Monday, July 23, 2007

USA and Canadia

Yes - its really called Canadia - the way that Aussies call Aluminum Aluminium. But not really, except that people always believe us and its hella fun.

So - I flew to San Francisco - fabulous city, and after a good sleep hired a car and drove 6 hours to Tuolumne Meadows to climb with some great friends our mine I was over the moon were in the area at the same time as me. Long slabs in the sun, high altitude, got a wee bit sunburnt, but had fun.







Got back into San Fran in time for the 4th of July, and after an evening of fireworks I spent some time at the University of California, Berkeley, where I had just as much fun meeting a research group and got drunk at the bar with them before chasing racoons on my way back to the uni accommodation, which was also great.



I had one last day in SF - where I went on a missing to see the Golden Gate bridge (as sooo many others have before me) only to be stopped by the famous fog. I even caught a ferry to Sausalito and went right by the bridge:




Which of course, I couldn't see. Then, I went back to the SF side and walked from the Bay bridge, which was gorgeously clear:



to the Golden Gate bridge (BIG walk - forced to buy expensive shoes on the way) to get the following stunning view:




Then I flew to Monteal - another fabulous city, where I was lucky enough to have some playmates join me...


There was LOTS of eating:



touristy observation:





Lots of partying too -
At the Jazz festival:



at the 80's club (where my bum got us free drinks):


Of course, I attended a really great conference during all of this, meeting up with some collaborators and launching a whole batch of new projects. I took Clare along to the conference dinner, where we (shock, horror!) drank:



and continued the drinking with my collaborator out to a bar and drank some more and played Clue, which I love:



There was shopping, and we found some interesting stores where miles away Mikl watched nervously as our joint account finances plummeted



We went to great circus act for the bargain price of $6 and Karin and I saw an Aussie band that I couldn't get tickets to in Australia:



Karin and I spent our last day at La Rhonde, the rollercoaster capital of Montreal












Which also included the famous "Vampire" rollercoaster:



Yay!

1 Comments:

Blogger Karinanne said...

Awesome recap. It was such a fun time!

11:18 am  

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