Jump to content

Home Sweet Home


CanAm

Recommended Posts

In various threads, Songfacters have revealed their ages and occupations and posted pictures of their attractive faces. This is a thread devoted to the cities and towns where we live. Please list all the things you love about the place you live and some of the things you don't like. I love to travel and am always looking for new places to visit. I'll start:

Calgary, Alberta

Pros: Calgary is only a one hour drive away from breathtaking mountain scenery and some of the best downhill skiing in the world.

For a relatively small city (approx. 1 million people), Calgary has an extraordinary number of excellent restaurants. Ethiopian, Hungarian, Moroccan, Thai and almost any kind of ethnic food you care to mention can be found here.

The city has a vibrant arts community, including a world class symphony orchestra, several excellent comedy clubs and many fine live theatre groups.

There are more than 100 miles of bicycle pathways that run through the city. The city also has many beautiful parks.

Many of the city's attractions are free or like Spruce Meadows (one of the finest equestrian facilities in the world) charge only a nominal entrance fee.

Cons: A dismal climate. Long winters with wildly fluctuating temperatures, short summers and virtually non-existent springs. Fall is the best time of year in Calgary.

A relatively high cost of living. Compared to many cities in Canada, Calgary is an expensive place to live. Compared to New York or Tokyo, Calgary is an inexpensive place to live. A relatively poor public transportation system.

All in all, I give Calgary a 7/10.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Vernon, Sussex County, New Jersey:

Pros: In the winter skiers have a variety of choices, our own ski area, Mountain Creek (5 mins driving distance), the Poconos in Pennsylvania or the Adirondack ski areas of New York (2-3 hours driving distance).

Other times of the year, you can enjoy camping, fishing, hiking,etc. at parks like Stokes State Forest and High Point, raft or canoe on the Delaware River, or just loiter at antiques shops or farm stands.

In July, there's a balloon festival.

Every August, on the Sussex County Fairgrounds we have the Farm and Horse show that coincides with the Sussex County Fair. There's also the Air Show at our small airport, where you can go skydiving.

Financially, you get a lot more house for your money. My husband and I could have never afforded a 4 bedroom house with 1.2 acres anywhere else.

Beautiful views, clean air and water...can't beat that.

Cons: Rough winters, with a lot of snow. A lot of one lane roads, so if you get stuck behind someone, you're stuck.

Malls are 30-40 minutes away. Nightlife???? What's that? There are a few bars that are decent, but most others, you need less than 10 teeth to feel "at home" in.

The famous "Jersey shore" is a 2-3 hour trek. More, if there's construction and there always is. There are two seasons in NJ--winter and roadwork.

Personally, I am far from my family (2 hours) so any get-togethers turn into long day trips or weekend outings.

Our state as a whole is too polluted and too expensive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

castellana3.jpg

That´s La Castellana, the big avenue of Madrid. I lived at the right of this pic for twentyfive years. It´s an ugly picture but the avenue is really beautifull. In my part of the town there´s lots of foreign people, mostly french and american. The city is very old and dirty, very touristical and noisy, I love living in the north. Madrid was great twenty years ago, you could have fun anytime, day and night, it was a charming and a cheap place. Now that this is Europe (so they say) it´s not anymore that wonderfull place to live...

You have mainly bars, lorts of bars, people drink beer and eat "tapas" (samples of food: olives, fish and all kind of things fried in tons of olive oil) You cannot park the car anymore.

The sky used to be astonishing blue... and you have parks everywhere.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Scottsdale, Arizona is a suberb of Phoenix. It has numerous luxury resorts and spas and is a golf destination. We have spring training baseball and are home to many "snowbirds" during the winter. It was voted the "Most Livable Place in the U.S." several years ago. Great weather from October through May. A lttle hot the rest of the time, but you get used to it. Around 200,000 population, low property taxes, good schools, low crime. It's seen as "Snobbsville" to some others in the area. But I've seen worse. I've lived here four years, it's not bad but it's not "home."

This is at the top of Camelback mountain, which rises 1,900 feet above the valley and has 360 degree views:

phoenix-photo-7-lg.jpg

I hiked to the top last fall.

we get great sunsets:

scottsdale_1.jpg

This is part of the downtown area:

108-0880_IMG.JPG" height="300" width="45

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Vernon, Sussex County, New Jersey:

. There are two seasons in NJ--winter and roadwork.

I can sympathize, Jenny. It's the same in Calgary. I wouldn't mind so much, if they didn't seem to work on the same streets each year. There is a road I have to take to get to work, and they have closed down portions of it each summer for the last four years. Geez!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

castellana3.jpg

That´s La Castellana, the big avenue of Madrid. I lived at the right of this pic for twentyfive years. It´s an ugly picture but the avenue is really beautifull. In my part of the town there´s lots of foreign people, mostly french and american. The city is very old and dirty, very touristical and noisy, I love living in the north. Madrid was great twenty years ago, you could have fun anytime, day and night, it was a charming and a cheap place. Now that this is Europe (so they say) it´s not anymore that wonderfull place to live...

You have mainly bars, lorts of bars, people drink beer and eat "tapas" (samples of food: olives, fish and all kind of things fried in tons of olive oil) You cannot park the car anymore.

The sky used to be astonishing blue... and you have parks everywhere.

Although I've never been to Madrid, Edna, a friend and I visited Andalucia in 1989 and absolutely fell in love with it. We visited Cordoba, Sevilla, Granada, Ronda and Malaga. My favourite city was Cordoba. We stayed at a lovely little pension near La Mezquita. This must surely be the only church situated

within a mosque anywhere in the world. We spent many pleasant hours wandering through La Juderia admiring the architecture and the many beautiful courtyards. We also fell in love with the town of Ronda. The view from the bridge that spans the river gorge was spectacular. We spent many pleasant hours conversing with our elderly hostess. We practised our rudimentary Spanish on her while she practised her much better English on us.

My two children are enrolled in a bilingual English/Spanish school here in Calgary, so my wife and I have started studying our Spanish again so we don't fall behind the kids. :)

The photo of La Castellana reminds me a bit of the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City, without the horrendous traffic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lake_Oswego01.gif" width="400" height="2

That's where I live. Lake Oswego, a small suburb of Portland, Oregon. It would appear to be one of those nice little suburbs you see on TV where everyone knows each other by name. "Hey look, it's Luigi the pizza-man" or "Well look who just walked into Jerry's bar! It's Big Bob, the mail-man!" It is like those, except without all the personality. It's not the kind of place where everyone really knows everyone by name. It is a nice place though. One problem is that many of the people here are rich and snobby. Not really the adults, more the kids who are very sheltered and don't realize that they are in such a rich town. That is one of the cons, the general snobbiness of the area. A pro is that it is a really fun place when you are a little kid. It's got fun things to do, and you can play all sorts of games out in the not busy streets or big parks. A con is that as a teenager, there is not much to do. There are a lot of bored teenagers here in Lake Oswego. Because of that, we don't have very many big crimes, but we have tons of petty crimes. Lots of crimes done in cars, being done by bored teenagers in their parents cars. And because of the general boredom there is also a lot of pot. What's really funny is reading the LO Review's weekly crime section. It takes funny things from the police blotter and puts them in the town newspaper. Another thing to mention is the lack of diversity. It's a very white place, and is often refered to as "Lake No-negro"

Town Landmarks: One would have to be The Giant Burger. It's got really good hamburgers, and seems like it's been there forever. I have no idea how long it's actually been around, but it's a great alternative to generic McDonalds.

Actually that's the only landmark I can think of.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I live in Goulburn, New South Wales, Australia. Also known as The City of Roses and The Lilac City.

Goulburn is Australia's first inland city and home to a population of 24 thousand people. It is a nice place to live, more like a large country town rather than a city. In Australia, Goulburn is famous for its landmark, the Big Merino, which is a huge building of a sheep. Inside the sheep are shops and you can even climb to the top of the Big Merino and look out its eyes.

bigmerino1.jpg

New South Wales highest security prison, SuperMax, is at Goulburn Jail and the Police Academy is also located here. The biggest crisis currently facing Goulburn is our critial shortage of water, our water supply is down to 16%, enough water only for the next 8 months. There is no rain in sight.

There are lots of pubs, clubs and restaurants/cafes. The Australian Jazz & Blues Festival is held every year in February and attracts local and international performers. The architecture of the buildings (including two cathedrals) is beautiful, and dates from the early 1800's. There is also a war memorial which is a tower with a museum inside. The memorial commemorates all servicemen & women from Goulburn who have fought in all wars. The war memorial sits at the top of Rocky Hill and looks down on Goulburn. At night a light from the tower shines around the city.

glbnwarmem200.jpg

Goulburn is a great place to grow up. It is an easy going, laid back sort of place. It is my favorite place in the world because it is home, and there is no place quite like home. :thumbsup:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

CanAm, Spain is a beautifull country, I fell in love with it when I was eight and decided I would live here later. Which I did. Ronda, Malaga, Cordoba, all these places are amazing. In fact, I don´t think I´ll be living in Madrid for long, we are planning to leave as soon as we can and settle in Granada. We´re fed up with traffic, noise, high prices, low quality of life... Madrid was wonderfull many years ago but it´s time for Andalousia now...

And that´s the place where I was born... Buenos Aires in the fifties...

ba17.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been there once before actually. I went to a really cool restaraunt there called "Don and Charlies." It has a lot of sports memorobillia, and great ribs!

Hey Batman, yes Don And Charlies IS very cool. I love all that baseball stuff, like the bounced check from Ty Cobb on the wall. There are some baseball jerseys hanging in the bar area, one of them is from a team I played with and is signed by me and my teamates. I love that place!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Scottsdale and Goulburn look and sound just beautiful. I would love to live in a place where it's warm all year long!!!

Here's a picture of the views along the Delaware River, where my husband and I have gone rafting and kayaking:

Jenny, thanks for showing everybody how pretty New Jersey can be...that's a great shot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Batman, yes Don And Charlies IS very cool. I love all that baseball stuff, like the bounced check from Ty Cobb on the wall. There are some baseball jerseys hanging in the bar area, one of them is from a team I played with and is signed by me and my teamates. I love that place!

Yup, it's a great place. There is so much memorobilia, you can't even see it all without standing on tables and interrupting other people's dinner. One jersey they had in there was of Neil Lomax, who used to live in Lake Oswego (my town). He is famous here because he was a 4th grade football coach who cheated to get his son to be able to play quarterback. In 4th grade, quarterbacks must be under 100 lbs, including pads and stuff, so he cut off parts of his kid's shoulder pads so he would seem to weigh less with his equipment on. And then another good LO story is about the mean ice-cream man. In a certain baskin-robbins here, the guy who runs it is an old angry man, and he was being mean to this girl who was working for him. One day she came home crying, so her dad went down to Baskin Robbins while the old angry manager was working there, and bought a cream pie only to throw it right in the managers face! And then there is the story about the cannibal who lives in the mansion on top of that spooky hill who devoured much of LO's population in the early 1800's, and who's ghost haunts the mansion to this very day, but I don't think that story is quite as interesting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Batman, my mother in law lives in Lake Oswego. If you see a mid 80's powder blue Mercedes 500 moving anywhere near you, run the opposite direction. She is a maniac! I was up there last November. It is very nice.

Here is my little slice of heaven, Santa Clarita.

sc1.gif

5011042211528.jpg

30435-1.jpg

santaclarita1b.jpg

Since I moved up here in 2003, it seems as if there is at least 1 wildfire a week in the summer months. We dont do too well with a lot of water, either...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Canada is like a dream for me. Maybe a song we sang in school helped... it was (in french)

Ma cabanne au Canada c´est le seul bonheur pour moi,

la vie libre qui me plaît, la forêt... etc.

I won´t post a song in French, but in school they always told us about Canada like a paradise...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks, Rich and Edna! Yes, Canada is beautiful, but all the countries I have visited (not nearly as many as I would like) are beautiful in their own unique ways. We would need a hundred lifetimes to visit all the beautiful sights around the world. I plan to visit as many as I can before I cast off this mortal coil.

:D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...