Sudbury, Ontario

My brother Ben has been living in Sudbury for about three years, and I finally got up to visit him this spring. It turns out that (in spring, at least) Sudbury is a very pretty town, nestled in the hills around Ramsey Lake.



Click the image for more photos

According to Ben, a week or so earlier - before all the leaves were out on the trees - the hills were all just black rock, but when I got there on the May long weekend, it was a perfect spring weekend, green leaves on the trees, lilacs in full bloom, blue skies, and possibly most important, pre-mosquitos!

Which was a good thing, because Ben is not one to sit around and relax, and he decided that after my flight from Regina to Toronto on Friday (which incidentally, had transferred through Calgary) and then from Toronto to Sudbury on Saturday I had done enough sitting for at least a week, and so we did a fair amount of walking. And mosquitos are plain and simply drawn to me. Not a trait I'm particularly fond of, really.

Cinque Terre

Part of the series - Planning Paris and Tuscany



I don't really think I need to say anything more about why I want to go here...

The Cinque Terre is a string of five villages along the Ligurian coast of Italy. It also happens to be only an hour's drive away from Lucca, where we are staying in a villa.

Day trip, Here We Come!!!

Driving in Italy

Part of the series: Planning Paris and Tuscany

So, as part of my trip planning for Tuscany, I have been reading through TripAdvisor. One of the articles I happened upon was all about driving in Italy, and as I am planning on doing a bit of that, I was very interested.

Apparently, I need to apply for an international driver's licence!!! Who knew?!!?

Also, there are these things called ZTL; Limited Traffic Zones, that are camera-policed, and you will end up with a ticket if you miss the signs.

• Tripadvisor article
• Image of ZTL signs in Florence

They gave me a Truck!

Part of the series: Experiencing Saskatchewan


Until this weekend, I have to say I never understood the appeal of driving a huge truck.

I get it now. I called on Saturday to get an economy car, and none were available, but: "we do have a pickup on special for $15.99 a day, would that work?" Oh, yes, it absolutely would work for me, thank you very much!

I had to jump a little to get into it, but I went exploring, got lost a little bit, and generally had a blast.

I had planned, a few weeks ago, to go touring through the Qu'Appelle Valley, which is a very large crack in the otherwise flat landscape of Saskatchewan that runs East-West just north of Regina. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, the weather was miserable - grey and rainy all weekend.



Saturday was absolutely beautiful, I had a truck, a brand new camera to test, and my GPS, and so off I headed.

 



Blue line = Road taken; Green line = Wrong turn; Red line = Missed turn

 A few highlights to look out for as you go through the photo album are:

• As labeled in my GPS - "Unpaved road"
• Standard intersection signage when traveling on grid roads
• Picture of a slough (why this is important, refer to the story titled "Bump Down" There)

Enjoy!

Click the image for more photos



"Bump Down" There!

Part of the series: Experiencing Saskatchewan

It was an overcast, windy Sunday, and Ben, Vinessa and I were leaving Erika and Riley's after lunch to go pick up Vinessa's car that she had loaned to a girl whose car had broken down... I'm not sure of all the details, but I did know that we were heading across country to this little town a bit further north.

We were in an extended cab pickup, Ben driving, Vinessa shotgun, and me back seat. (just to assist with the visual imagery)

I discovered during the drive that neither Ben nor Vinessa really knew the route they wanted to take, and so me and my trusty iPhone ended up guiding us out of the maze of grid roads that we ended up on.

As we were navigating, we noticed a huge flock of snow geese off to the left, and before I knew what was happening, the conversation went like this:

Ben: Check out that huge flock of geese!
Anna: What kind of geese?
Ben: Snow geese.
Anna: Cool. (losing interest and looking out across the fields at something else)
Vinessa: Ben, why don't we just bump down there and check them out?
Ben: Sure.
Anna: (attention RAPIDLY returning to the conversation AND the location of the geese, way off in the middle of a field) ... What do you mean "Bump Down There"!?!?!
Vinessa: (as Ben drives straight off the road instead of turning the corner) Oh, you know, just "bump down there."
Anna: Oh.

...Truck bumping along through the field towards the geese...

Vinessa: Ben, maybe this wasn't a good idea. What if we run into a sloo*?
Anna: What's a Sloo!?!?!?!
Vinessa: (laughing too hard to answer me...)

Saskatchewan: Land of the Living Sky Things People Only Do Here Because You Can't Do Them Anywhere Else. Or so my experience is proving to me.

Click the image for more photos

* Slough (pronounced sloo): (in the prairies) a large hole where water collects or the water in such a hole

Definition provided by Dictionary.com