US | Canada 2018

We flew out of Brisbane at 2145 Saturday 30 June and arrived in Las Vegas at around midnight Saturday 30 June after a 6 hour flight, 4 hour stopover and 9 hour flight....

We arrived here late at night (still June 30) and couldn’t wait to get to bed. The lights of Vegas from the plane were incredible. It didn’t take long to realise that Las Vegas is where everything is bigger, louder, more expensive and tackier than it should be...

We left the hotel this morning and headed to Treasure Island to pick up our hire car. Once there we were directed to the fourth floor to pick up our Nissan Versa (the US version of the Australian Pulsar)...

Today we drove an hour up the road to see the Grand Canyon. It was as immense as it looks and its size truly humbling. We spent the full day there in awe of the magnitude of what we were looking at – 1,000,000 acres right there in front of us...

Williams was one of those great American towns that could be classed as ‘Anytown’ USA...

We drove back to Las Vegas first thing this morning and dropped off the hire car around lunchtime.

After the serenity of Williams and the Grand Canyon, the noise of The Strip didn’t appeal all that much, so we caught an Uber to Fremont Street – the old part of Vegas...

We arrived in NY tired and bedraggled after an overnight flight. We had booked an apartment in Brooklyn through AirBnB nearly 12 months earlier so, after collecting our luggage, we caught a taxi there and piled into bed for a few hours...

We left the Big Apple this morning and flew into Toronto, then caught our shuttle for the 125km trip to Niagara Falls...

We left Niagara Falls this morning and boarded our transfer for the 1:40 hour ride to our accommodation in Toronto. We arrived at around 1:00pm but had to wait until after 2:30pm to get into our accommodation – the joys of booking an apartment and not a hotel room 😢

We had an early start this morning as we had a four hour flight to Calgary. We arrived at the airport at around 7:15am and boarded our 8:20am flight soon after...

We arrived at the station at 0600 for our 0630 departure and enjoyed a cup of coffee and some harp...

What a day! We started at the waterfront and headed to Grouse Mountain on the free shuttle...

After such a busy two days in Vancouver, today was spent taking off shoes, getting x-rayed, sitting around airports, and traveling to Seattle. After disembarking the plane and collecting our luggage, we caught the train downtown to our hotel, had lunch and wandered around the city for a bit...

Our ports of call:
Seattle, USA | Juneau, Alaska, USA | Skagway, Alaska, USA | Tracy Arm Fjord, Alaska, USA | Victoria, British Columbia, Canada | Seattle, USA

We disembarked the ship quite early at 8:30am and caught an Uber back to the Sheraton, where we stayed before embarking on the cruise. They were kind enough to check our bags for the day until we left Seattle. That gave us about five hours to sight see before we had to catch a train to the airport to start our journey home...

Our penultimate day was spent at Waikiki Beach. The weather was kind to us once again as we wandered up and down the beach front with every other tourist on earth. We pulled the pin on these shenanigans at around 4.00pm and had a swim...