Our next big adventure.... Two years off work and backpacking the world!!!

Friday morning early rise to get to Vancouver Airport. We took the Expo & Canada Skyrail lines. Must be the cheapest transport to an airport in the world. $4.50 each. We needed to take two flights one to Toronto then another to Edinburgh. Our total flight time and transfer times were only about 13 hours but we gained 8 hours because of time zones. We left on the 21 st and Sharon's original receipt showed we arrived on the 21 st . Our accommodation was booked for the 21 st . When we arrived in Toronto I got confused. I'm sure we would be arriving on the 22 nd . We hadn't crossed the International Date Line. I was correct. Panic set in. It was already late in Edinburgh. We sent an email but far to late to change the date. We should have already been there. We arrived in Edinburgh 6.15am. Picked up our rental for the two weeks. This time a Mini Cooper 4 door Clubman manual. At least we didn't have to wait around until late afternoon to book into our B & B....

Our Uber driver dropped us near the Union Station and told us to head down a walkway which we did. After wandering around for 15mins I checked out our offline maps and realised he directed us in the opposite direction. Back on track we only had to wait 30mins before boarding. We are in economy which means 4 nights of sleeping in a seat. Amtrak seats were far more comfortable to sleep on. These trains are 60 year’s old. Amtrak were only 50. The train has two engines, 21 carriages and is 500m long. We have carried on two bags of food and planned on just buying our dinner. There is an observation deck which both of us has taken advantage of many times. They also put on entertainment by a duet. Our first stop we were able to get off for a stretch in a town called Hornepayne. Staff made the announcement we would be arriving in 10mins. The town has a population of 1000 and their train station is a two story brick building built in 1929. Something to check out. When we arrived the station w...

Tuesday 4 th September. It was hard to get up at 3.30am. Our flight left St Johns at 5.40am. From St Johns we flew to Toronto and gained 1½ hours. Then another flight to Quebec, we arrived at 11.10am. Our accommodation was 22km away and decided Uber was the best way of getting there. We arrived at Hotel Le Chateauguay at 12.15pm. Check in time wasn't until 4.00pm. Fortunately the owner took pity on Sharon and gave us a room straight away. We had 1½ days in Quebec we needed to work out what to do. We had decided to spend the next day at Old Quebec and the rest of today at Montmorency Falls as they were only 4.3km away from our hotel. Ordered another Uber and off we went. The falls are 83m high 30m taller than Niagara Falls. There are also traces of old fortifications dating back to the Battle of Montmorency on July 31st, 1759 between the British and French. They have zip-lines over the falls and a gondola to the bottom of the falls. The falls freeze over in winter and would be f...

Wednesday 22 nd Aug was a very wet day. Sharon had organised a private taxi to pick us up at 11.30am to take us to Halifax Stanfield Airport. We were quoted $55 dollars. Sharon was ringing them at 11.45am because they still had not arrived. He arrived at 11.50am. First thing I thought was he was going to ask for more money. 300m down the road he asked what we had been quoted. Sharon tolled him $55 his reply was it should have been $75. Sharon had put in her pocket the $55 and told him that’s all we had. This is not the first-time people have tried to get more out of us after being quoted a price. When we arrived at our gate we could see our plane was going to be a bug smasher. Both of us looked at each other and all we thought about was our last flight together on a prop plane was to Stuart Island with water pouring in from the roof. The plane was a Bombardier 400 and built in Canada not England like the last one. It was a great flight with complimentary beer. When we flew over N...