This week has mainly been spent doing further research for my Canadian trip, but before I go into that, I have been getting excited about a few other travel-related things this week.
Firstly, I discovered that Google Maps have produced a virtual journey on the Moscow to Vladivostock Trans-Siberian Railway.
I posted the video on here earlier, but on reviewing the post I discovered that the experience of the video is much more superior if you watch it directly from the Google Maps page here.
This discovery resulted in Sam and I spending about an hour in front of her computer looking at all of the different sections of the journey, playing the audio options and doing the 'happy dance', which is both an air-punching dance we invented in Vietnam to express joyous things and the cause of much eye-rolling amongst our friends. The cyber-journey provided by Google Maps is not the London to Beijing route which we are planning to embark on in August/September 2011, but it is still incredibly exciting to see moving images of Baikal and the Volga River instead of the still pictures in my countless guide books. I am going to be writing about this trip extensively in the future, so will not go into too many details at this stage!
There has also been talk amongst my friends about a little trip to Budapest in early summer once essay deadlines and exams are over. This is a really loose plan at the moment as we all seem to be over-committed in May/June, but hope to compare our schedules and find four or five days to take this trip. This will be the perfect remedy to four months of hard work and staying at home: strolling down the Danube, looking at beautiful buildings, soaking in Turkish baths and drinking wine. If I'm feeling particularly flush and have enough time I may even look into travelling there by train on the advice of my favourite website, The Man in Seat 61.
Finally, this week begins the showing on BBC2 of Simon Reeve's latest adventure Tropic of Cancer. Unfortunately I was called away from the television with an important phone call about ten minutes into the show so was unable to watch it in its entirety, so am going to make some time in the next couple of days to watch it on iPlayer with no distractions!
Aside from these lovely things, I have also been planning for Canada. As well as going for the wedding and the vacation, I am hoping to do some writing whilst there. I have thought of a few ideas for place-specific pieces, but also like the idea of writing something with a food or wine focus. I have always been fascinated by the role of food and eating within other cultures and on my various travels have tried to get out of the tourist-orientated restaurants as much as possible to eat amongst local people. I have also found that the food-related experiences I have had have been among the most enjoyable and memorable, for example eating breakfast with Buddhist monks in Koyasan, Japan or being taught to cook a Khmer Amok in a restaurant in Siem Reap, Cambodia. So with this in mind, I have been trawling through websites looking for the 'authentic' Canadian cuisine and how I can somehow become involved in this.
Through the very limited research I have done thus far, I have found that the majority of Canadian cuisine is largely based on British and French cuisine (which I have already experienced quite a bit of!) and some interesting traditional dishes such as poutine, ginger beef and flipper pie which are most definitely not vegetarian-friendly!! Ollie, who cannot help but read over my shoulder when I am researching such things, became very excited about being reminded of the high quality of seafood in Canada and started reeling off a list of what he was going to eat once he arrived. I, on the other hand realised, much to my delight, that the traditional Canadian foodstuff I would probably be focusing upon is maple syrup. So am currently researching the processes of making this glorious nectar to see if I can get some first-hand experience. May have to call upon the Torontonians for advice once again.
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