Round the world in pictures: North America

While we were on our whizz round the world, Nigel published a daily picture on Instagram. For those of you who are not Instagrammers, we’ve reproduced the photos in 4 blog posts. This one covers USA and Canada.

Our first day finds us in #chicago and after a fabulous pizza (what else?) we had a lovely early evening stroll down to Millennium Park where this fabulous polished chrome structure called The Bean gives you an interesting perspective on the city.

How adorable are these guys?! Marcus and Teng are two of the White Hats … a 500-strong group of volunteers to welcome people at #Calgary Airport. A great idea that could easily be adopted in the UK. And if truth be told, we’d quite like to adopt Marcus and Teng. 🙂

We were in the last carriage of our #rockymountaineer train today, which gave us this opportunity to include a little bit of the train in this stunning #canadian scenery.

Day 2 of the #rockymountaineer trip. Here we are snaking along the Thompson river heading towards #Vancouver. Unbelievable scenery all the way.

Loving #Vancouver’s airport! Since we’ve arrived into the city, we’ve been riveted by these seaplanes landing in front of our accommodation. What a fantastic part of a transport infrastructure ..

Day 6 has been a rainy one here in #Vancouver. But would that stop us having fun? No way!! We wanted to make sure we saw Stanley Park while we were here, so we decided to do it by horse-drawn carriage. At least it would be under cover! Needless to say, there were no other punters, so we sat there just behind the driver with blankets over us. It was actually really lovely. 🙂

Day 7 started with an amble around #Gastown, then a ferry to #northvancouver to capture this shot … and eat ice-cream! 🙂 What a treat #Vancouver has been! Laid back, fun and beautiful. Off now to #sanfrancisco, but we’ll never forget this wonderful city.

Day 8 of #RTW. And we’re in #sanfrancisco. This is a flock of pelicans in the bay. I like the way they appear to be flying over the container ship steaming past #Alcatraz. We walked for 6 miles around the northern part of the city and got our first glimpse of the Golden Gate bridge.

Day 9 saw us visit #MuirWoods to see the sequoias and #sonoma and #napa for wine tasting. A really fabulous day .. full of great wine, laughter and a bit of community singing on the coach back. This pic gives a pretty fair indication of wine country scenery in California.

Day 10 stated with an early trip to #alcatraz. I managed to catch the moonrise. It’s a chilling place, where the venom of its inmates still seems to ooze from the walls.

Day 11 was our last in #sanfrancisco. We had a lovely walk in the #GoldenGatePark and saw these beautiful bluejays. This one was vying with the squirrel for some peanuts. We also saw a couple of raccoons, which was a real treat.
Day 12 is a strange one for us as it technically doesn’t exist. We’re flying over the international dateline and so won’t be on terra firma until Saturday. See you on Day 13!