Travel

First day in London

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On October 2, Richard and I will have been married for fifty years. 50! Fifty years of ups and downs, joys and sorrows. Seeing and experiencing new places and cultures has long been something that we’ve loved to do together. That’s why about a year ago when I started thinking about how we might celebrate this momentous milestone, it was obvious to me that it needed to involve travel. But where should we go? We considered everything from hiking in the Azores to a cruise down the Nile River, but before we settled on a definite plan, the possibility of another short term mission trip came to our attention. At first, we thought that we’d be returning to Armenia where we served in May/June of last year. Eventually, however, we learned that we’d be going to Istanbul, Türkiye just one month before our big anniversary. We started to look at how we might combine the two into one trip. As a result, here we are on our way home from Istanbul spending five days in London, England celebrating 50 years together a wee bit before the actual anniversary!

Our home away from home this week is an aparthotel in Notting Hill. After breakfast this morning, we head for Portobello Road Market, less than half a kilometre away. Stretching about a mile along Portobello Road, this is one of the world’s most famous and historical street markets offering antiques and collectables, vintage clothing, jewelry, artwork, fresh fruit and vegetables, a variety of street foods, and much, much more. Saturday is the market’s busiest day and I read that we should plan to arrive early to beat the crowds. That was definitely good advice! When we arrived shortly after 9:00 AM, some of the vendors were still setting up and the street was quiet, but within an hour or so, it was absolutely packed with people.

Of course, we had to pop into the souvenir shop that appeared as the fictional Travel Bookshop in the 1999 romatic comedy, Notting Hill, starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts.

After leaving the market, next on our agenda was our first ride on the “Tube”, the world’s oldest subway system. Our destination was massive St Paul’s Cathedral. The original cathedral was destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666. Construction on its replacement started nine years later in 1675 and it was completed in 1710. With its iconic dome, it was the tallest building in London for 250 years. The total height to the top of the cross on the dome is exactly 365 feet. The chief architect, Sir Christopher Wren, intentionally designed it that way to represent each day of the year. Apparently he also wanted there to be a 60 foot high stone pineapple on top of the dome as a symbol of peace, prosperity, and hospitality, but he settled for golden pineapples on top of the two western towers instead!

I was totally blown away by the sheer enormity of St Paul’s. To put it into perspective for those of you back home, the cathedral is significantly bigger than the Alberta Legislature Building in Edmonton!

In 1981, the cathedral hosted the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana and it has been the location of massive state funerals for figures like Sir Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.

After enjoying coffee and tea in an outdoor cafe next to the cathedral, we walked about a mile to the Garden at 120, a free 15th floor rooftop garden in the heart of London’s financial district that offers 360-degree panoramic views of the city skyline.

From there, we caught our first glimpses of the River Thames, the Tower of London, and the Tower Bridge.

Continuing our walk another half mile or so brought us to the Tower of London. Again, it was much more enormous and not at all what I expected. Named after its first building, the White Tower, which was built by William the Conqueror in the 1070s as a royal fortress, the Tower was also a palace with grand apartments where the king and queen could entertain and conduct business. As at St Paul’s, we chose to walk around and view the Tower from the outside rather than joining a tour that would take us inside.

In 1100, the Tower became an infamous prison and many prisoners including Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII, and Sir Thomas More, who refused to recognize Henry’s separation from the Catholic church, were beheaded or hanged. Over its nearly 1000 year history, it has been adapted and repurposed for many different roles even including a zoo or royal menagerie from the 13th century until 1835.

By this time, we had done a lot of walking. Our feet and legs were tired and we had no intention of crossing the Tower Bridge, but suddenly we were there and Richard decided that we really should, so on we went!

From the far side, we made our way to the closest Tube station and headed “home” tired, but happy for all we’d seen and done.

Istanbul highlights

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We came to Türkiye (Turkey) on a short term missions trip, but after finishing that assignment and becoming tourists, we’ve fit a lot into less than 48 hours in Istanbul!

Located in the heart of historic Istanbul, our tiny, family run hotel is tucked into a little alleyway just off a busy street.

Our window looks out over the street and the entrance to beautiful Gülhane Park. Now a very busy and popular urban park, Gülhane was once the outer garden of nearby Topkapi Palace and only accessible to the royal court.

Our hotel is also only a 5 minute walk from the Hagia Sofia Grand Mosque, quite possibly Istanbul’s most famous landmark. Since it’s construction was completed in 537 AD, it has served first as a Christian cathedral, then an Ottoman mosque, a secular museum, and now an active mosque once again. Unfortunately, it’s presently undergoing renovation, so we didn’t get an unobstructed view of it.

As non Muslims, we couldn’t enter the main worship portion of the mosque, but we did take what we now consider a badly overpriced tour of the portion that’s open to the general public. There is a very strict dress code for all who enter. Men cannot be wearing shorts and women must wear a head scarf and have their shoulders covered.

Just across the Sultanahmet Square from the Hagia Sofia is a second beautiful mosque, the Sultan Ahmet Mosque which is more commonly known as the Blue Mosque because of the thousands of blue ceramic tiles that decorate its interior walls.

Again, we couldn’t enter the main portion of the mosque which is only open to Muslims, but we were free to wander the outer courtyard.

After meeting some of the team that we served with over the past week for supper last night, we returned to Sultanahmet Square to see the Blue Mosque lit up at night. The meaning of the banner is “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”

The Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque are only two of the more than 3000 mosques spread across the city, so it’s not surprising that wherever we were (including in our hotel room at about 5 o’clock in the morning), we could hear the very loud calls to prayer that ring out from the tall minarets at five different times throughout the day and night!

This morning, we walked about a kilometre to the Grand Bazaar, one of the oldest and largest covered markets in the world. Founded in the 15th century shortly after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (now Istanbul), it contains over 60 covered streets and nearly 4000 tiny shops selling everything from jewelry to clothes to carpets, leather goods, ceramics, and spices. It was like wandering a ginormous shopping mall.

Located on both sides of the Bosphorus, a narrow strait that connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and separates Europe from Asia, Istanbul is a huge city that is located partially on each continent! About two-thirds of its population live in Europe and the rest reside in Asia. We are staying on the European side, but after leaving the Grand Bazaar today, we made our way to the Asian side via the Marmaray, a commuter rail line that connects the two continents through an underwater tunnel beneath the Bosphorus. There, we strolled the Üsküdar Coast Walkway, a stunning promenade along the shimmering blue water. At the end of the walkway, we found a marina and an open air restaurant where we enjoyed some fish and chips while watching boats of all sizes making their way in and out of the strait.

A post about this city wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the cats of Istanbul! An estimated 250 000 street cats live freely and harmoniously alongside the human population of approximately 16 million. Roaming freely through the markets, mosques, cafes, and subway stations, they are treated as community pets rather than strays. Shopkeepers and residents routinely leave out fresh water and food for them.

There’s more that I could say about our brief stay here in Istanbul, but we have a plane to catch in the morning and it’s time to get some sleep!

Writing On Stone Provincial Park

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Over the years that we’ve been together, hubby and I have visited 18 different countries and we’re about to add 2 more to the list, but there are still places closer to home that we haven’t explored. Until the past week, Writing On Stone Provincial Park was one of them.

Straddling the Milk River just north of the Alberta-Montana border, Writing On Stone or Áísínai’pi, which means “it is written” or “it is pictured” is geographically central to the vast area inhabited by the Niitsítapi (Blackfoot) people since time immemorial. For them, it is also a deeply sacred place, a place where they seek the guidance of spirit beings thought to dwell in the hoodoos and nearby hills. Áísínai’pi was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2018 and in order to protect the ancient art on many of the rock faces from vandalism, part of the park is an archaeological preserve closed to the public except by guided tour.

It is impossible to adequately capture the sheer magnitude of the landscape in photos, but here are a few to give you a taste of what you would see if you were to visit.

Writing On Stone has the highest concentration of Indigenous rock art on the Great Plains of North America. We did a two hour Markings of Áísínai’pi tour to view many of these pictographs and petroglyphs. Pictographs are painted on the rock with red ochre, crushed iron ore mixed with animal fat or water. Time and weathering have all but erased these remnants of days gone by.

Although the Blackfoot elders want the rock art to age naturally and no attempt has been made to preserve them, petroglyphs, etched into the stone, have lasted much better. While there is no technique that can accurately date rock art sites, researchers estimate their age based on objects depicted in the artwork as well as by analyzing changes in rock art styles. The next photo shows part of one of the oldest panels in the park.

While the exact meaning of much of the artwork is unknown, much of it was probably ceremonial, created during different rituals like vision quests. 

We also hiked the 5 km out-and-back Matapiiksi (Hoodoo) Interpretive Trail and, on a different day, spent a couple of hours wandering our way through the Hoodoo Exploration Area on the hillside between the campground below and the very informative interpretive centre perched on valley’s edge above.

All I could say over and over again was “This is so amazing!”

Camping with caterpillars

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Hubby and I spent the past four days camping at Cross Lake Provincial Park about three and a half hours northwest of here. Amazingly, in spite of the fact that Alberta has been experiencing near-historic rainfall over the past month, we enjoyed four days of beautiful sunshine and it wasn’t until we were tucked into bed in the trailer last night that the rain began to fall again.

In addition to all the rain, Alberta has also been experiencing a massive infestation of tent caterpillars, a natural phenomenon that peaks every 10 to 12 years. Located in the boreal forest that encompasses almost the entire northern half of the province, the campground was overrun with these hairy little critters.

Although we love to spend most of our time outdoors when we’re camping, we ate our first supper in the trailer to avoid the caterpillars and when we were outside that evening, we literally had to tuck our pants into our socks to keep them from crawling up the inside of our pant legs!

One place where there were no caterpillars was out on the water. The main Cross Lake Provincial Park campground offers 130 lovely powered sites, but across a wide bay and accessible only by foot or by boat, is rustic George’s Point campground with seven tent only sites. For the first of our two kayaking excursions, we packed a lunch and paddled over to George’s Point for a picnic. We were the only ones there and this is the view that we enjoyed.

While kayaking, we saw families of ducks and loons as well as gulls and other water birds, but we were especially delighted to spot a bald eagle. There’s no way to keep a kayak perfectly still on the water, so taking good photos, especially those that require zooming in, is extremely challenging. Needless to say, I’m pretty happy with this one…

When we got back to our campsite later that day, it was lierally like walking into a horror movie! Every surface was crawling with caterpillars… thousands and thousands of caterpillars! Thankfully, we’d heard from another camper that there weren’t many of them on the far side of the campground where there were more evergreen trees and less of the deciduous ones that the caterpillars feed on. The campground was far from full, so we asked and were given permission to move. It was a lot of extra work, especially for hubby, but it was definitely worth it. Although there were still a few creepy crawlies, we were able to enjoy the remainder of our stay.

We weren’t able to do as much hiking as we might have as many of the trails looked like this…

Thankfully though, although we had to carefully skirt around a couple of huge puddles, the trail from the campground to French Creek, which flows out of the lake, was passable and we even found the only geocache located in the park while we were on that hike.

Now we’re home and it’s raining again, but at least there are no caterpillars here!

Exploring Saskatoon in style

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Today I have a little bit of Fashion Friday and a little bit of travel for you all in one short post! Hubby and I spent three days this week representing our church at a denominational conference in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. While most of our time was spent in meetings, we had some free time to do a bit of exploring on Wednesday afternoon. We decided to spend it walking a small portion of the Meewasin Trail, a scenic multi-use pathway that stretches over 105 km in and around the city, mainly along the South Saskatchewan River.

A big question for me was what to wear when I would be spending a significant amount of time in an air-conditioned venue, but also a couple of hours walking outdoors in 32ºC (90ºF) heat!! Here’s what I chose.

The white jeans were a thrift store purchase several summers ago and have appeared on the blog before, but the open-weave crocheted top, worn here over a white cami, is a recent acquisition purchased at a new consignment shop in our area. The sunglasses in my left hand and the hat were very important accessories on such a hot, sunny day and I also wore my Ecco Yucatan walking sandals that provided much needed support as we ended up walking 7 km (4.3 miles) on paved pathways.

We accessed the trail and started our walk across the street from the historic Knox United Church. Built between 1912 and 1914, it is a designated municipal heritage building.

Another historic building along our route was the iconic Bessborough Hotel, Saskatoon’s castle on the river, which is presently closed for major interior renovations.

A little further along, we passed some much more modern architecture.

The beautiful Zhongshan Ting pagoda in Victoria Park was donated to the city in 2015 to commemorate the first Chinese immigrants and their contributions to early Saskatoon.

Fragrant blossoms and the presence of many pairs of Canada Geese were signs of the season. This fellow kept a close eye on us as while his partner grazed and we were careful not to annoy him. While these large birds become very comfortable in urban areas, they can also be highly aggressive, especially during their spring breeding and nesting seasons.

For the last bit of our walk back to the vehicle, we left the riverside and walked along Spadina Crescent. There, we came across one of the most recognized and photographed landmarks in the area, the Tribute to Youth statue. The life-sized bronze sculpture featuring five children with interlocked limbs forms a sphere and captures a sense of childlike play and energy. They definitely appeared to have more energy than I did at the end of our 7 km walk!

The Devil Loves Prada 2

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Since we don’t live close to our grown children and their families and weren’t going to be seeing any of them yesterday, hubby suggested earlier in the week that we should go out for dinner and a movie on Mother’s Day. I chose The Devil Wears Prada 2. Considering the fact that it’s been 20 years since the original movie was released and close to that long since we had seen it, we decided to watch it on Disney+ on Friday evening to refresh our memories. I’m glad we did. While the sequel, with its return of the original cast, could be enjoyed as a stand alone, it definitely features character callbacks and references to the original.

I wasn’t sure what to expect as sequels are often disappointing, but in this case, I was pleasantly surprised. We both thoroughly enjoyed the movie. The script writers did an admirable job of handling the 20-year time span and I loved seeing 76-year-old Meryl Streep still rocking the big screen. The movie also showed very clearly the major changes that have taken place in the world of journalism and the magazine industry over the past two decades.

Of course, how could I not enjoy a movie about fashion and writing? The often flamboyant outfits were a sight to behold, but one piece especially captured my attention. I absolutely loved Miranda Priestly’s (Meryl Streep) cropped and tasseled Dries Van Noten jacket!

It’s interesting to note that the jacket almost didn’t make it into the movie. Apparently, it sparked quite a controversy with some in the studio wanting to axe it, but Meryl Streep herself convinced them that it was an important addition that fit the scene very well. It has rightfully become a fan favourite and I foresee similarly embellished jackets becoming a trend!

I also enjoyed the portions of the movie that were filmed on location in Milan, Italy as they brought back wonderful memories of our very brief time there in 2019. Glimpses of the magnificent Duomo reminded me of our astounding time on its very ornate rooftop and watching Meryl Streep walk the length of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a very high end shopping mall that we also walked, was definitely a fun moment. You can read about our afternoon in Milan and see more photos here.

At one point in the movie, Stanley Tucci’s character, Nigel makes the rather disparaging comment, “Look what TJ Maxx dragged in.” For those of you, especially amongst my Canadian readers, who aren’t familiar with TJ Maxx, it is similar to our Winners and is, in fact, owned by the same parent company. Obviously, the off-price retailer wasn’t impressed with the snarky line in the movie, but rather than respond in a negative way, they saw it as a “can’t miss” opportunity. Flipping the script, they hired Tucci and came out with this absolutely brilliant ad.

So, if you’re wondering if The Devil Wears Prada 2 is worth seeing, I say yes!

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

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Hubby and I reached a new milestone on Friday. For the first time ever, we became the grandparents of an adult when our grandson, Drew, celebrated his 18th birthday! I have no idea how the time went so fast, but this sweet babe is now a fine young man!

Drew and his siblings are Métis. He, in particular, has taken a keen interest in their Indigenous heritage, so yesterday we took them to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a remarkable site that teaches about the Plains native culture.

Located about two hours south of Calgary, Alberta, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is the most outstanding and best preserved example of a unique communal hunting technique employed by the Plains people for thousands of years. At sites like this one across the North American Plains, Indigenous tribes used natural barriers such as coulees, depressions and hills to funnel bison herds into prepared drive lanes ending at a precipice over which the bison were stampeded to their deaths. The carcasses were then butchered in camps set up below the cliffs to provide food and materials for clothing, tools and dwellings.

The seven-levelled Interpretive Centre at Head-Smashed-In was built into the hillside just south of the jump site in such a way that the fragile archaeological deposits were left undisturbed. As recommended, we started our tour at the top where we walked the 200 metre upper trail to the viewpoint overlooking the precipice.

Working our way down through the seven levels of exhibits, we stopped at the theatre on the third level to view an excellent 15 minute film re-enactment of a buffalo jump.

We had planned on walking the 1.2 km interpretive trail below the cliff after finishing inside, but a storm had blown in and it was raining, so we missed that part of the experience. It was still an excellent day and well worth the trip.

Book of the month – April 2026

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Moon Road

Sarah Leipciger

Divorced for more than two decades, Yannick and Kathleen have not seen or spoken to one another for nineteen years when they receive the news that human remains have been unearthed on Vancouver Island. Could this be their daughter, Una, who disappeared without a trace over twenty years earlier? This unimaginable shared loss brings them together for a cross-Canada trip from Ontario all the way to the Pacific Coast.

As they bicker their way across more than two thousand miles of Canadian Shield, prairie, mountain, and forest in Yannick’s old pick-up truck, a history of love, loss, headstrong children, and hopeless searching reveals itself.

It was the cross-Canada trek, a route that I have traveled several times myself, that first drew me to this book, but it was superb character development  that kept me turning the pages. Kathleen is strong, single-minded, and independent. After all the years that have passed, she still keeps a running count of the number of days that Una has been missing, maintains a Find Una Facebook page, and hosts an annual party to keep the memory of her disappearance alive. Yannick, divorced several times, is a bit of a lost soul, restless, unsettled, and feeling his age in creaky bones and aching joints.

I’ve seen valid comparisons made between Moon Road and Elizabeth Strout’s novels, but truth be told, I enjoyed this one more. It’s a thoughtful and moving story that I found difficult to put down.

Moon Road was the first of Sarah Leipciger’s novels that I’ve read, but I’ll definitely be looking for her two earlier ones, The Mountain Can Wait and Coming Up for Air.

Saipan: from tranquility to typhoon devastation

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This is the message that I’ve been receiving from WordPress for the past few days.

By far the most popular post, the one that has been drawing lots of readers to my blog, is this one that was published more 15 years ago. Entitled Where in the World is Saipan, it was written when hubby and I learned that we would be spending the summer of 2011 serving as short term missionaries on the tiny Pacific island of Saipan.

Saipan is the largest and the most densely populated of the 14 tiny islands that make up the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands which stretches 400 miles along the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean. Just 15 degrees north of the equator, the island is only 12.5 miles (20 km) long & 5.5 miles (8 km) wide, but it has a population of almost 47 000 people.

A tropical island with a warm humid climate, Saipan holds the Guinness World Record for having the most consistent temperature in the world. The average temperature year-round is 27C (81 F) with very little fluctuation between day and night. It is, however, in a very high-risk area for tropical storms or typhoon with several passing near or directly over the island annually and I’m sure that this is what has drawn so many people to my blog post this week.

On Tuesday night and throughout the day on Wednesday, Super Typhoon Sinlaku hammered the island with sustained winds of up to 150 mph (240 km/h) flipping cars, uprooting trees, toppling utility poles, and ripping off tin roofs. The only hospital on the island sustained severe flooding as did many homes and other buildings. Power and water were out and many of the roads were left impassable. The images and videos that have been filling my Facebook feed are heartbreaking. Here are a several from the Marianas Press.

What a sharp and horrifying contrast from the tranquil beauty that I remember.

As gorgeous as Saipan was, however, and in spite of the fact that there were beautiful beach resorts along the west side of the island, we also knew that many of the people that we were ministering to lived in houses like these ones. I can only imagine what’s left of them after Sinlaku ravaged the island this week.

I’m not happy about the fact that there’s still snow in our forecast for the coming week, a time of year when we’re often on the golf course, but seeing what the people of Saipan have been dealing with certainly puts things into perspective in a hurry!

How far would you go for a party?

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This weekend I did something I never imagined that I would do. I flew all the way to Vancouver for a party! I left Friday morning and was back home again by supper time on Sunday! It was a whirlwind trip, but I’m so glad I went.

It was over ten years ago that I wrote this post about my older brother. More than a decade before the measles vaccine became available, Donald, an infant at the time, suffered irreversible brain damage due to encephalitis, a severe, often fatal, complication of measles. Although my parents were told that they should put him in an institution, they refused and we grew up together. He has, however, been in care all of his adult life. Since 1981, before the Community Living Society that now provides residential and personalized community-based support to individuals throughout Vancouver and the Lower Mainland of BC, came into existence, Trudy M has been one of Donald’s primary caregivers. After 43 years with CLS and even longer with Donald, Saturday’s party was a well-earned celebration of Trudy’s retirement. How could I not be there?

Over the years, Trudy has become family. Mom and Dad adored her and as I said when asked to say a few words on behalf of our family at the party, four of us became siblings by birth, she became our sibling through hard work and dedication.

The only reason that I had considered not going to the party and the reason that my stay in Vancouver was so short was the fact that this is the beginning of what we in my community theatre group call “hell week”. This Friday is opening night of our latest play and it’s all hands on deck to ensure that we’re ready to entertain our audiences. Thankfully, our director is also a close personal friend who knew how important it was to me to be able to slip away for Trudy’s party.

Although I was in Vancouver for less than 48 hours and in spite of the fact that it was a damp, drizzly weekend, I arrived in the city on Friday in time to watch one of my grandsons play a game of rugby. That was particularly meaningful to me because he attends and was playing for the same high school that I attended 60 years ago!

My sister and I also fit in a long walk on Saturday morning. Coming from Alberta where we still have sub zero temperatures and lots of snow, we enjoyed the humidity and the signs of spring that we won’t see here for awhile yet.