Well, it would seem that life has quickly outpaced my ability to write about it (go figure). Here we are in early September, and yet my blog seems stuck somewhere back in the wilds of Northwestern China circa early July. I’m leaving for London in a week and I still haven’t managed to finish my travel journals. Oops.
I guess it is because I’ve been having so much fun playing tourist in my own neck of the woods. I’ve been approaching once familiar and mundane scenes with a completely new and rather sinocized perspective, aka “the sky is so blue!” syndrome. From exploring Old Montreal to canoeing on an isolated lake in pristine Quebec wilderness, I’ve been having a grand old time.
Today I just got back from a weeklong trip that took me through two of my favourite places on earth: New England and New York City. They have both had a significant effect on my life; the former because I spent a month there every summer for sixteen years, the latter because I was so frikkin’ obsessed with it when I was a kid. I hadn’t been down to the States since 1999, so it was great to visit the southern neighbour that is so familiar, yet still so very different. In Canada, a “small” beverage is not larger than a bucket. : )
For those very few dedicated readers wondering where China fits into all this, fear not: I still have travel journals from Turpan and Dunhuang to post here, and they definitely feature some of the more amusing experiences from the whole trip. But as Ape Rifle changes continents once again and moves further away from life in China, I’m not sure which direction this blog will take. I will still follow everything of interest in China-related news, but sadly there will be no more first-hand tales of life in the Middle Kingdom. Perhaps we will have to settle for accounts of mangled Mandarin in the Chinese eateries of London.
So to reflect the gradual move away from China that this blog must make, I’ll take the lazy way out and post some pictures of the places I’ve explored this summer in North America.
Montreal, Ottawa, Rhode Island and New York will all, in good time,get the dedicated posts they deserve. For starters, though, I offer some simple eye candy.
Hotel-de-Ville
Montreal, Quebec
Boulevard Rene-Levesque
Montreal, Quebec
St-Lawrence River
Montreal, Quebec
Parliament Hill
Ottawa, Ontario
Chateau Laurier
Ottawa, Ontario
“Trout Lake”
North of Shawinigan, Quebec
Newport, Rhode Island, USA
7th Avenue
New York, NY
Downtown Canyons
New York, NY
Before I start rambling on about my adventures on this continent, however, I will give my China experience the proper closure it deserves. So, next up and last stops: Turpan, Xinjiang and Dunhuang, Gansu.