Turtles, eagles, herons and geese..

huge moss covered trees

Today we walked around Stanley Park - some massive trees and beautiful woodland and views across the bay. there are some seriously old trees here but apparently 10,000 were destroyed in a storm in 2006 which must have been a massive change tot he landscape. We saw a turtle sunbathing and lots of Canada geese and even spotted two bald eagles swooping across the bay. There were some amazingly zebra striped dragonflies and quite a lot of large stately herons. Its a large area so although it was busy - sunny Saturday day out - it didn't feel crowded apart from the cycle lanes and it was a nice change to the non stop traffic and bustle of the city the day before.

turtle sunning itself

beautiful roots of a fallen tree

We walked right through the park and we wandered into town, walking through very varied suburbs but mostly looking quite affluent, we had lunch in a bar and found quite a few little street markets. We did a lot of people watching - and there are some interesting people to watch - and then we thought we might go to the art gallery but the queue was massive and it was quite alot of dosh to get in so we went and got our hire car instead....

What a hoot - we booked the economy - cheapest car we could find for 60 days and believe me I did my homework, choosing to go with reputable company as we needed the car for so long and across to the USA as well... and have ended up with a seriously fat car Mercedes... its bigger and posher then anything we have ever driven before- I just checked the contract to make sure they gave us the right car!!!! I guess we are in the land of the plentiful..... except we went downtown on the bus this morning and went a different route to before and both of us were quite shocked at the rows of homeless people living out of shopping trolleys and boxes lined up all along both sides of the street for quite a distance. It was like a shanty town ... it was very depressing to see. I guess that's big city life these days, such evident poverty surrounded by such incredibly obvious wealth!!

Back to the car scenario - it make us a bit nervous and slightly embarrassed to be driving something so large and grand esp when we are camping in a £40 tent (and people are living out of shopping trolleys) ha ha however we will try and enjoy it! We can at least sleep in the car if we need to!!!!

Tomorrow we head into the mountains via Walmart to buy sleeping mats camp stoves and the accessories we need for wild living in the outback.. and then we head for wilderness leaving wifi and internet (and comfy bed) behind so I don't know when we will post next.. depends when we find a cafe!!!

just an after thought - I think Dr Freds getting desperate for rocks......

Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful. There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...

Almost last chapter... In which our Go Stargazing team watch Astonishing Aurora Borealis seen from the deck of the Astonishing Borealis!!!

The weather brightened considerably and the snowy peaks lining our sail down the fjiords looked glorious and sparkly in the sunshine against a (mainly) blue sky back drop. More awesome scenary.... the Go Stargazing team wrapt up their lectures ... only searching for the illusive Northern Lights remained. The tension from the night before dissolved in the sunshine the forecast for Aurora borealis was looking fairly positive - it was the captains farewell cocktsil party so everyone had their gladrags on.. We ate dinner and sky remained clear so we headed back to our room and donned as many layers as we could move in and proceeded to deck 10 in anticipation of stars and northern lights..... it did not dissappiont - just we got there as the bridge announced that the lights could be seen on the starboard side of the ship. It was stunning. Slowly the intensity built. The auroral green became brighter and bigger areas appe...

Istanbul

We had a really excellent day exploring Istanbul. It's over 25 years since I went to Istanbul on a long weekend trip with somebody that I thought was my friend at the time. But with with hindsight.... Well that's another unimportant story for another time... All that time ago I did have a brilliant time and loved the city. I loved the mix of east meets west - It left me intending to return sooner than later so I was really looking forward to revisiting. I was a bit unsure about how Dr Fred would take to the place because it is enormous, it's bustling, it's noisy, it's smelly. There are lots of exciting backstreets and of course there are a lot of tourists - And I was determined to visit the Grand Bazaar... Istanbul didn't disappoint - but I have to say it was a very different city to how it had been all those years ago. It seemed even bigger, and was definitely more full of visitors. I had started with a plan that packed the ...

Planet Ruby Starrs

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