alexandluke go to jail
Did we survive the night in jail at HI-Ottawa Jail Hostel? Find out!
Ottawa Happenings
We have been in Ottawa for a couple of days and are busy exploring the Nation’s Capital by taking your suggestions of what to see and do. It has only been one week since we embarked on this trip, but so far this unorthodox method of unplanned travel is working out massively in our favour, and our experiences in Ottawa really highlight its success. We have not only experienced the best of the city (a lot of which we NEVER would have found on our own) but we have also met some amazing people – again, who we never would have met if we had stuck to the tourist guides.
Last night our hosts in Kanata (just outside of Ottawa) introduced us to some great people over an amazing dinner at Bombay Masala where we enjoyed a wonderful meal in such an unexpected place (a strip mall in an area of the city we never would have navigated to on our own). The onion bhaji were to die for, the rogan josh was perfection and the service was so welcoming.
After dinner we all went to Pub Italia in Little Italy. We imagine that this place is extremely popular in patio weather, but even on a cold March night it was a wonderful place to bunker down for a pint. Pub Italia is one part Italian tratoria, one part Irish pub and one part medieval kitsch – an absolutely marvelous combination that is creatively expressed through massive murals of half-naked red-haired mustached nights and a beer selection to swoon over.
It has been a week of reminiscing for Luke. His old friend Mark (aka Clipboard) from uni surprised him by showing up at the pub Saturday night and yesterday morning we met Luke’s childhood best friend Joel and his wife Aly over brunch at K S Restaurant. Luke and Joel hadn’t seen each other since Luke was 9 or 10. I think Aly would agree that it was so nice seeing these two old friends reunite. It was great hearing all of their old stories and it made us feel that even if all this experiment did was to foster a handful of reunions it would be well worth it.
Of course we have also managed to hit some of the more traditional tourist attractions in the city, including the obligatory Beaver Tails in Byward Market (we went for the cinnamon flavour – which we recommend), Parliament Hill, the Eternal Flame, and of course, the Cat Sanctuary behind the Parliament buildings. We know there are many museums in this city, and are eager to see a couple of them, which we plan to accomplish before we head out. Our stay in Ottawa has been slightly extended in order to facilitate a visit to the passport office so we will have time to stop in at a museum or two on Tuesday before we head out (typically most museums are closed Mondays, and Ottawa seems to be no exception).
We have had multiple people suggest that we eat at The Works, which looks like an amazing burger place and I’m curious to see how it stacks up next to Craft Burger (my favourite Toronto burger joint). Stay tuned to see how that turns out.
Our Route So Far:
Thank you Google Maps for being such an integral part of the alexandluke project! We love Google Maps.
We are at 97.7 The Beach
We are live on The Beach Right Now! Click the picture below to listen. We will be here until 10:00am EST.
At 7:00am the poll below will close and one of us will have to brave the cold Wasaga weather to get coffee. If I were you, I would vote Alex! ANNND this is Alex who made this post, which means that I (Alex) really want to go get coffee!
Luke is playing radio trivia, the listeners thank you for your votes.
- Luke (60%, 30 Votes)
- Alex (40%, 20 Votes)
Total Voters: 50
Loading ...Thanks for voting Alex to get the coffee!
- Alex (70%, 7 Votes)
- Luke (30%, 3 Votes)
Total Voters: 10
Loading ...alexandluke.com
It’s official, this website is no longer documenting an intention to travel. This website now documents the travels of Alexandra Sabine and Luke Vigeant through North America based on the suggestions of people on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and this website.
We are heading North, and the vote was a blowout:
Twitter Vote Winner - North
Website Vote Winner – North
YouTube Vote Winner – North
Our resident statistician will be posting the exact results of North’s win in the coming days.
Because North won, here is our rough itinerary for the next 4 days (until our next vote):
Day One We will spend our first night in Collingwood, and the next day,
Day Two will have us on Blue Mountain where Alex will face her childhood fear and ride a chairlift for the first time in her life! Then Luke will either give her a snowboarding lesson or a skiing lesson.
Day Three will take us to Wasaga Beach where we will co-host a radio show with Jeremy John at The Beach 97.7! Afterwards we will head up to North Bay where we will stay with Luke’s relatives and babysit one our loyal follower’s kids for the night. We will introduce them (and you) to the Truppets, traveling puppets who will be going all over North America with us.
And finally on Day Four we will have the unique opportunity to run a General Store in Stonecliffe, Ontario for the day!
We left Toronto today to the warmest farewell imaginable. Our family, friends, friends of friends, and even perfect strangers came to our goodbye party at Wally Magoo’s in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada!
We have some great footage and look forward to posting a video to YouTube for you all to see in the coming days.
At 5:00pm sharp we left the restaurant and started driving towards Collingwood, Ontario. As we approached the city @alexandluke asked our followers in the area where we should eat. Instantly we were met with a tweet from @mataraahson recommending a restaurant and asking some others to chime in. Through her help, and the help @karenbowness we were able to see the recommendation of @charliepee to eat at Collingwood’s Green Mango Tree. The food was great and the price was right, thanks for the help all of you!
This in itself is not an exciting story, but we are so excited that on our first night of trying to use social media to control our road trip! We were able to be sent to collingwood by our followers, and were able to eat delicious thai food based on the suggestions of our followers.
Tonight we are staying at Collingwood’s best real estate agent’s home, this of course being Aggie Davidson of Clairwood Real Estate. We are grateful to spend our first night in such a comfortable space, and are excited to wake up tomorrow and help alex conquer her fear of chairlifts.
Thanks for the overwhelming support over the past couple of days,
We are so excited that our experiment has begun.
love A&L.com
Ni Hao Ma Haimen Middle School!!!
We are thrilled to find out about our first grouping of fans from China! Over 1000 students at Haimen Middle School will be following our experiment thanks to a friend of the alexandluke.com project named Kyle Fines.
We wrote a letter to Haimen Middle School that we are happy to share with the rest of the internet, enjoy!
Dear Haimen Middle School,
We are so happy that you are observing and interacting with our trip even though you are so far away from us, when we saw the picture that your teacher (Mr.Fines) sent us it made us very happy.
We are very sorry that our site uses some technologies that you can’t see due to the content being blocked by your government, we will do our very best to make China-friendly versions of some of our videos in the coming weeks. When we succeed you can rejoice in the fact that our first China-viewable video will be made especially for you.
Should we be brushing up on our Cantonese or Mandarin? Let us know! We will do our very best! In the mean time, get Mr.Fines to grab a large piece of paper that you can all draw on. On this piece of paper you can draw or write whatever you would like. After everyone has had a chance to draw on the paper we will get Mr.Fines to send us a picture of it and we will turn it into a sticker that we will put on our car.
That way we can take a piece of Haimen Middle School wherever we go!
Thanks so much for participating,
A&L
A Great Story About How We Gained Support From @Oakville_VW Dealership
Luke and Mark Seibert (General Manager) stand with “The Bandit” outside Oakville Volkswagen, the birthplace of Burt. We brought him in to be serviced earlier this week, and the team at Oakville VW took notice of our stickered-up car and have rallied around us offering moral and service support throughout our journey, starting with a fresh set of tires! Thanks so much Oakville Volkswagen – its so nice to know we have the support of the VW family wherever we go!
Wasaga is offering big incentives if we go North!
This morning Alex was woken up by a phone call from Jeremy John from 97.7 The Beach. The very chipper morning show host decided to announce to alexandluke and all of his listeners that Saga Resort has offered to put us up for the night in their lovely accommodations provided we end up being voted North by our followers! Nothing like speaking on live radio before you have even brushed your teeth.
We want to thank Saga Resort for their amazing and generous offer to us. We took a look at their site and their blog, and it got us quite excited! Now we can only hope the polls keep sending us North until it closes on Saturday.
Thanks again to Jeremy – and we hope to meet you in person very soon!
A&L
We found uniforms – now we can plan our goodbye party!
It took about four different malls, seven different sporting goods stores, and multiple trips around the internet before we were finally able to get our hands on two complete matching tracksuits. We originally thought this task would be fun and easy, but it turned out to be one of the most difficult tasks yet. In fact there were many times when we thought about how much easier it would have been if the Blue Jays outfit had won.
Alas, after a few days scouring the GTA, leaving blood, sweat and tears all over this city, we finally found our tracksuits in a magical land where fishing supplies are sold in massive warehouses decorated with taxidermically prepared animals and the discount shopping is as plentiful as the parking lots. This land is called Vaughn Mills.
The excitement we felt after finally finding them (and for half-price) was so great that we quickly drove to the nearest wooded picnic area and attempted to do coordinated jumping photos with the camera on auto-timer.
It sort of worked…
Now that the excitement is behind us, we can do some party planning.
In just one week we are setting off for about six to eight months, leaving our friends and family and the wonderful city of Toronto behind, so why not head out with a bang. We have arranged to meet up in Queens Quay to say fair well, hand out some goodies, and close the polls on our very first directional vote. Will we go West, East or North? You can find out by coming down to Queens Quay next Saturday. Here are the details:
Where: Wallymagoo’s, 245 Queens Quay West
When: Feel free to drop in any time between 2pm and 5pm, but keep in mind that we are leaving at 5, so you might want to be there to see which way we head first!
How to get there: There is Green P parking just east of the venue. It is also walking distance from Union Station (just walk directly towards the lake). And the Spadina street car runs along there as well.
We hope to see you all there! Feel free to RSVP on Facebook here.
A&L
Alex and Luke went back to school
Yesterday we had the absolute pleasure of going back to school, but this time around we weren’t the students, we were the guest speakers! Here’s how it all went down:
About a week ago a girl named Katie (@katie_m_thomas) had to present a Hot Topic to her Social Media PR class at Humber College. She presented the alexandluke project – can you believe it!? The entire class sent us tweets inviting us into Humber to meet with them. We, of course, said yes! So we made a little presentation, and off we went to school.
We met with two different groups of students and spent two hours with each group presenting our project and picking their brains. We got some very positive feedback from them, and they gave us a lot of new ideas. These students are amazing – they have some great blogs themselves which you can find if you poke around on twitter using the hash tag #HumberPR.
Meeting these students was very useful for us, as we have no background in PR or any formal education in Social Media, so they offered us their expertise, which was great. But the best part of visiting Humber was that it represented exactly the sort of thing we hope this experiment will yield all over North America…
The alexandluke project randomly reached one person over the internet. That person told a group of people about it. We found out about it and very quickly an online relationship formed. Within days that online relationship turned into about 60 real life personal relationships when we stepped onto campus. How incredible is that? Days like yesterday tell us the experiment is working.
Thank you to all of the students that attended class – we know you are really busy with midterms, and we so appreciate all of your comments and questions and offers to stay with you! @chefdeafjeff, we would love it if YOU could teach Alex how to ski or snowboard if we make it up North on the 21st! And North Bay girl (sorry, we missed your name) – we would love to go to that place you told us about where Champlain portaged!
At the end of class we asked the students to draw on a piece of paper that we will be turning into a sticker on our car. We have scanned it into the computer and are sending it off to Zazzle to have it printed. Now Humber will be with us wherever we go! If you ever see our car, look for the Humber sticker – it has all of their twitter names on there, so you will be able to get in touch with these amazing students and see what they are all up to in Toronto! Or, take a look at the scan below:
Thanks again to @MichaelCayley for having us in your classes! We had the best time.
Love
a&l