The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Colombia, designed by celebrated Canadian architect Arthur Erickson, was opened in 1976 and is considered a masterpiece of modern Canadian West Coast architecture. It’s around half an hour’s drive south west of downtown on the beautiful forested Point Grey peninsula that looks out over the Strait…
Tag: travel
The Stampede to Calgary
Flying out of Vancouver you get the most incredible view of the city and its stunning coastal geography laid out beneath you. The nearby snow-capped North Shore Mountains – Grouse, Cypress, Seymour and the iconic formation of The Lions (twin mountains called The Sisters by the native Squamish people), whilst further ahead lie the vast…
Rocky Mountain High – Alberta Bound
Lake Abraham is some 194 kilometres north of Banff towards Jasper along the Icefields Parkway, Highway 93, known as one of the most beautiful roads on the planet. And that’s no exaggeration, the scenery on this drive is out of this world with soaring snow-covered rocky peaks, snow-laden forests, frozen lakes, glacial valleys, vast icefields…
O Canada, At Last!
It’s our annual ‘Escape the FNQ Heat’ time of year. And this year our cold destination is Canada and, more specifically, Vancouver. A first time for us, so exciting to see a new country and a city we’ve always wanted to visit. Vancouver is often compared to Sydney (I’ve heard this a lot) – for…
A Taste of Port
We were gifted a 3-night ‘staycation’ in Port Douglas by family (thank you G&R), so we nipped up the Great Barrier Reef Drive (around 45 mins from Clifton Beach) – one of Australia’s most spectacular roads, hugging the Coral Sea with the rugged rainforest covered Macalister Ranges tumbling down to touch the reef itself. Cyclone…
Cassowary Capers
One of our ‘bucket list’ things to see and do when we moved up to Far North Queensland was to encounter a Cassowary in the wild. Well, we’ve been to the Daintree many times and sadly had no luck. We even live beneath the Macalister Mountain Ranges – a wild Cassowary protectorate… but since it’s…
José Paronella’s Dream
Paronella Park is a mystical rainforest wonderland around 130ks south of Cairns set in the foothills of the towering Mt Bartle Frere (1622m), the Wooroonooran National Park and the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. José Paronella, an entrepreneurial and visionary Spanish immigrant arrived in the area in 1914, working hard yakka in the surrounding sugarcane…
In The Bleak Mid-Winter (With Glorious Sunny Bits)
We were down in Melbourne for a short winter break, a bit of culture and a catch up with friends. It’s a three-and-half hour flight from Cairns to Melbourne (direct), some 2,817 kilometres away – that’s the equivalent of London to Moscow and, let me tell you, it felt like Moscow, with an arrival temperature…
The Yin and Yang of Shinjuku
There’s no denying that Shinjuku is one of Tokyo’s most colourful districts, in so many ways. It’s famous for its extravagant shopping, the busiest train station in the world (with over 3.2 million people passing through on any given day). Its immense crowds thronging day and night. It’s crazy technicolour neon-bling and 3D billboards. It’s…
Ice Ice Baby – The Sapporo Ice Festival in Susukino
There’s another aspect to the Sapporo Snow Festival, the Ice Festival in Susukino (which bizarrely translates as “Zebra Grass Fields” – go figure) the red-light district of Sapporo, one of the largest of its kind in all of Japan (again, go figure!) far away from kid-friendly Odori Park with its cutesy-pie Anime snow sculptures. Susukino…
Travels With My Ant 