More from the East Coast of Canada

Well, I have been on this road trip of the East Coast for 8 days now and I thought I would give you the highlights.

Thus far we have seen:

Riviere-Du-Loup, PQ - We missed the show here because of car trouble :(

Grand Falls, NB - Stopped here at a Walmart to pick up some groceries and get our bearings.

Plaster Rock, NB - Rocked out and had a great night in a hotel here. The owners were amazing and breakfast was great. I highly reccomend checking out this tiny town, and we hear that Pond Hockey is all the rage here in the winter thanks to Don Cherry.

St. John, NB - Great show here at a bar called Cougar's Lounge. It was a tiny venue, and The DGB stopped in for an open mic night. We enjoyed $23 Gallon Pitchers and the guys ended up rocking out on a stage in a park at 4:00 a.m. until the police showed up. They were super nice about it and we went back to the van and laughed until the sun was starting to show.

Black Beach, NB - Tiny little beach in the middle of nowhere, on the Bay of Fundy. Played some football on the beach and ate some lunch. The locals thought we were crazy and the water was freezing but it was a great time!

Blacks Harbour, NB - Dropped into a random bar on our day off, where the boys did an impromtu performance and sold a stack of CDs, and we drank a lot of rounds of free shots. We were going to leave and the bartender thought we needed drinks for the road, but of course she can't sell them to us, so she gave us a case out of her car! We ended up sitting in the harbour watching the tide with a guy from Halifax, and he crashed in the van at the end of the night with us.

Fredericton, NB
- Had a great time here. The show was an open mic again at the Capitol. We ended up staying at Catherine's house (yup, we just met her) She looked after us well though. Gave us a place to crash and an amazing breakfast. We basically <3 her. :D Miramachi, NB - The DGB played a show at O'Donoghues, which is a 175 year old bar in the Irish Capital of Canada. It was a very cool and the panfried fish and chips was absolutely amazing. I turned in for an early night because I'm a party pooper like that sometimes. I was exhausted, but woke up refreshed for our next day in Moncton.


Parlee Beach, NB - Stopped in for a dip in the ocean. Probably the most beautiful beach I have ever seen and we enjoyed the shallows before venturing out for a proper swim. The boys played football in the ocean again while we all dodged the jellyfish. I didn't even know we had these in Canada but they were plentiful and very cool to look at.

Moncton, NB - had a great time in Moncton. The boys did a show there and it was fantastic as always. Interesting characters and invites to crash, but we decided that we were safest in the van with the door locked.

St. George, NB - Stopped in to see Jamie's family where we'll be staying for the next couple of days. They're about the sweetest people you'd ever want to meet and have beds and burgers ready for us upon our return.

St. Andrews, NB - the boys are currently playing a set at The Red Herring and I'm writing this. Sounds great, and I'm thinking that we're going to have to come here for some dinner tomorrow too. $7.99 lobster dinner just haulled in off a boat is too good to pass up I think.


Clearly, that's a lot of travelling for 8 days! Not only have we seen these places, but everywhere in between because the guys I'm travelling with have tour dates for their band booked in no particular order all over New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and then back to Quebec!

The cool thing about this trip is that we're not doing the Mapquest and go directions. We are actually using maps and atlases to find our way, picking out random destinations along the way and attempting to stick towards the coastline whenever possible. As four kids from the interior of Canada, any occasion to breath in salt air is a good excuse.

The people out here truly are as hospitable and welcoming as you hear. I could hardly believe it. The guys are being absolutely fantastic about me tagging along with them and it's been a hell of an amazing vacation for me, and about as cheap as a vacation could come.

New Year's Resolution ~ Dealing with returning home

It's funny, when I left for the UK I had read about post-vacation depression but I blew it off as one of those "not going to happen to me" things. Wrong!

Every traveller has a different name for the fallout of a great trip, so let me explain what it is.

Basically, post-vacation depression occurs when you go to a different city, country, or continent and experience a way of life that is completely different from your own. You see new sights, taste new foods and meet new people, essentially you experience this great little thing called culture.

And then you come back home.

The people are the same as you left, the city is the same, you go back to eating the same things you always did and hanging out at the same old haunts.

Home is nice, but you didn't realize how bright and sparkly the world could be until you were seeing something new for the first time in years.

I'll give you an example.

Remember when you got your driver's licence? Think about that first month. You were free! It was like being four years old again, when you got to see everything for the first time, and under your own power no less! Suddenly, riding in the back seat of your parent's car wasn't good enough anymore, you wanted to drive and anything less was a letdown.

Toronto, and my life here, suddenly feel like riding in the back seat.

I've barely travelled, eighteen days is not a long time to be out of Canada, but since I've gotten home everything just seems a little bit bland. Part of this is my own frustration that I came back to find it too cold and snowy to spend endless days wandering the city discovering new things, and laziness in pursuing adventures beyond my experience in Toronto.

This becomes a problem when I intend to continue travelling, I can't mope every time I come home, because that defeats this whole extraordinary life that I'm trying to live.

My solution to this situation basically is this:

I need to find awe and wonder in Toronto. I used to love this city. It used to make me feel alive, and I need to recapture that. I want to get lost in the city, to find something that I've never seen, to explore and be scared and try something new.

So, that's the goal. No weight loss resolutions here, I'm going to re-discover the city in which I live. I'm going to explore, adventure and enjoy Toronto between the many trips I intend to take in the next year.

If you want to join me, let me know.