical point of view), but the name’s a terrible choice and quite disappointing. (an interesting fact is that roughly at the place where the skywalk is built, i remember a stop at the street where you could stop your car and take a look. the view was similar to the one from the skywalk. now you can’t stop there anymore, but have to pay quite some bucks to be transported there by bus.)
from roughly the middle of the icefields parkway, at saskatchewan river crossing, we headed east along highway 11. the mountainous landscape changed to endless farmland, endless straight roads with regular (every 25 kilometers or so) perpendicular intersecting roads. except from slight elevation changes, you it feels like you can drive forward forever. eventually, we headed south, though.
our next destination was drumheller in the heart of the alberta badlands. from there, we explored the badlands a bit, in particular we saw horsethief canyon, horseshoe canyon, and the famous hoodoos. unfortunately, we had several rainshowers inbetween…
from drumheller we continued to vulcan, where we visited the tourist information as well as the trekcetera museum. thanks a lot to devan and michael for showing us around both places! (besides, a museum where you are even encouraged to take photos is a great museum!)
finally, we ended up in calgary, where i used to live for quite some time. this was the first time i visited calgary as a tourist, and it turns out there are quite some things to see you wouldn’t expect. if you ever want to explore calgary, you should visit the calgary tower – they have a great electronic tour guide, which is essentially a smartphone where you can click on buildings you can see and get audio information, sometimes also videos, about the places. it also included some material on last year’s flood, so it looks like it’s pretty new. i hope they’ll keep it and also keep it up to date.
the other great thing we did was a city tour on calgary’s only hop-on hop-off bus. apparently not well known, we happened to be the only two passengers for our tour. which was great for us, since our guide was really fantastic (he used to guide tours in the rocky mountains before)! he explained and showed us lots of things we would have never seen or heard about. he also showed us some nice places which are usually not part of the tour. it’s really a shame that this tour is not more well-known.
from calgary, we took a plane to toronto.
today, i drove from anttola/mikkeli up to kuusamo. the views i got reminded me a lot of the yukon. this time of autumn where everything is so colorful is called ruska; i hope i’ll also experience that while staying near to ivalo.
this night there is a solar storm going on (as one can watch right now here), resulting in probable aurora sightenings. unfortunatley, there are clouds on the sky… but maybe i’m more lucky during the next days?
here are a few more impressions from the next day, when i continued to ivalo:
yesterday i was told by t. that there is a direct flight from zürich to calgary, offered by edelweiss air. (they fly to calgary each friday, return each monday.) today i checked their website and found out that they also offer flights to vancouver, anchorage, whitehorse, and also two scandinavian destinations, umea (in sweden) and kittilä (in finland), as well as keflavik airport on iceland. most of these flights are only offered during special seasons, though.
so maybe i have to try them out :-)
here’s my project 52 shot for the eleventh week. the topic was
glas.
i decided to photograph something which reminds me of fall 2006, when i first visited canada. one thing to bring with you for good friends is maple syrup, for which canada is famous. in touristy places, one can get it in very nice bottles, shaped like a maple leaf. i really like these bottles, and yet, i still just own one of them. anyway, here’s a nice glassy excerpt from the bottle:
technical details: 30s, f/20, 105mm, iso 200.
another less glass related shot from the same bottle is the following. it depicts a part of the cap, with some maple syrup leftovers sticking to it, with a nice curly golden band which is especially beautiful when viewed in this size. on the right, you can see a white ribbon with red maple leaves (i.e. the canadian flag) on it which is tied to the golden band.
technical details: 30s, f/32, 105mm, iso 200.
here’s my project 52 shot for the tenth week. the topic was
this topic could be so easy if archive photos would be allowed. like in the last year, i visited many stunning places which i’d love to see again right now:
the photos were taken near vikajärvi, haines junction, keno and mayo, and yellowknife (from left to right, top to bottom). the message of these photos is plain and simple: i’d like to be far, far more north! somewhere near the arctic circle, or even north of it.
unfortunately, i couldn’t make it north. instead, i went south, and up by train, to recover a photography combining two aspects of northern travel: snow and railways.
technical details: 1/1000s, f/8, 32mm, iso 200.
(this photo is in fact older than the topic. originally i wanted to near to that place again, to take more photos, also for use for project 52. unfortunately, i was too busy and too sick to do this.)
this weekend, i was in vancouver. a second time. this time, i attended the cms winter meeting. the computational number theory session was hosted in a hotel suite on the 29th floor, with a great view over the english bay. we also had a non-mathematician attending the session:
on my last day, i decided to go to stanley park another time. in fact, i walked once around it. here are some impressions from the walk and from the view we had during the session:
and sorry for the photo quality… i forgot to bring any camera, so i had to abuse my mobile phone…
this weekend, i payed yellowknife a second visit. this time, during winter, with snow, ice, and freezing temperatures. and more aurora viewings.
here’s a first impression i got on the first day. it was taken at 14:20, and you can see that the sun was already pretty near to the horizon. the sunset is around 15:30, and goes down to 15:00 during winter’s shortest days. sunrise was around 9:30 the time i was there; it goes up to 10:00 during the shortest days.
i was staying in the narwal bed and breakfast, a small bed and breakfast located near the great slave lake, meaning i could just walk on the frozen lake and hopefully see some nice auroras during nighttime. here’s a nighttime impression, without an aurora but with clouds:
during the days, i often walked around and on the frame lake. lots of memories came up. it was often cloudy with breaks. here are some nice impressions:
finally, on the second and third night, the sky was mostly clear. and both nights featured auroras! the second night had a not very bright one, at least while i was outside, but the third and last night had some really great ones. here are a few impressions:
finally, here’s a video i recorded, consisting of 484 frames, each shot having an exposure time of one second. the movie is played back with six frames per second, i.e. you get a time lapse:
(this is a html5 video tag, so hopefully it works. otherwise, you can directly try the mpeg 4 variant and the ogg theora variant.)
today i was a second time in the fish creek provincial park. this time, it was covered in snow. here are some impressions:
the temperature in the park was really nice. i never felt cold, more like sweating under all my covers. (which changed when i left the park, somehow…)
speaking of temperatures, yesterday, apparently at 11 am, calgary was the “second coldest place on earth”, or more precisely, the second coldest place in the list of places watched by wx-now, with -33 degree celsius.
well. i was inside at that point :)
