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Things I learned during my trip to Canada
17 years ago
General
19 hours on planes (5 + 14, with 2.5 hours at LAX inbetween) is not really a whole lot of fun.
TSA guys are a bit... nuts. I got padded down and my bags swabbed; welcome to America!
Canada is nice. Actually, what I saw of Canada seemed quite similar to what I envisaged the U.S. to be (probably moreso than Canadians may like to admit) only a bit further north.
The mountains are big. Also, pretty. I managed a peek around Banff and Lake Louise. Also, cool. I don't dare imagine what winter is like.
The cars are big, too. Most of the utes you see around are freaking huge, though they frequently carry (next to) nothing in the tray. The roads are pretty expansive, too.
And speaking of things big, the splash-zone of North American toilets is huge. No hope of getting away with a silent rim-shot when there's no rim left to hit.
Niagara Falls is also big. It's hard to get an idea of how big the falls are, how wide the feed river is, and how deep the outflow river is without seeing it personally. And it's pretty. Except for all the kitsch crap people have built around it. That shit is fugly.
You can stay in Canada for nearly two weeks and somehow not try maple syrup. :-/
Lemonade is typically not carbonated. Lame. I love lemon soft-drink (as it's called back home), and carbonated lemonade can be hard to find. (I did find some eventually, at 99c/2L. Bargain!)
Sprite contains "natural lemon-lime flavours". Apparently. ...Maybe if you squint real hard and believe it does. See, they don't say that back home, because they'd get the ACCC on their arses for misleading advertising.
Salt and vinegar chip packets are aqua coloured, not purple.
Working out how much tip to leave is a really annoying use of time that could be better spent.
I probably learned something about quantum mechanics, too, I suppose. Or, at least, I should have. This was meant to be a work conference trip, after all.
You can get used to hearing the local accent, but it's great to hear a familiar drawl on the way home.
I'm back, by the way. Hi.
EDIT: Argh! How could I forget this one: The squirrels are really immensely stupidly cute! I just wish I could've gotten some more decent photos of them.
TSA guys are a bit... nuts. I got padded down and my bags swabbed; welcome to America!
Canada is nice. Actually, what I saw of Canada seemed quite similar to what I envisaged the U.S. to be (probably moreso than Canadians may like to admit) only a bit further north.
The mountains are big. Also, pretty. I managed a peek around Banff and Lake Louise. Also, cool. I don't dare imagine what winter is like.
The cars are big, too. Most of the utes you see around are freaking huge, though they frequently carry (next to) nothing in the tray. The roads are pretty expansive, too.
And speaking of things big, the splash-zone of North American toilets is huge. No hope of getting away with a silent rim-shot when there's no rim left to hit.
Niagara Falls is also big. It's hard to get an idea of how big the falls are, how wide the feed river is, and how deep the outflow river is without seeing it personally. And it's pretty. Except for all the kitsch crap people have built around it. That shit is fugly.
You can stay in Canada for nearly two weeks and somehow not try maple syrup. :-/
Lemonade is typically not carbonated. Lame. I love lemon soft-drink (as it's called back home), and carbonated lemonade can be hard to find. (I did find some eventually, at 99c/2L. Bargain!)
Sprite contains "natural lemon-lime flavours". Apparently. ...Maybe if you squint real hard and believe it does. See, they don't say that back home, because they'd get the ACCC on their arses for misleading advertising.
Salt and vinegar chip packets are aqua coloured, not purple.
Working out how much tip to leave is a really annoying use of time that could be better spent.
I probably learned something about quantum mechanics, too, I suppose. Or, at least, I should have. This was meant to be a work conference trip, after all.
You can get used to hearing the local accent, but it's great to hear a familiar drawl on the way home.
I'm back, by the way. Hi.
EDIT: Argh! How could I forget this one: The squirrels are really immensely stupidly cute! I just wish I could've gotten some more decent photos of them.
--big cars: yup, cheap gas will do that
--expansive highways: Out west, yes. Come to the Northeast for narrow lanes and posted speed limits so low they're universally ignored.
--Sprite: You'll also find it and almost all soft drinks for that matter (at least in the US) to be infested with corn syrup instead of cane sugar. Thank our corn lobby for that. Only stuff that says "100% natural" is such. Anything else...isn't, misleading nomenclature hasn't gotten enough people up in arms to do anything about it.
--on a related note, most of us have never heard of apple cider with alcohol in it (oh, the horror!). I didn't know such a thing existed till this summer.
--Tips: there was a drawn-out argument on the forums here about why it's prevalent where it is and how stupid it looks to folks from where it isn't.
--Accents: I didn't know what a "Canadian accent" was till literally a couple of weeks before the first time going there a few years ago (i've since been there about a half-dozen times). I had heard numerous examples of it, but never heard it connected to a nationality.
*ducks*