Good day to you all from Washington DC National airport. A lot has happened since last updating. We left USA and entered into Canada. I'm aware that doing so and writing about it renders the blog title slightly redundant, but that's just a small matter. Unfortunately I can't load photos right now and my plane boards in 20 minutes so it's not the most thorough of reports on our final days road-tripping.
To save repeating myself and at the same time maintaining the smallest level of suspense to make you come back to read again, I'll give only a few details.
We spent 2 days on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. I'd never been to Canada before so this was fun. We stayed in our first hostel of the trip in downtown Victoria. It's a pretty place, very British and well the sun shone while we were there during the day time so we have fond memories.
On our drive to Nanaimo to hop across from Vancouver Island to the mainland, we took a mini pilgrimage to a town called 'Duncan'. The myth of our Duncan had grown throughout the trip and locals along the way now knew him as an 8 foot 12 giant. Canadians, however, heard of this and busted out many humungous totem poles and placed them in Duncan, thus making our trip to Duncan with Duncan more special.
Once on the mainland we went to Vancouver - the first time we'd been without reservations, friends, GPS or any clue where we were going. I did find myself driving up a bicycle path at one point, but we'll smudge over that for now. It was a very international feeling city, with plenty of accent from far-off places around the world. Downtown, where we hosteled, was a nice size and allowed easy walking days. Only easy if you decide not to walk all day and cover about 20km. Walking through Stanley Park in order to stay warm, we covered almost every trail. This allowed us to recall every place we had stayed on the trip and truly appreciate what we had accomplished.
On the day of my Canadian departure we had a mini mistake as I left without taking Duncan's car keys but managed to fight my way back through traffic to find the hostel and the keys.
I spent one more night in Seattle before flying over to Washington DC - just over 2300 miles in 5 hours. That sort of pace rivals Mabel's driving power! I left Mabel in Seattle to sell with friends for those concerned about her well-being. In DC I re-visited some of my favourite sites as well as some areas we'd not been able to get to earlier in our trip. Thankfully I didn't pick the Air + Space museum, otherwise I'd have been evacuated yesterday afternoon due to a security breach leaving an entire section of The Mall teeming with Police, tv camera crews and 'do not cross' tape everywhere. I also got to spend some time with a friend I hadn't seen since 2004 who we'd planned to meet earlier in the trip but hadn't been able to. We had much to catch up on and it was definitely a good way to end my trip.
I know find myself in DC National airport about to board the 1st of my 4 flights in the next 30 hours: DC - Atlanta; Atlanta - Detroit; Detroit - Amsterdam; Amsterdam - Aberdeen. Once the jetlag clears back home I'll fill in the details of what I've just written.
Scotland here I come!
