We were fascinated (and overwhelmed) by the enormous halls of antiquities on display at the Louvre – but got a giggle out of this chunk of an Egyptian frieze showing a man doing I’m-not-sure-what to a cow, and the cow exclaiming “THRONE SNAKE BIRD SUN FLAIL!”. I’d probably say the same thing, given the circumstances. [...]

[Read more →]

Natasha and I have just returned from an unbelievably epic 3-week grand tour of Europe! Over 32 cities in 11 countries in only 21 days – it was exhausting but so exciting and inspiring.
While we were touring around I noticed that a lot of the local names (endonyms) for places were not very difficult [...]

[Read more →]

I really like the little video these guys have put together – it sortof reminds of me of “Where in the world is Matt”, and it’s getting me all excited about our upcoming Europe trip.

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Also – very nice piano score.
Edit: I’ve been duped, sortof. The Washington [...]

[Read more →]

I sleep a little easier every night since visiting the fortress at Quebec City – knowing that when invaders try to conquer the citadel, Canada’s elite royal guard have a secret weapon up their sleeve. State-of-the-art blue felt body armour. Razor-sharp solid golden horns. A breed distantly related to killer whales and ferocious arctic wolves. [...]

[Read more →]

During our train stopover in Montreal, Natasha and I stumbled into an opportunity to check out the insanely cool “Bodies: The Exhibition” event taking place at the Eaton Centre. I’d read about it in magazines – a german scientist (Gunther von Hagens) came up with a plastination method that treats cadavers so that all of [...]

[Read more →]

Natasha and I joined some visiting friends on a haunted walk of Ottawa! I’m probably the last guy you’d want to invite on a haunted anything, but I bit my tongue and had a lot of fun. I learned a few things too – did you know that the east end of Sparks Street is [...]

[Read more →]

We hitched a ride with some friends bound for Toronto over the weekend and visited the amazing Niagara Falls! Super cool!

The falls themselves were beautiful and incredible, but the surrounding tourist traps were an eyesore. I feel bad for people who’s first impression of Canada are the falls and then the wax serial killer museum.  [...]

[Read more →]

Over the Easter long weekend Natasha and I joined some friends headed up to a maple-syrup-producing “Cabane a Sucre” on the other side of Gatineau, called Le Domaine De L’Ange Gardien. It takes about 40 minutes to get out there, driving highway 50 completely skirting around downtown Gatineau and then following pretty clearly-marked signs through [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve been having really crazily vivid dreams lately. There’s a bunch of elaborate storylines every night, but they all seem to share an aspect of tremendous physical effort. I’m either running flat-out to catch a train, or trying to lift construction equipment, or leaping through windows in desperation. I wake up feeling exhausted. Which is [...]

[Read more →]

A fuller post is coming once I have a chance to decompress, but we drove 856km today to get into Ottawa just before dusk. It was another beautiful (but long) day of driving! I really enjoyed the freeway through Sudbury, and the 17 east of North Bay. There’s really nothing out there except beautiful endless [...]

[Read more →]