h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm in a hotel in Ottawa. It's tuesday evening here so it must be Ottowa. Montreal tomorrow and Quebec the day after. We were in Toronto this morning!

WE got an upgrade to business class on the way out and then our hire car was upgraded to a limo type thingy. This current hotel was a bit of a lottery on the internet - but is superb. The Indigo... it's gorgeous. Free wifi so here I am.

Very tired now. I may be online another day if the hotels allow.

Oooh, how exciting. Have a great time.

Thanks Bel. We're nolw in Kingston at the junction of Lake Ontario and the St Laurence river. It's lovely here.

While we were in Quebec we went up river to the mouth of the St Laurence where it meets the Atlantic. Apparently the aquatic food stuation there is very good and it attracts Whales. One town we went through described itself at the capital of Whales - I thought that was Cardiff...

Anyway we got on a big boat and sallied forth. We'd hardly started sallying when a Minky whale surfaced and went straight back down to enjoy the buffet. Then a while later we came across a family of Baluga (Beluga?) whales. They are amazing! They are perfectly white and they hang around in family groups so you see about 4 at a time.

After we saw the first group they turned towards us and swam under the ship. You just saw ghostly figures below the water. Spooky but lovely.

We saw a couple more minky whales and another family of balugas. We were told we may see a fin whale, much bigger than the ones we saw, but none materialised. The minky weighs in at about 8 tonnes and the Baluga are smaller but the fin whales are around 120 tonnes.

The scenery is fantastic!

We went to Montreal on the way back and caught a bit of the comedy festival. The carnival procession was fantastic with huge Laurel and Hardy and Mr Bean and Charlie Chaplin and, and ... so many more.

We're driving the beast of a car to Toronto today and we'll go to the zoo tomorrow. Mrs Vestie's aged aunt and uncle are having a barbecue for us tomorrow with some of the cousins, so we're looking forward to that.

We fly back late friday night and get back to England on Saturday morning.

Awww, sounds as if you had an absolutely smashing time.
Enjoy the BBQ with the family and have a good flight home.

Thanks Bel, I'll be in touch

Good! Hope you'll not suffer from jet lag too much. What's the weather like in Kingston? Europe is suffering from extremes, it's either drowning or burning, depending on where you are.

Weather in Kingston was lovely. We're back in Toronto now and the weather here is hottish and humid. Some parts of Canada have seen 42C so we're lucky that we haven't had the extremes. We've seen on the news about Greece and Romania and Hungary. 340,000 Brits without drinking water sounds a bit serious too!

Overnight flying tomorrow - I hope I can sleep on the plane.