We love you Toronto

After a couple of nights out in Brampton and awesome hangouts with my friend Andie we are now in the incredible city of Toronto. Though we have only been in Toronto for not even half a day I think it's safe to say that we have completely fallen in love with the city. I will be sure to post some photos when we get to a computer so you can try and understand what I mean.

Anyway, we are now in our third hostel of the trip and this one is a million times better than the one we stayed at in Vancouver. 

The whole street that we are staying on is actually owned by the hostel so we actually have our own room in a little house which is kind of cool.

After arriving in the city and finding out that we couldn't check in for an hour or so we decided to explore Toronto in search of some lunch. And of course we found a hugeee shopping centre with a crazy big food court. This food court had everything you could possibly want to eat, which we found in the form of poutine of course (butter chicken poutine as well, can you believe it?).

After our delicious poutine we realised that the Hockey Hall of Fame was just down the road so we decided that shopping could wait for tomorrow.

We were both in pure heaven inside the Hockey Hall of Fame. We were both overwhelmed by an awesome (and cheap) NHL gift store, abundance of jerseys, pucks and old memorabilia. Kristian got the chance to be a goalie (he may have received a puck or two to the body, photos of bruises will come soon) and got to shoot a few goals aswell.

But the definite highlight of the day was the chance to not only see but to touch the incredible NHL Stanley Cup. We sucked it up and paid the $10 for a few photos with the cup, which we are very glad we did now as we found out that the cup is only in the Hall of Fame for 65 days a year, so we were super lucky to have seen it.

  

After spending a fair while in the Hall of Fame it was time to retire back to our room and rest our little tired legs, do some laundry and watch some good ol' Sons of Anarchy.

We have a jam packed new fext days here in Toronto which includes going to a baseball game, visiting Niagra Falls, going up the CN tower, lots of shopping, a brewery tour with Andie and her friends and a whole lot more.

So be sure to check the blog in a couple of days and we will update you all on more of our adventures.

Hope everyone is well 

Lauren & Kristian

:)

Photos from Moraine Lake, Lake Louise, Banff & Calgary (with running commentary)

It's been a little bit difficult of late to find a computer that will allow us to upload some of our ever growing 800 odd photos, but finally, here in Brampton just outside of Toronto, we have found such so Enjoy!

(I'll provide a little commentary along the way!)

Moriane Lake - Banff

The next couple of photos were taken on the tour we tagged along on that took us to visit Moraine Lake and Lake Louise. Even though Lake Louise is the famous lake, mostly because of the uber expensive chateau placed on the foreshore, Moraine lake (in my opinion, Kristian) was the most beautiful lake. The diversity of the area made it unlike anything we'd ever seen. There was obviously the centrepoint - the turquoise lake that run from the glacier just above it between the mountain ridges, you had the endless trees surrounding anything and everything, then a random - but very large- rock pile at the shore, in which most photos were taken off as it provided a very good vantage point.

View from the top of the Rock Pile at Moraine Lake

The photo above and below were the easiest photos I have ever taken. They are two incredibly different and distinctive landscapes, but funnily enough, I had not moved when taking both photos' If you could imagine, I took a photo of the trees and mountains, then literally turned around and took a photo of Moraine Lake. Stunning.

View of Moraine Lake from the top of the Rock Pile

Panorama shot of Moraine Lake

This panorama shot literally blew my mind. It was taken from atop the rock pile of the surrounding area, and to get the full view you MUST click on it to enlarge it. The funny thing is, the water looks almost fake or touched up, but it was literally that colour, it was almost hard to believe!

Lake Louise

Above and below were some shots from Lake Louise. It had a huge amount of natural beauty by itself, but if you look below, the chateau on (almost) the waters edge really made the place stand out. I did feel sorry for the guests at the chateau, paying $450+ a night, the hotel itself and the Lake Louise grounds were a huge tourist attraction, hence there was an immense amount of tourists in the area (and you were even allowed in the hotel itself!), which if I were staying there, would have detracted from the overall serenity of the experience..

Lake Louise

The Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise

Panorama shot of Lake Louise

Like I said before, if you read that that the photo is a panorama in the little caption, you MUST click on it!

Copying the crazy Koreans sitting infront of us on the bus

This photo above may appear kind of bizarre, but this one is merely on here for us to have a laugh. The story behind it was that while sitting on the bus to Lake Louise and moraine lake, we were sitting behind two Korean tourists. They were quite affectionate towards each other, which Lauren thought was nice. However when that affection failed to cease and desist after 50 minutes on a bus, it got kind of weird. Like we're talking 'get a room' kind of stuff every 1-2 minutes over a 50 minute period. And it didn't end there. The girl insisted on feeding the poor man, putting lip balm on his lips, even sucking on his sore bottom lip, and taking endless selfiss,it was just gross. This went on for 4 hours, or the entire tour, and we were stuck behind being forced to watch. 

Our little 'home away from home' in Banff - the HI Hostel.

Nothing too special about this picture, it was our hostel in banff for 2 separate nights in between stays at the Rimrock (imagine how hard it was to go from the Rimrock back to this!). It wasn't a bad place to stay, the only notable thing about the experience was we had one German man staying with us, and the only English he knew (or as much as we could suffice) was 'cool'. So naturally, that made for interesting conversation. Not.

Watching the NY Rangers train in Banff, Helloooo Brian Boyle!

We were very lucky to have seen the NY Rangers in such a small initiate training session like this, and being so close, it was hilarious to watch Lauren crap her pants when a puck would come flying our way.

More of the training session

Banff Greyhound bus station

The apartment block where we were staying in Calgary

This was the apartment block we were staying in when the developing story of Axe Murders was conceived. 

Canada has a crazy amount of squirrels. We are thinking of bringing one home for Jax & Charlie.

This is an amazing action shot. 

Everyone hangs out at the park on the weekend in Calgary

Calgary is a little bit of a strange place. Its not like Melbourne or a lot of other places for that matter, solely based on one thing. The CBD or Downtown is supposedly NOT the place to be. Generally all the coolest places to go/see/eat/drink are always located in the city, and because of such reason, the city is always extremely busy, especially on weekends. Calgary is not like this. Its a pretty city, but damn there is nothing to do! Nor eat, nor anything. If you are looking for something to do, you have 3 options: 1) walk around and view various parks and streets because they look nice 2) walk over the overpasses that connect blocks, in which supposedly Calgary is famous for (and what made me laugh is that this is the 5th best thing to do in Calgary as voted by tourists!) 3) Stay home. Simple. There's a chance youll have more fun (and probably find more things to do, such as wash the dishes, sweep or clean something).

Nonetheless, despite my rather plain outlook on Calgary, it is a genuinely nice place, you should go there, then we can discuss how little there is to do! 

The Peace Bridge - Calgary

This is probably the coolest thing in Calgary, in the least, its probably the funkiest.

Ribs & Poutine (chips, cheese & gravy) have been a staple in Canada

View of Calgary City

This is little Harley, our Air BnB hosts dog. He was a bit of a sweetie

This little guy was incredibly cute, and a refreshing glimpse of our little jaxy boy who is being missed. 

The Calgary Tower

This is one of the worlds smallest viewing towers, ever. Or if your an optimist, its the worlds 55th largest, but does that really compliment its size?

Stephen Ave - Calgary

Funky building in Calgary

These two photos were to basically show everyone that Calgary has a bit of funk. So yeah,. that's it.

On our last morning in Calgary we walked to a diner which we had read about online, and it turns out the 15 minute walk was worth it! Below is the breakfast menu.

Read the second order from the bottom on the left hand side, then scroll down.

Our delicious breakfasts & shakes!

A view inside Kristian's "every topping" omelette

I know I said that weird space age bridge was the coolest thing in Calgary, but I'm wrong, dead wrong. Australia, meet omelette. Or omelette done right by Canadians. I warn you though, it does come with a side of heart attack, and you'll understand why when you read the menu posted just above (Second bottom order on the left hand side). 

Nonetheless, simply divine. Afterwards I didn't need to eat for 11 hours, which must be some form of record for myself.

Yesterday afternoon we left Calgary to fly to Toronto. The flight was a bit over 3 hours which went by very quickly due to the fact we had cable TV on the plane so we could watch a whole lot of shows on hockey.

We are now in Brampton which is just outside Toronto visiting Lauren's friend Andy. Tomorrow we are heading into the city for a few days so we will post again soon.

Hope you're all well.

Kristian & Lauren

Axe murderers? No, just friendly and gassy people in Calgary.

I should probably explain the start of today's title right away, as its generally not something anyone wants to see/hear. Well, as you all know we are in Calgary at the moment, and have been for the past 2 days, and what is unique about our stay in Calgary is our accommodation. Its not your conventional hotel or hostel, its actually a strangers house. Yes, we've rented out a room in someone's house that we've never even met. Sounds a bit iffy and daunting at first glance, and that's exactly how it felt that first night. After getting off the greyhound bus from banff, we walked to our new faux home, a nice new apartment block one suburb from downtown. We grabbed the keys from a lockbox in the lobby and proceeded to check out the place in which we were staying. Upon entering the apartment we noticed nobody was home, so we chucked our bags in the room designated for us and check the place out. It felt quite strange going into a strangers house when they were not home and putting your stuff in a random room, but we did so anyway.

After hanging around in the room for a bit, we noticed someone was home, in the bedroom next to us. We thought they'd come out and welcome us and have a little chat, but no, they didn't. So we went out to grab some dinner in the city. When we came back, still no one in the house, but then we realized they were in their room again. Strange. The hours ticked by, and it came to 10:30pm, we had still not seen anyone. Getting stranger. Queue Laurens panic. "I don't feel comfortable here, there is someone home but they haven't even come out to greet us or anything, what if they are an Axe murderer? Queue hysteria. " I want to leave, I want to go to a hotel, I don't like this....mer mer mer mer, what if they come in and murder us in the middle of the night?" I tried to console her, telling her I'll sleep with one eye open, nothing was working. At this point we were sitting up, I knew if I didn't do anything she wouldn't sleep and we were in for a horrible night. I knew drastic circumstances called for drastic action, and that action came in the form of a site that analyzed farts, giving riveting descriptions of the many types of forms of gassy excretions. While a very strange thing to do, it worked like a charm at 12:30, and put Lauren to sleep in no more than 2 minutes. Finally time to rest.

The next morning we awoke, rather thankfully, as it meant we were alive, and not staying with Axe murders. Quite the contrary, a young girl our age and her boyfriend that turned out to be very accommodating and friendly. Just if we'd known that 12 hours prior. They also had a little dog, the primary reason why we stayed here, and he's awesome, a little energetic jax that loves to play.

So our opinion on calgarians had vastly improved, but it was set to improve even further. We had read that they were very friendly, and that was not wrong. Crossing the road, cars stop for you and let you walk, even on a freeway exit, smiling and waving to you as you interrupt their commute. Even when buying things, we were ratcheting around for 10c change, and before we could find it, a lady had already given the merchant 10c for us and didn't bat an eye lid. How nice hey? Take note people in Melbourne! People also smile, a rarity in Melbourne city. Its just nice.

Then you got other calgarians that like to blow massive pockets of air out of their backsides, in the middle of the busy street. I swear my hair parted as I walked behind one man that let his fog horn off as I walked behind it. But its all in good fun I suppose?

We are off to the hockey now as well to see the Calgary flames vs New York rangers which should be awesome fun. So we will post photos tomorrow night along with the rest of Banff when we arrive in Toronto.

So until then, hope everyone's well!
Kristian & Lauren.

Leaving paradise behind.

Yesterday was our last day in high altitude paradise, yes it was the end of our time in Banff. The place is stunning, everywhere you look, you see natural beauty. Every animal, tree, mountain and glacier was truly spectacular. But not just that, the main street was flawless in every way, the buildings had an old colonial feel, the streets were clean and decorative, the scenery truly monumental in every direction and an endless amount of gift shops (its primarily a tourist town for either the scenery or snow depending on the time of year). But like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words so I'll hold out on my descriptions until I post more photos tomorrow.

So back to what we did yesterday. After our triumphant mountain hike, which literally almost killed Lauren, we rather willingly decided to take the morning off, then decided to book a short tour in which all the work was done for us. That tour happened to be to the rather famous lake louise and lesser known - but arguably more beautiful - moraine lake. First up was moraine lake, turquoise blue water surrounded by a massive natural rock pile and of course big mountains with glaciers overhanging. We will post photos to properly showcase the area. After a quick stroll, we headed to Lake Louise to visit the lake itself and the Fairmont chateau. Again photos can only do justice to how grand the chateau was and the turquoise water of the lake.

That brings us to today, funnily enough the lady on the tour bus informed us that the New York Rangers were in town and holding training sessions open to the public. So naturally, anything hockey, we awoke nice and early to secure some good viewing points around the tiny rink. It was awesome to see the various training techniques employed throughout the session, but unfortunately an infamous signature from any player was not accomplished.

After watching the rangers practice, we left the lovely town of Banff to head towards Calgary, which is plainly described as a 'working city'. But I think that's a bit of an understatement, yes it is a launching pad for anyone visiting the rockies due to its close proximity (1.5 hours drive) but there is more than meets the eye when looking closely at this small city. Surprisingly, and a telling sign, was that the first thing that came to mind was that the main strip drew a somewhat striking resemblance to Rose street in Edinburgh Scotland, which is a massive compliment if I don't say.

We are heading back in tomorrow for a better look and explore so we will upload some photos to show you some of the things I was just describing to you.

So until then, hope everyone's well and we will talk soon.
Kristian & Lauren.

Climbing a Mountain

 So there hasn't been an incredible amount of things going lately mostly because we have been taking it easy and enjoying the tranquil town of Banff. The place is beautiful, as you can obviously see from the photo`s. We were very fortunate to get a very cold day on the first day we arrived, which would sound pretty crappy, but it did produce quite a bit of snow which is unusually early for this time of year, so it made our views exceptionally better.

This is the view we woke up to on the first morning at The Rimrock Resort

Lets start with the hotel. Now, this hotel, the Rimrock Hotel Resort, is exceptional. But what makes it even better is that we had previously come from a hostel, which to its credit was quite a nice one, but hostel and 5 star hotel are worlds apart. And to make things even nicer, we didn't have weird people sleeping in the same room as us! That was indeed very strange, considering we had woken them up on our arrival at 10:30pm and they just starred blankly into our souls because we had disturbed their slumber. But enough on that, back to the hotel. While the hotel was grand, the view was simply sublime. If you refer to the picture above, that was the view through our 4m x 3m landscape window, and it was largely helped by being put on the highest floor, which for the life of me I can`t understand why they granted my request considering we only paid $72 a night! (even the reception was stunned at the price).


A snow topped mountain right by our hotel





We decided to take it easy once we arrived in our luxury hotel, so went spent a couple of hours admiring the view and watching cable TV, because it was the first time we had ever had TV ANYWHERE, so naturally it was amazing. 

 

The start of our 3 hour hike up Sulphur Mountain

 

After a short relax, I decided we should climb a mountain. But not any old mountain, I wanted one of the biggest and steepest. Lauren called me crazy, but I think she was the crazy one when she decided to come with me. Now, let me first explain a couple of things. This hike was meant to be around 5.5km, which doesn't sound like a lot, probably would take the average person 1 hour and 20 minutes to walk that distance in suburbia. But this wasn't suburbia, far from it, turns out we chosen to climb one of the steepest mountains, and what made it worse was when we were starting to tire, after the first 10 minutes of the 3 hour hike, we were constantly reminded that there was a gondola effortlessly taking people to the top in under 4 minutes. But it was all in good fun. That was until the 2 hour, Lauren had hit the 6 stages of grief, which involves, yelling at trees, myself and throwing rocks over the small cliff faces in frustration and kicking the heads off snowmen (yes, we were walking up a steep incline path that was eventually covered in snow!). She then resorted to having a small weep, followed by more yelling, and then came acceptance after merely 40 minutes of the cycle, I call that progress. View below for images on the hike.



View of the Banff Gondola during the hike
 



Half way up incredibly tired selfie

One of the incredible views we saw during the hike

Finally made it to the top! We were super tired as you can tell by Kristian`s facial expression.

This face I am pulling here is of pure relief. You see, not only was the 3 hours one of the most grueling hikes of my life, but I also had to literally push Lauren up the mountain during the last hour. Her body had given up, and the only progress we were making was penguin steps, which honestly rolling up the mountain would have been quicker.


But the view from the top was worth it (click on picture to see it better)
 

But as you can see, it was all worth it! The views were spectacular at the summit. But the problem was, there was an observatory in view approximately 1.2km`s away, in which I had the urge to view (being the little ADHD kid I am). I`ll upload some of my 360 degrees photo`s from that later tonight. While grueling, it was worth it. 

View of Banff from the top of Sulphur Mountain

 



All of our hard work was rewarded by getting these incredible pork rib bites for dinner!

 

This little dry rib pieces are literally one of the best human foods you can buy. Lauren is literally drooling at the sight of them while I write.

And RIIIIIBS!

 

 

We are still trying to work out the formatting on blogger, so please excuse this last paragraph being incredibly small. We will endeavor to sort out this problem.

 

We are off to Lake Louise and Moraine Lake today for a quick little guided tour, so we will upload some photos from that most likely tomorrow.

 

Until then,

Kristian & Lauren.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snow in Banff!

Hi everyone,
Once again this post is going to be mainly photos we have taken the past few days.
We are now in the amazing Rimrock Resort Hotel, and it is just unbelievable.
I will post some photos of our room and the view below. Also as the title of the blog states it is snowing here in Banff!

Kristian`s Japa Dog!



For all the men - The BC Lions (Football) Cheerleeders

Breakfast for dinner



Our first Dairy Queen Blizzard - holding it upside down and it not falling out is one of its big selling points

Pretty Gastown - Vancouver

Strolling around Gastown & bought a rose off a homeless man

 

Canucks & Sharks warming up



The Canucks about to come on the ice
 



Fight!!
 

Fin, the Canucks mascot

 



Our happy faces being right on the ice
 



Our `this bus ride is way to long` faces
 



One of our many views from the bus to Banff
 



Another lovely view from the bus.

Beautiful but rainy Banff
 

 



The rest of the Hotel from our room

 



Pretty much up in the clouds

 

Our incredible view

 

Banff Avenue

Delicious dinner :)



View from the main street in Banff

The mountains surrounding Banff

View from the end of the main street
 

Kristian thinks he`s a bit of a model.....




Anyway that's enough photos for now.
Will post again tomorrow hopefully, but for now its time to watch cable and enjoy the view from our ginormous bed!

Love
Lauren & Kristian
xx