My abiding memories of Mexico City will be traffic, food and amazing hospitality. We stayed with the family of friends Sarah made on her year of exchange in Calgary. The Gonzalez’s have a beautiful house in a gated estate on a golf course in the northern part of Mexico City. Getting from the airport to their house is a bewildering course through Mexico City’s labyrinthine road network where the indistinct lanes are owned by whoever shoves their way in first. It’s more like Formula 1 driving than what we know in Australia. I don’t know how you would even begin to navigate your way through the city but luckily we were very kindly being driven by Adriana, Sarah’s friend from Calgary, to a dinner with the Gonzalez family at a local restaurant.
And what a dinner. Kicked off with tequila for me served in a tall glass and accompanied by salt and cut lime and another glass filled with a piquante tomato drink. Sarah and I then had muy typical soups based on tomato with shreds of tortilla and corn. Next we had steak cooked on the bone served on sizzling plates, the idea being that you cut the meat from the bone, slice it and sear it on the super hot iron plates, much like what is used for sizzling Korean food in Sydney Chinatown’s food courts. This seared meat is then used in tacos with super fresh tortillas, freshly made salsa (three varieties of different heats, one of which was pounded together in a mortar and pestle at the table), beans, guacamole, fresh lime. It was very tasty especially with a nice Spanish red that Mr Gonzalez brought along. Then for desert a very nice cheese flan for me and dulche de leche pancakes for Sarah.
Then it was back to the Gozalezes place for a bit of slow dancing to an old jukebox playing classic Mexican tunes in the bar. We definitely were not slumming it.
The next day Adriana again kindly drove us, this time to Teotihuacan where ancient pyramids are located. These pyramids were built from 100BC to 250BC. They were used for ceremonies of an astrological nature, one linked with the sun and one with the moon, although they are starting to think that the sun temple might have been for water sacrifices. These pyramids are grand structures, only excavated in any major way in the early 20th century. Before that they were blending nicely into the landscape by disguising themselves as hills covered with dirt. Mexico City is interesting in this respect. In the year 1500 it was four times bigger than London with a population around 200,000. It has a long history and could have been the Rome of the Americas if the conquistadors weren’t so thorough in burning cities to the ground. The foundation myth of Mexico City is that the cities founders were told by the gods that they needed to build a city wherever they saw a eagle eating a snake on top of a nopal cactus. If you ask me, an eagle eating a snake on a cactus in Mexico is not going to be all that rare. Eagles must eat snakes while sitting on a cactus all the time. Still, as foundation myths go it makes for a good tshirt. Unfortunately for Mexico City the eagle they spotted eating a snake happened to choose a problematic location for building a city – a swamp. Mexico City has a history of sinking and the original founders had to invent new construction techniques to cope with the tricky terrain, techniques which the Spanish later adopted when they started erecting buildings here. The massive growth and expansion of Mexico City also caused problems when the slums started literally dragging the city down. As you fly in to Mexico City you can see the slums climbing up every available hill. It looks like spreading mould.
Back to the pyramids at Teotihuacan, people still climb up and try to draw energy from the sun at certain times of the day by holding their arms in the air. I was drawing a fair bit of solar energy for the whole climb up. The pyramids are ringed by a cobblestone road which you clatter around to get to your preferred parking lot. On the way random men will throw themselves in front of your car with very serious looking “you must stop your car” body language. These guys are touting the local restaurants and want to give you a flyer. They honestly almost kill themselves to deliver this information, then as you inevitably clatter past their inauspicious restaurant more guys try to guide you in front of their place as though you’re navigating a jumbo jet in to dock. Their dedication is admirable but we had lunch in a cave.
It seems very Mexican for there to be a restaurant in the sort of cave that in Australia could be a tourist attraction in its own right. The poor waiters have to climb up and down stairs all day balancing a ridiculous number of plates on a tray held up in one hand while they use the other hand to balance themselves as they navigate the stairs. It’s a high risk time saving strategy. The kitchen must curse when they drop one of those trays.
The next day we visited the centre of Mexico City, which is an effort in itself. You can either leave at 6am to beat the traffic (and that’s 6am sharp – any later and the roads start backing up) or try leaving much later at 10am as we did. Even at 10 it’s slow going as I guess happens in any city of 21 million or so people. Mexico City is the largest Spanish speaking city in the world and in the top five cities population wise in the western world. It’s not surprising that the roads are full. A good trip from the Gonzalez’s to the city takes an hour. In bad traffic you’re looking at two hours and in really bad traffic you probably give up and turn around. Mexico City has more sites of interest than you can poke a stick at, but given our limited time (we were about to fly off to Cuba) we could only do a few things. First on the list was walking up to the Zocalo which is a big-ass plaza flanked by the national palace, the cathedral and the very interesting Templo Mayor. Templo Mayor is an ancient ruin which was only excavated to any serious degree in 1978, quite late to be digging up the major ancinet temple of this city, but as with many cities built on the remains of other cities, the practicalities of day to day living tend to override archaeological interest. The ruin even has a relatively modern brick water tunnel running through the guts of it. This building was too important to ignore any longer and, while they are still excavating it, the ruin has become a tourist attraction in its own right, slapped down in the heart of modern day Mexico City. It’s quite creepy because at this temple they performed a lot of human sacrifice. There are serpent statues and an enormous statue of skulls, just in case anyone was under a misapprehension about the place when the priests invited them around. Sarah got an audio guide which repeated what was printed on all the information boards but in worse Spanglish, so we didn’t leave with a totally in depth understanding of the place which the subsequent museum with only Spanish signs didn’t help to illuminate. I would suggest wikipedia is greater source of in depth knowledge than I will be.
We also missed a guide for the Diego Rivera murals at the National Palace but to my mind these amazing paintings do a good job of explaining themselves. The murals take on the not insignificant task of depicting all of Mexican history. They are amazing artworks with a simple vibrant style, yet so detailed and rich with colour and stories. They are all magnificently rendered but the centrepiece takes the cake by attempting to sum up the modern history of Mexico with one massive, jam packed mural extravaganza and it works wonderfully.
The Zocalo is a huge square garnished in spectacular Mexican fashion with giant golden bells made from glittery gold paper and oversized flags fashioned from the most glittery non-precious material money can buy. All this was to celebrate 200 years of independence from the Spanish, 1810 – 2010. I guess they’ve left the decorations up because they just look really good and cheer everyone up. Either that or they cost a bomb and they want to get their money’s worth. At some point they will have to stick that 12-foot high fake bell in the decorations box until the next big anniversary rolls around.
Mexico City is the first place that either Sarah or I have taken one of those open-air tour buses. We were just too foot-sore for more wandering around looking at landmarks so the bus seemed like a better option, but by the time we got on the bus we really only had time to do one circuit, so no hopping on and hopping off. The trip gave a good overview of the landmarks but perhaps our initial experience on this type of bus would have been better in a city not renowned for having some of the worst traffic in the world. The bus crawled around in the hot sun with sparse and patchy commentary about what is a very lively and interesting city. At least now we have an idea what we want to see next time, which is not so far away. Our return flight from Cuba is returning to the Mexican capital.
At the end of the day we got a ride home (and it did feel like going home) to the Gonzalez’s house with their nephew who is living with them while he studies for his diplomatic credentials. Isaac is a new breed of Mexican workaholic in a similar vein to the life we left behind in Sydney. Isaac is working full time in the Mexican foreign ministry but to be posted abroad he needs to pass a test. Most of his spare time is consumed with studying the broad range of information considered necessary to becoming a rounded diplomat. At least he got to practice some English with us, but it was very kind of him to drive as home and take us to dinner, as his average day consists of leaving for work by car at 6am, which all being well with the traffic takes around an hour. He then takes a French lesson from 7am to 9am, works a full day, and drives home at 7pm to study. The fact that he was so generous with his time despite this workload is an indication of the kind hospitality we were shown.
Dinner was fantastic. Just a little fast food taco joint where they whip up small chicken, meat or cactus filled tacos (soft shell of course) which you then fill with your choice of toppings and salsas which are permanently on the table. It’s incredibly quick and tasty fast food.
Flying out we joined Isaac the next morning on his work run at 6am to beat the traffic and make it to the airport in plenty of time. We also wanted to check on a missing checked bag that we totally forgot to pick up off the carousel (if it even made it that far). It had some medicine and toiletries that we had planned to take to Cuba, but as an extra bag it got left behind in our efficient but zombie-like airport routine on arrival. Getting back a bag lost from a Mexican budget airline, especially one full of lots of goodies, was always a slim chance, but they were very nice about it. We stocked up on a few more donations at the airport pharmacy and settled in for the short flight to Cuba.
Sarah and I differ in our views of San Diego. Where Sarah sees gritty street life I see people who would do you over as soon as look at you. Where Sarah sees an admittedly beautiful stretch of cliffs along the coast I see a smoggy sea-scape not nearly as impressive as the Sydney coastline.
Maybe it was the bed bugs in the hostel, maybe the frantic schedule of jaw dropping sight seeing in Yosemite and Death Valley, but San Diego left a bad taste in my mouth. We stayed in Ocean Beach, or OB as the locals call it, which is like a mixture of Bondi Beach and Newtown but not as picturesque or interesting as either of them. OB feels like where American surfers go to die. We never found out why they were so many limbless men in wheelchairs. Were they returned abandoned US soldiers? The number of totally down and out people is a depressing reminder of the USAs inability to look after their own citizens. For the richest country on earth their strict adherence to ‘survival of the fittest’ has some shocking consequences that could be easily avoided if only the country’s knee-jerk reaction to socialism and taxes could be overcome.
San Diego has a faux Old Town, a faux little Italy, a faux Gas Lamps district and an invisible Chinatown. We did a tour via rental car on a Saturday morning before returning it and didn’t feel a strong need to go back to any of these places in our remaining time there. Faux Old Town felt like a theme park dedicated to someone’s impression of what San Diego once looked like but the faux old buildings filled with chain bars and restaurants were more depressing than intersting. Their Little Italy takes Leichardt and notches it down a couple of levels in authenticity.
At this stage it wasn’t looking good for San Diego. We returned the rental car at the airport and walked back along the harbour, past the aircraft carrier and associated US Navy vessels, past the tourist boats and had lunch in Little Italy, where they have posters hanging from the street lights of every famous American of Italian heritage they can think of. As far as I know none of these celebrities have an association with San Diego or even know that their photo is hanging in the street. It looks as though someone has just googled the images and printed them in grainy black and white to try and remind people that they are supposed to be in Little Italy, not just a random collection of unremarkable shops.
As I count it there are four redeeming features of San Diego that we came across, and I’m not talking about the zoo or Sea World which we avoided. Balbao Park has most of the cities museums and art galleries located in one spot. The whole area was developed for a 1915 Panama expo competing with San Francisco in the same year for most impressive expo. San Diego focussed on culture and art and the result is an expansive park with a lot of very interesting looking museums and courtyards which I was too footsore to walk through. There is also a large goldfish pond and a smallish botanical glass shed. Any other city and the park would be unremarkable but in San Diego this breathed life into what had otherwise been a dull and sterile experience, although the jumbo jets taking off from the nearby airport did break the peace and quiet somewhat as we tried to nap in the park.
The second good point to San Diego was unsurprisingly where all the rich people hang out. Corinado is kind of an island, although from the map it looks as though it’s connected by land. I suspect that because half the island is owned by the navy they don’t let you on certain parts of it, so most of the population has to drive over a long bridge to get there. Corinado has a nice white beach and a famous old hotel next to the beach where you can buy expensive drinks to sip while the sun goes down.
The third good point are the afore-mentioned sea cliffs along the top of which we cycled for an hour. The ocean stretches out to the horizon as the sun dips into it, highlighting the plethora of surfers bobbing about. Appropriately large-windowed houses line the road looking out to the sea but it’s still possible to get an unobstructed view from the road, something not so common in Sydney where property development usually triumphs over the casual visitor.
The final good point was the company and food. We had dinner with an old friend of Sarah’s from her time learning Spanish in Guatamala. Fidencio and his partner Lucia invited us for dinner at the OB Hotel where we had extremely tasty fish tacos (with the proper soft tacos, not that hard shell palaver).
Not even excellent fish tacos could redeem San Diego in my eyes, and given the importance I place on food that is a damning assessment. Adios USA, you have incredible natural scenery and some nice folk scattered around, but a week is about all I can handle.
While the entire Eastern side of the Sierra mountains is dry, nothing quite prepares you for the hellish nature of Death Valley. You enter the valley through a 5000 foot high pass. Getting out of the car here it feels hot but not unbearably so, like a nice warm summer day. By the time you reach the valley floor, which is at sea level, the heat is oppressive. We took a very short walk on some sand dunes and even with our Australian upbringing (or maybe because of it) we didn’t take long to figure out that it was too hot to be strolling around in the middle of the day. The heat coming from the ground felt like it could melt our shoes. It’s no place for a picnic. There are signs by the highway telling you turn your A/C off for the next X number of miles as you climb up to 5000 feet again before the road plunges down to sea level once more. The map shows where spare radiator water is located. Amazingly we saw a runner making his way down a dead straight stretch of road with the temperature heading well over 40. It would be a dispiriting place to do any form of exercise, the distances are so vast, straight and blisteringly hot.
Legend has it that Death Valley was named when a group of settlers became lost trying to get to California. The story goes that the one guy with a map got sick of waiting for them to cross a river with the carts somewhere in Nevada and decided to abandon them. These poor guys then wandered West in the hopes of finding a pass in the mountains and ended up wandering into Death Valley. Luckily for them it was winter, but even so it’s not the kind of landscape that’s rolling with water. They cooked their oxen over fires made from wood salvaged from their carts and continued on foot, eventually getting close enough to California to be discovered by ranchers.
Death Valley seems like a likely spot to have a few minerals lying around but mining attempts here always failed. It has become much more successful as a tourist destination where the novel temperatures attract quite a crowd of sticky beaks. The valley gets particularly hot because of its geography. It is incredibly dry. Some years it doesn’t receive any rain at all. There are so many mountain ranges between Death Valley and the coast that all the moisture gets sucked out of the clouds long before they make it to the valley. It is also a very narrow valley surrounded by mountains. The hot air that rises from the valley hits the mountains as it rises and is recycled back down, increasing the temperature even further. When we were there in early Autumn it hit 46 degrees. Death Valley holds the record for the second highest temperature ever recorded, 56.7 degrees. The highest ever recorded belongs to Libya.
Despite being inhospitable Death Valley is really fun to drive through. The road is most often dead straight but has all of these dips so that it feels like you’re riding in the swell of the ocean. There is a one way scenic drive that would make a hell of a go kart track as it dips and twists its way through the cliffs.
We also made a trek up to a ghost town just over the state line in Nevada. It was formerly a mining town and at its height supported 10,000 people. There are eerie photos displayed as you walk through which show the town in its height when expectations were high and the streets bustling. There are just crumbling ruins now sitting on the mountain side looking down on the baking valley floor. Despite its appearance even this ghost town is not remote. Tourists are not prolific but in the ten minutes that we were wandering around about three cars did a slow tour. No-one else got out of the cars and I don’t really blame them.
We drove out of Death Valley to the south past all the main attractions. The pictures will do then better justice than my words but you have to imagine it all with a searing dry heat and blistering short walks to the lookouts. This was broken up by lunch featuring waiters with impenetrable accents who served me a prickly pear margarita, bless them.
The other notable feature of Death Valley are the dried up lakes. These are not dried up lakes in the sense of Lake George near Canberra, which when dry (which is most of the time) looks like a paddock. You could not graze cattle on the dried up Death Valley lakes. They leave behind piles of salt, some forming crystalline shapes on ground resembling a cracked cow paddock, others on salt flats as level and white as a skating rink. Tourists scrawl messages in the pristine salt. The salt gathers there, washed out of the mountains by the rare flooding rains, then dried by the burning sun. This is the lowest place in America, something like 282 feet below sea level.
Our days in Yosemite and Death Valley were long and tiring but we have the 1300 (unedited) photos to prove that there was a lot of amazing scenery. That night we drove out of Death Valley under a pink sky, once again heading into the night in a national park driving a rental car and not sure exactly where we were going to sleep. Confounding the naysayers it all worked out perfectly. We pushed on the the little town of Baker and found a typical Californian motel with a pool which was warmed by the desert sun. Looking up at the stars while lying on your back in a pool after a long and hot day driving is just about as restorative as an ice cold beer.
Baker was not the quaint little town we were expecting. As we drove into town and surveyed the two available hotels you could see the line of gleaming headlights coming back from Las Vegas. Baker was a strip mall next to this highway. Lined with fast food joints you would think it offered nothing for the passing tourist, but this being California, no town is without an attraction. Baker has two. The first sounds impressive but the reality is beguiling. Baker has the world’s biggest thermometer (claim unverified). The thermometer is an over-engineered monstrosity which I found impossible to decode. The second attraction is the Alien Beef Jerky store. This store plays to the stereotypes of the region perfectly, this town being not a million miles away from Area 51. They have enlarged newspapers from the original discovery of the flying saucer supposedly stored at Area 51, an oversized (presumably fake) flying saucer which you can make do something by inserting money, a couple of aliens sitting in a car, and of course Alien Beef Jerky. We had been warned by the receptionist at the motel the previous night that this jerky has a huge markup and that we should not buy it, which we were happy to oblige. Sarah did fall for the freeze-dried ice-cream sandwich, which is presumably linked to the shop because freeze-dried stuff is used in space, although the way this thing crumbled when eaten it would most likely have extremely hazardous effects in zero gravity. Sarah also bought a scorpion lolly. It had a real scorpion inside. The lolly tasted like green apple but according to Sarah the scorpion tasted a bit stale, which is disappointing.
Next day we had breakfast at Deny’s due to limited choice then joined the Las Vegas highway to head away from the city of lights and bypass LA as we made a beeline for San Diego. Once you get used to the mammoth freeways our main point of interest from the trip was the smog. How much of it was a mist is hard to tell, but it was the middle of the day, so that seems unlikely. We could barely see the mountains next to the road. The smog was never as thick as when going past the LA valley but joined us for the whole trip to San Diego.
Our gateway to Yosemite was the quaint little town of Mariposa. There are some small towns in the US that just have a good feeling about them. Everyone is friendly and in a good mood, the buildings are old fashioned but not touristy, and overall it’s as pleasant as being in Canada. Mariposa is just such a place.
We arrived as the sun was going down. We immediately hit the visitor information centre where a classic older American lady mapped out an itinerary for us through Yosemite and down to Death Valley. She couldn’t have been more helpful and pleasant. She is obviously a Yosemite tragic as she kept popping off to the monitor on public display to refresh the webcam showing live pictures of the park. I don’t know how she kept her enthusiasm for planning people’s journeys through the park going but she was as excited as if she was coming with us.
Mariposa also has a classic American diner, one where they still actually cook original food rather than schlepping out the usual hotdogs and burgers. I had delicious pork chops with caramalized apple and onion with country style mashed potato. Delicious. Sarah had a bowl of chilli all washed down with local beers. We sat up at the counter and watched the chef work. It was a thoroughly pleasant way to end the day. As we walked back to the hotel we couldn’t help being reminded of the religiosity of the US. There was a sign near the visitors information centre listing the two dozen churches in the area for this tiny rural population. They love a good church over here.
We got up early the next day and drove into Yosemite valley. The park ranger we bought our tickets from at the booth on the road was shockingly enthusiastic. “Where you folks from? Australia? I love you guys. I want to visit there one day.” We could imagine him trotting out exactly the same line to the Austrians in the car behind us. Yanks are generally terrible at picking accents. At our hotel that morning we heard an American talking to a British lady. He asked “Where are you from?” When the lady replied with “England” he said “I knew there was some kind of an accent there!” Americans on the free shuttle mistook a man with a northern English accent for an Aussie. No clue.
Yosemite is another one of those places that is difficult to convey in words and photos. Ansell Adams spent a lifetime trying and even being familiar with his work the real thing is still gob-smacking. Just driving into the valley you are confronted with giant granite monoliths featuring incredibly high waterfalls. In true American style all of this stunning scenery is visible from the comfort of the car or the free shuttle buses that travel around the main sites every 10 minutes. The park is so accessible that we even say a small dog with wheels for rear legs happily pulling itself around. The dog was wearing little dog shoes on its rear feet for some reason, as if he was going to stand on his hind legs and start jogging when the miracle cure kicked in.
Despite Yosemite being an easy place to see spectacular scenery while doing the bare minimum amount of exercise, there are also some seriously hard hikes for the fit Yanks, of which there are quite a few as well. One of the hikes is four miles but with a 2700 foot elevation. We were a little less ambitious but ours went up 1000 feet in short order past a beautiful waterfall in the most amazing steep valley. The steepness of Yosemite is so startling because the granite cliffs are so sheer and smooth. It looks like a giant has cleaved them with an axe. One of the mountains, called Half Dome, looks like a mountain has been sliced in half.
A storm rolled in late in the afternoon. As we scurried back to the car to manically drive to attractions further up the hill a harried doe and her faun trotted nervously into the car park, presumably looking for shelter in the worst place possible. The other common wildlife attraction are the chipmunks which look impossibly cute when they hold a nut in their little paws and nibble away. They would also be good in a revenge of the chipmunks horror movie with their dark, beady eyes. Despite best efforts to educate people about not feeding them, the best place to spot a chipmunk is outside tables at the cafe. They scurry all over the place picking up crumbs and becoming entirely dependent on their human friends. Luckily for them the human tide to the cafe doesn’t look like stopping any time soon so it’s a conveniently symbiotic relationship.
The other big attraction in Yosemite are the Giant Sequoia trees, billed as the largest living thing on earth. They are not the tallest (that honour goes to Redwoods) and they aren’t the oldest (Bristlecone Pines take out that award) but the Giant Sequoias have the most heft, and boy do they deliver. We drove 2 hours back into the park on our second day in the area just to see them. I wasn’t sure it was worth the trip until I googled photos of them in the hotel. After all, we had been seeing a lot of big trees lately, did we really need a special trip to see more? It was well worth it. The scale of these trees is incredible. In the stump of one dead tree they drilled a tunnel which people in the past drove cars through for some ye olde time entertainment. One of the fallen Sequoias has a trunk with a diameter twice as tall as me. They live to three thousand years old and really only die when they are physically incapable of supporting their own weight, often when snow and wind combine. Another downside to being the biggest thing in the forest is that lightning is very attracted to the top of you, so often the very top of these trees are dead and withered while on their lower limbs they support branches that are as big as other trees.
So it was definitely a good move to make the drive back to see these extraordinary trees. In the parking lot on the way out I was waylaid by one of those American guys who just has to have a conversation with you. It’s like a compulsion. He was from Seattle so it’s possible caffeine had fused with his DNA making it impossible for him not to talk. He and his wife had just driven down from Seattle, and you know, these Giant Sequoias are ok, but you should see the Redwoods on the coast of Washington State – they are really incredible. I must make a mental note not to turn into this guy after our year of travel is done.
Our days in Yosemite were long. It’s difficult to stay near the park so we drove in at dawn and spent all day with necks craned upward hiking around, before driving home as the sun set. This was not particularly smart as there is no shortage of wildlife in Yosemite just waiting to leap out at us from the pine covered verges. On our first night we drove down Tioga pass in complete darkness, oblivious to what surrounded us. Coming back the next day we were amazed at the size of the mountains we had driven past. The Sierras are steeper on the Eastern side and are such a contrast to the rounded Yosemite mountains.
On the second day we did a small walk up to Dog Lake, one of the easy ones. Once fifty or so hikers had passed us coming the other way it was beautifully tranquil with not a sound in the forest. Dog Lake was a suitably serene spot to soak my feet and look at the reflection of the mountains.
We even had a pleasant encounter at the next service station 30 minutes later when I attempted to buy a map of Oakland, the San Francisco map being so discrimatory that it didn’t even include its sibiling across the bay. The guy running the service station was from Yemen and kindly let us use his computer and printer to get directions. He wasn’t rapped about living in the US, it was just a place to make money as far as he was concerned, not like living in Yemen where all his family was. He didn’t mind Oakland, apart from the black people, which would be a problem for him as Oakland is a majority black population. I get an uneasy feeling in *any* big American city. There is a violent undercurrent just wandering around many American cities, or maybe it’s just the rewsult of the yanks pumping out so many episodes of Dexter and CSI. Still, it’s hard for an Aussie to totally relax in a gun culture and the insane freeways don’t help sooth the journeys. Oakland was at one stage the murder capital of the US, but it seems like that title is on constant rotation. Luckily for us we were far from a violent part of town. Our friends Josie and Andy live in respectable suburbia with a beautiful backyard and view of the hills. We had the nicest possible introduction to California with a BBQ to celebrate Andy’s birthday with a few of their friends. We had marinated chicken thighs, sweet yam (one hell of an unhealthy tasty dish), snags, bean salad and a nice local brew. There’s a real focus in the west coast on eating local produce and they have great food to choose from. I would give up my first born for the corn alone.
The politics of California and left-leaning Australian are very similar. It’s easy to forget that a lot of Americans on the coast think that the middle of their country is insane as well. There has been general despair with how little Obama has accomplished, real fear of the loony right wing, and general frustration with the direction of the country. It was interesting to talk with sufferers of the housing bubble pop over here as who I daresay have a different view on the stability of house prices that the average Sydney-sider. There was also a feeling that it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for America to go through some tough times, learn some humility, and get back to the basics. The main streets of Oakland have a Mexican flavour to them with bright colours faded by the bright sun, lots of concrete and cars. It doesn’t take long though to head into the hills and get some greenery. For breakfast one day we went to Aunt Mary’s for some southern comfort. This is not yet another of Sarah’s relatives but a local restaurant specialising in grits and greens. Grits is a savoury corn meal porridge, mine served with (you guessed it) bacon. Sarah had the works, biscuits and gravy, eggs, potato hash and greens. It went down a treat.
Oakland felt like a home away from home, so we took the opportunity to do a few chores. On Sarah’s list was a haircut so she rang around the local places to make an appointment. To be fair, nappy hair is not common parlance in Australia, but in the States it describes the hair of black people. Previously a derogatory term it has now been reclaimed by the black population. So when Sarah rang The Nappy Hair King or something similar, the phone was answered by a very puzzled black woman wondering why this Australian was asking about a trim. We didn’t follow that up. Rather than taking the usual route down the coast on Highway 1, our next stop was the wilderness of Yosemite and Death Valley.
About halfway in between Montreal and Toronto we stopped at a little diner where Sarah had a humungous tuna salad (they do their salads big in North America).
We perused the local paper which had a feature story on prostitution in this small farming area (drugs are a problem).
We also came across the Queen of the Furrow competition which is a beauty pagent where, you will pleased to learn, contestents are also judged on their ploughing skills. At least it’s more flattering than calling it the Queen of the Plough.
When we arrived in Toronto the first time around, a little tourist weary and looking for a rest, the city didn’t feel as bustling as we thought it would, or packed with obvious sightseeing destinations.
It’s a good thing we had time to come back and dig a little deeper. Toronto feels like an Americanised Melbourne, the comparison extending to Toronto having street-cars, what we would call trams in Australia. It doesn’t have the spectacular sights but there is a good vibe to the place with cool bars and good food.
We were lucky to make it back to Toronto at all. I made a navigational error and we missed the correct turnoff which would have taken us past downtown and via a very simple method to the hostel we were staying at in Kensington. By the time I realised that we had gone too far we were at the airport and stuck in traffic. When I say stuck in traffic this is not just some Sydney-sized jam. We were on a freeway merging with another freeway, and I think there was a different freeway running in parallel. It felt as though there were a good ten lanes attempting to squeeze together as we tried to get to an exit ramp. We managed to get off the freeway and turn around but the situation going the other way was not a lot better. Missing that turnoff added about two hours to our trip, which would have been bearable if not for the fact that we had to return our rental car to the heart of downtown on Friday rush hour, and both Sarah and I had planned to meet friends for a drink. So we crawled through downtown Toronto past the construction and lane closures, throwing in desperate u-turns and cursing the one way streets as cyclists whizzed by. We eventually got to the underground car rental return in time and emerged blinking into the evening light, a crazed look in our eyes, to gratefully suck down the closest alcoholic drink.
Not only did we have drinks lined up, but also tickets to the ball game that night. The Toronto Blue Jays versus the almighty Yankees. I’m not a massive baseball fan, cricket’s more my go, but the games are not a million miles apart in sentiment and it was a really fun night, in large part because of the hot dogs. Sarah and I got kind of a gourmet dog with beans and then proceeded to pile a ridiculous amount of free toppings on top. The photo of me eating the hotdog captures the moment I turned into a hotdog zombie and had just one purpose, to eat hotdog flesh. The game was great as well. Toronto took an early lead then Swisher brought a few runs home for the Yankees to make it 3-1. The game was tied deep into the ninth innings and to be honest I was praying for a run of any kind just so we could leave and either sleep or have a few more drinks. My new hero Molina brought the Blue Jays home with a homer that just snuck over the fence at centre field. It was impeccable timing as the drive was starting to catch up with us.
At the game with us were Chab and Jon, friends we knew from Sydney who live in Toronto now. They took us to some cool bars and we had some refined tequila, more the sipping than shots variety. On our previous visit we went to a gritty blues bar where we were outnumbered by the roadies and random drunks. The place had atmosphere in spades and only lacked sawdust on the floor.
We stayed in a different hostel on our return in a funkier part of town. The trade-off was a shared bathroom and a dingy room overlooking the fire escape. Such is the lot of a budget traveller. We stayed in Kensington. The photo of the used car filled with plants probably tells you all you need to know about the trendy kind of place it is.
We had the best grilled cheese sandwich here from a place called The Grilled Cheese. There seems to be this trend in North America of places specialising in just one thing and trying to do that one thing perfectly. The Grilled Cheese nailed it with this sandwich. The cheese was the perfect temperature between buttered toast. We had the variety with mushrooms. All are served with a side of crisps and a pickle. Damn, it really hit the spot.
The next day we groggily emerged from our tomb-like room to attend our other pre-booked Toronto event, a TIFF screening. TIFF stands for Toronto International Film Festival, and it’s kind of a big deal. It’s one the premier festivals of the year and attracts all the big names. We didn’t see any big names, but you never know, that guy at the Inuit Art Museum *could* have been famous. We’re a bit out of touch.
We went to see the one film that fitted our schedule and that we had could get tickets for, the latest Bruce Beresford feel good flick, which was fun but nothing special.
And with that we rolled off the line for the CN tower, one of the tallest structures in the world. As you will be able to tell if you gallantly look through all the photos we took in Toronto, the CN tower pokes it nose in everywhere. It’s always peeking over the top of buildings to see what you’re up to, butting into scenes where it’s not wanted. What better place to escape its pervasive prescence that inside its slender body. This is not a quick process. Somehow other people have heard about the CN tower as well and wish, as we did, to ascend high into it. We lined up for almost an hour to get in the lift, and this is after lining up to get the ticket and going through this very strange security screening where you’re blasted with jets of air. Once you get in the lift it goes up at a scarily fast rate making your ears pop. The elevator has glass sections in it so that you can begin one of many vertigo experiences right from the start. The view from the glass-walled observation deck is spectacular. It feels like you’re in a plane coming in for landing. One level below this they have the glass-floored observation floor which could support some random number of elephants or an almost infinite number of jumping children. It really is a long way down and you can’t help but picture the glass giving way and that delicious to imagine feeling of tumbling out of control to your doom. Or you can just go to the outdoor observation area and get a cold blast of wind in the face as you look out over the vast Lake Ontario.
The lake is too toxic to swim in so apart from the yachts swanning around there is not a lot of water sport action. On our previous visit to the city Sarah and I came across a fake beach next to the lake with deck chairs and umbrellas, attended only by a smattering of other tourists. The clouds had descended and summer was wistfully skipping away for another year.
Having spent my formative years in Canberra I immediately felt at home in Ottawa. We stayed in a B&B in the embassy district owned by an Australian called Carole who had that self-assured manner of many a grey-haired baby boomer. The B&B was located on Goulburn street. How Australian can you get?
When we arrived Sarah was busting for the loo but no-one was home at the B&B. We knocked on the door with no luck. So we abandoned the doorstep and drove to the local park looking for a public washroom (as the locals colloquially call a toilet). We spotted one and a dropped Sarah off to run over while I looked for a good place to park. I had to park a while away and walk back only to discover that Sarah had found the toilet locked. This was now getting serious. There wasn’t a convenient spot to go au naturale, so we hoofed it back to the car and starting driving randomly looking for a gas station or anywhere with a toilet really. Sarah was concentrated, warning me not to get stuck in traffic. We crossed a bridge and ended up in a retirement village. I convinced a reluctant Sarah to ask them if she could use the toilet but the front door had an intercom and even in her desperate state she was not about to have a conversation like that with a stranger over an intercom. So we drove off again and found a street with a few restaurants. Sarah dashed off and found satisfaction plus some baklava. We got back to the B&B but still no-one was home. I managed to get on to their wireless connection and checked the email confirmation they sent again. The key had been in the letterbox all along. My bad – sorry about that! Carole’s response we she heard was, “People just don’t read things anymore.”
Ottawa has nice parks next to the river, a university in the middle of town, it’s home to the Canadian parliament and hosts many national institutions. Is any of this sounding familiar? Ottawa was pleasant without being remarkable. To be fair we only had a day there so it’s not like we got deep under the city’s skin. We took a walk around parliament hill (the buildings are an attempted clone of the English Houses of Parliament), went up the Big Ben replica clock tower and took in the leafy view. Then it was of to the gargantuan Museum of Civilization which attempts to cover the entirety of human life in Canada. It’s a large topic with an appropriately sized museum to go along with it. The building was designed by a Metis architect and we wondered whether the confusing layout was a metaphor for the Metis people struggling to find a place in Canadian culture (EDIT: Sarah would like to disassociate herself from this culturally insensitive statement. Her thoughts were that it was to give people the experience of being a minority and unfamiliar with the rules of the majority). It was the kind of museum that just kept going on and on with very extensive (and to be fair interesting) information about every period of Canadian history. They had some amazing totem poles and examples of First Nation houses. Footsore and bloated with information we wandered over to the national gallery for a cram session during their free evening on a Thursday. We had about 90 minutes to cover the major periods of Canadian art including the magnificent seven who produced some very nice modernist landscape studies, and the more generic abstract art which seems to be quite similar in every country.
We met a couple at the B&B who had spent a week in Ottawa already and rather than going to Montreal as planned were staying for an extra week in Ottawa. This seemed excessive to us, no matter how many galleries, museums and parks there are.
Ottawa would feel more unique for Australian tourists in winter, when the large canal that runs through the centre of town freezes over and the run the zamboni over it to prepare it for the ice skaters. They have winter markets on the canal as well which I can just picture under a clear winter’s sky. One member of parliament apparently used to ice skate to work every morning. As it was we bundled up against the coming Autumn and strolled among the leafy streets having a very Canadian nice time.
I’m sure there’s more to Quebec than the old walled town, but we didn’t see a great much of that, and really, why would you bother when this sumptuously historic artefact, the only remaining walled city left north of Mexico, perched above the St Lawrence river.
True, we did stay in a hotel further up the highway from the centre of Quebec city which was a bit quieter and cheaper. It was near the hotel that I lost my poutine virginity at Chez Ashton, a fast food chain that specialises in the incredibly fattening dish native to this part of the world. Elsewhere this dish is known as chips and gravy with melted cheese, but it is the small things that make all the difference to a good poutine. The fries must be incredibly crisp, the gravy flavoursome and the cheese must squeak. In an authentic poutine they use cheese curd which is soft, white, has the texture of bocconcini, and which squeaks as you eat it. If it doesn’t squeak it’s not a real poutine.
Poutine had been built up in my mind ever since Sarah and I had some chips and Lord of the Fries in Melbourne. They do a faux poutine flavour here that is fine, but Sarah assured me was nothing like the real thing. Since arriving in Canada poutine has been on my lips everywhere. It is possible to get poutine at Burger King now, but I saved myself until we arrived in the area where poutine originated Quebec. A blog dedicated to reviewing poutine even criticises the Montreal poutines as being inferior to the Quebec City varieties. For health reasons the guy who reviews poutine only eats one per week. This is a lethally fattening dish.
Chez Ashton, despite being a chain, is highly recommended for its poutine, so when we checked in at our Quebec hotel late in the day I was pretty happy to here that there was a Chez Ashton’s within walking distance. I ordered the biggest size. The biggest size is only slightly smaller than a family-size meat pie. It was delicious but to my undying shame Sarah had to help me finish it. I don’t think I need to eat too many more, but it’s our last day in Quebec today and there is a Chez Ashton in the old quarter, so I might have to bid adieu with a small serving (which I then did – it sure hit the spot on a rainy Autumn day).
Quebec City takes Montreal’s old town and notches up the history a degree or two. The old city is perched on a hill and surrounded by the original old walls and gates which formed the fortress of the town. There is a rich history of conquest here. The British captured Quebec City in 1759 after a prolonged siege. It stayed in British hands until the war of independence in the US. Quebec, rather than siding with the US, cut a deal with the British which allowed them to remain French-speaking and gave the some degree of autonomy, which is why Quebec is 90% French speaking to this day. Of course Quebec has a strong separatist movement as well but narrowly voted not to secede in 1995. You can still see graffiti in support of Quebec nationalism sprayed around town.
I can see how Quebec City would be awful in peak summer season, when Sarah last visited. There is only so much space in the old quarter and this would quickly be taken up with the zombie tourist hordes craning for the best photo opportunity and matching buskers playing the hits of The Beatles. Montreal is a bigger city more able to accommodate this influx of foreign bodies without becoming infected itself. Quebec City is a town of around 700,000 and gets 5 million tourists a year. I suspect the locals have just about quarantined the old town and get on with their lives in the more modern parts of the city.
That said, this place is popular with touristas for a reason. You couldn’t get a more quaint and pretty city outside Europe. The natural charm of the place is captivating.
Montreal has at various times been the capital and largest city in Canada. It is proudly French speaking although not at virulently so as Quebec City. Sarah had an encounter with a parking inspector that was purely French (not that we speak it). Luckily he was a Nicole Kidman fan so Sarah’s plea of being Australian in our basic French had the desired effect.
Montreal has a beautifully preserved old town near the St Lawrence river replete with cobblestones and copper roofed chateau-style buildings. It really does feel like you have been transported to Europe, especially after the Americanness of Toronto. This was also the oldest part of Canada we had been in so far, with the European founding of the city in 1642.
Montreal itself is an island surrounded by two large rivers. As you would expect it is lined with bridges on all sides. Traffic is pretty appalling. We crawled into town at peak hour when we arrived, partly due to the huge road construction efforts going on. Canadians joke that there are two seasons in Canada, winter and construction. Given the adverse climate the summer months are really the only time to work on the roads, so they go gang-busters for as long as they can, the result being traffic chaos.
In Toronto and Montreal we parked the car and took advantage of Bixi bike sharing. There are Bixi stations all over the city with bikes for rent locked in place. You can pay around $5 for 24 hours access and not pay extra if you take rides of 30 minutes or less. You can take a bike from one station and drop it off at another. For a new trip you just swipe your credit card, get a pin, then enter this next to the bike you want. You don’t need to use a helmet in these cities which makes the whole scheme much more practical.
So you can imagine us cycling our bixi bikes through the sunny cobbled streets of Montreal, lunch of saucisson, bread, cheese and olives packed, just taking in the beautiful buildings of the old quarter.
We also had a great little French-style apartment to stay in which we found on one of the short-term leasing sites that have sprung up on the internet. It was cheap, near the bixi and metro stations and very cute. It gave us the opportunity to cook food for ourself as well with some lovely produce. Fresh and meaty sausages, asparagus, and of course the North American staple, fresh corn on the cob.
Canadians don’t get a long summer but they pack a lot in. The streets of Montreal were full of bands, buskers and street fairs. After wandering through this on the Saturday night we intentionally ended up at a little jazz club. They mixed an awful martini but the music made up for it with the Yannick Rieu Trio, a very slick jazz band who pulled some awesome jazz faces, especially the drummer.
It’s a conundrum as a tourist that the best places to see are riddled with other tourists. It’s hard to get all high and mighty about this being a tourist yourself. Making the fine distinction of calling yourself a ‘traveller’ doesn’t really exempt you belonging to and forming part of that horde that tramples through all the most impressively spectacular world scenery. Coming through Canada towards the end of summer has made tourist numbers more bearable but I was reminded of the tousistic nature of the Montreal old town when I saw a respectable looking middle-aged woman swigging what looked like a small cup of methadone. I did a double-take and realised that it just a wine sampler from the nearby stall. Only tourism junkies around here.
Montreal is named after the small hill in the middle of town called Mount Royal (or in French Mont Real – real is middle French for royal). For some reason this hill is hard to see from town. You catch the odd glimpse through the buildings but it doesn’t dominate the skyline. The hill is famous now for dope smoking drummers who gather there on Sundays for a session. We took the less subdued option of walking around the hill without a map looking for giant crosses and graveyards. It was one of those walks where the journey is more important than the destination, mainly because we got lost and unwittingly did a complete circle around the summit. It was a beautiful sunny day with the light filtering through the annoyingly green leaves (no spectacular fall display for us).
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