The Road to London Ontario

The Road to London Ontario

We have now been away for over seven weeks.  The first two weeks involved a convoluted journey to London and the second two weeks were spent setting up our home.  We spent week number five flinging ourselves around Florida and for the last week and a bit we have been looking after James, who has been sick with strep throat, sinusitis and conjunctivitis!!!!!  This first posting tells you about our journey to London!

Auckland

We left Adelaide on Wednesday the 24^th April and flew directly to Auckland (4 hours) on an Air New Zealand flight.  The journey was unremarkable because Alex was well occupied with his ipad and his really cool touch-screen entertainment system.  James was a STAR for the whole journey.  Alex only started to yell “I’m bored” (he doesn’t do anything quietly) for the last 10 minutes of the flight.



Alex, James and Jacqui with
Uncle Darren in the tree-house

James, Alex, Aunty Cindy and Uncle Darren

It was utterly delightful to see our dear cousins Cindy and Darren waiting to pick us up in the arrivals lounge.  Cindy and Darren are also James' Godparents.  We spent four relaxing and fun days with them.  They are doing an amazing job of renovating their house while living in it – we are looking forward to inspecting the progress on the house on our way home in late August.  The best thing about the house is the tree-house in the back yard, yes a REAL tree house!!!!


James at the fort on top of the volcano

Being shown around Auckland was very interesting.  It is a beautiful city – gorgeous parks and seaside areas.  There is also the remains of 52 volcanoes evident in and around the city!!  (Look up the “Auckland Volcanic Field” on Wikipedia).  At the top of one of the volcanoes we visited a fort built by the Māori people.  We also visited a volcanic, black sand beach.

While in Auckland we discovered a great place called MOTAT (the Museum of Transport and Technology)..............



The Linds and the O'Briens
at the entrance to MOTAT

James and Alex at MOTAT

MOTAT also had an historical village
here are James and Alex in stocks!

............and did some fun kid-stuff in an awesome outdoor playground and an indoor playground called "Big-Ups".






Alex and James mucking around with Uncle Darren

A fun afternoon at "Big Ups"

We left Auckland on Sunday evening (28^th April) and flew directly to Vancouver.

Vancouver

Hmmmmmmm......the 13 hour flight to Vancouver!!!  Again, James was a star!  Alex was OK for most of the flight.  However, we had about 3-4 periods (while everyone was sleeping) of Alex screaming, crying......and yelling “I want to go back to Australia!!!!”  When we arrived in Vancouver, we weren’t able to fit into a regular taxi with our luggage, so we hired a stretch limousine (tacky!)  This was of great fascination to the boys and a bit of fun. 

 

Arriving at the Sheraton was of great relief; we had a relaxing two nights recovering from our long-haul flight.  We only had one day to sight-see, so we called the nice limousine driver and he drove us around Vancouver!  Another beautiful city!  Vancouver is surrounded by lots of water with beautiful snow-covered mountains in the background.

 

Totem poles in Vancouver

 

Vancouver CBD

 

Room service at the Sheraton!

Montreal

Our five-hour flight to Montreal on Tuesday 30^th April was uneventful (thank goodness!!), mostly I think because Alex sat next to Chris on this flight.  Chris has a much more calming influence on our crazy three-year-old than I do!  We were picked up at the airport by a delightful French-Canadian guy by the name of Tony Leroux.  He was involved in organising the conference Chris was attending in Montreal and we stayed in the hotel where the conference was being held.  Chris presented a paper at the conference which was well received.  He only attended bits of the conference, because most of it was in French!!!  He attended the handful of presentations that were in English.

We really enjoyed Montreal it is a very vibrant and multi-cultural city.  It was a delight to walk down the street and hear everyone around you speaking French.  People were very friendly and never minded speaking English.  Montreal is known as the city of museums, and we managed six in three days!

James, Alex and I took the Metro (underground train) to visit the Biôdome, the Insectorium and the Olympic Park on the first day.  Those who are old like me will remember that the Olympic Games were held in Montreal in 1976.  Next to the Stadium is the most magnificent Biodôme!  This massive dome houses a walk-through flora and fauna habitat – four common Canadian environments to be exact: rainforest, maple forest, marine coast and sub-arctic.  The Insectorium was interesting, but a bit creepy!  Very colourful butterflies and HUGE tarantulas!!!  Another day, the boys and I went to the Museum of Canadian Stories and the Museum of Natural History.

Travelling on the Underground

The Biodome

 

 The Insectorium

On the last day, the four of us met up with a Montreal friend and colleague, Jean-Paul Gagné to do some sight-seeing.  (He is known to his friends simply as JP).  JP took us around the old part of Montreal – fascinating and beautiful.  We had the opportunity to also visit the Museum of Science (they had great exhibition of sharks – we felt very much at home) and the Museum of Archaeology.  The latter was incredible!  This was a museum built directly on top of an archaeological dig!  This illustrated the entire Montreal story from Native Canadian life, to French settlement in a number of stages, right up to current times.

The Montreal Museum of Science

The Montreal Museum of Archaeology - the archaeological dig under the museum!!!

 Our First Week in London Ontario
On Sunday the 5^th May we flew from Montreal to London on this funny little 30-seater aircraft, with a very short stop-over in Ottawa.  Thinking that we would only need a day to set up our house, we planned to stay at the Lamp Lighter Inn for a night or two.  How naive were we?!?!  It took four days to make our new house liveable and we spent our first night at 416 Platt’s Lane on Thursday night.  It then took another week to set ourselves up properly and comfortably!!!!  The Lamp-Lighter Inn is quickly worth mentioning!   Not only was it a very comfortable, family-friendly place to stay and eat, the central part of the hotel was a huge atrium with a beautiful garden, swimming pool and water slide.  Here are some pics.......

Tropical paradise at the Lamp Lighter Inn

Why did it take so long for us to set ourselves up?  Because our townhouse had basic furniture, a fridge and NOTHING else!!!!  Also, one of our days involved having to finalise Chris’ temporary work permit.  In order to obtain this permit, Chris was required to enter Canada!  Given that we were already in Canada, we had to essentially re-enter the county!  So, we drove one hour to a town called Sarnia, on the shore of Lake Huron (one of the Great Lakes) and thus on the border with the USA.  This town was the closest border location.  We had to enter the USA and turn around to re-enter Canada.  (This is called a "flag-pole procedure").  We naively thought this would be a simple 5-minute procedure.  Boy, were we wrong!  The US customs and immigration people (AKA Homeland Security) were VERY scary, intimidating people!!!!  This freakish experience lasted an hour and all four of us were scared!  When we re-entered Canada, it took about another hour for the Canadian customs and immigration people to decide whether they would give Chris his work permit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Thankfully, the Canadian customs guys were MUCH nicer!  After this experience, we made a bee-line for home and a VERY stiff drink!!!!!!!

With our house nicely set up and the Lind family starting to feel settled, we flew off to Florida for a week as Chris had another conference to attend.  Next stop, the Sirata Beach Resort, St Pete’s Beach, Florida!!!  See next posting for our Florida story.  More about our house and our life in London in another instalment!!!