Montreal, Mont Tremblant et Quebec Cite

Hi

Finally got around to spending enough time on the computer to update the blog.

Montreal was our first stop, a beautiful city, though waaaaay too many sex cinemas, we counted about 12... it has a lovely old town, that is very european with pavement cafes and grand old buildings. well old in canadian terms which is only a couple hundred years. We didnt scale the mountain in the end as decided it wasnt worth it for my hip. We did have a lovely dinner our with Vanessa and her boyfriend Pawel. Ness is doing her elective at one of the montreal hospitals, so it was nice to meet up. We also went to the biodome which was like an eden project for animals instead - we finally saw a BEAVER woohoooooooo! he was cool.

Mont Tremblant was our next stop, a 2 and a half hour bus ride up into the laurentian mountains. The fall colours are just starting so its quite beautiful to see all the trees turning copper and reds. The hostel was good, with a lively bar. Unfortunately on our first day, I think I must have eaten something odd, as I spent the day being sick. Not fun, but it did rest my hip a bit, which was a plus. Our second day, I felt better and so we ventured out into the resort, which is rather plastic looking but kind of cool. You get in a standing gondola thing that has no cover first to take you to the base of the mountain skimming the trees and buildings on its way. We took a proper gondola up to the top, froze because it was only 3 degrees and very windy, sat and had a hot chocolate and rapidly came down again! Rich has now decided he would like to go skiing ... perhaps when I am fully fixed. He also got to do a luge run, but they wouldnt let me on because I was on crutches, boohoo. It was his first ride on a chair lift too to get to the start. We didnt doo too much else as I was very sore. Though it looks like a good place to go skiing.

Saturday, we came back to montreal and caught a train up to quebec city. We got priority boarding on the train as I was on crutches, with all the oldies... And everyone kept asking if I required assistance or a wheelchair... I think they all think I am permanently disabled as I am using blue elbow crutches which they dont have here. Nice though that they are so helpful.

Last night we went for a gentle wander, very sore, so had to come back, but got to see our first glimpse of old quebec, which is again beautiful. This morning we exlpored some more and discovered how expensive clothes are! There are also hoards and hoards of saga louts out and about ... not sure how they all fit in the city, which is surprisingly small. They have the cutest eco buses in the city which look like postman pat vans. Now in the hostel for a break before headnig out to dinner later.

we also had breakfast today, then decided to stop for brunch ... and maybe some lunch in a bit too ... definietly turning into fat canadians, though now most people are normal sized, so its something about st johns that makes them all so fat there. Heading u to Tadoussac tomorrow for some whale watching, fingers crossed a, we will be able to actually go, b, there are some whales!!!

xxxx

Beautiful Montreal

We made it out of St Johns Woohoo!

Now we are in real canada, another boring night in Toronto, although we did have a very nice greek meal. unfortunately hip was too sore to go watch the international film festival being held there though.

We are now in Montreal, it is beautiful as expected. Rich even managed to get me on a bike 3 times today!! (which is better for my hip as its non weight bearing - dont worry mum). Very sore after walking around so having a quiet night in today. Going to a biodome and their mountain thing tomorrow, then a meal out in the old town.

xx

Sunset, Sunrise, Ferryland Picnic

la manche suspension bridge

sunrise on saturday morning 6.34 am

rich's bum as he climbed into the boot from the backseat to get me a banana.. hehehe, he then got stuck in the hole, as he is a fatty canadian now, just before we had to pull over and rescue him..

waves, waves, waves

sunset on friday night

This weekend we hired the car from friday night so we could go and have a bbq up on Signall Hill and watch the sun go down over St John's. All went well until the 8 matches ran out without lighting the bbq ... so we had a few beers in the sunset, before coming home and cooking the food in the oven instead! The sunset itself wasn't very spectacular either as there were no clouds about.

We then decided to brave the early morning and get up at 6am for the sunrise too on saturday. Surprise surprise we were not the only ones on signal hill at this time ... at least 10 other cars were there too! The sunrise was much nicer than sunset and quite beautiful to watch. As we were all wide awake then we had eggs for breakfast and set off for cape spear.

Waves, waves, waves and a few more waves. Rich got obsessed over taking photos of the waves crashing ... no whales in cape spear though... destined not to see any I think. Once last chance at Tadoussac!

Ferryland for lunch, and some seal watching - our first unexpected animal visitor who played around in the surf for a while checking us out, shame we couldn't get any decent photos of him. Another lovely picnic in the beautiful sunshine and cloudless sky - I think all I write about on here and take photos of is what we eat...

Next stop was La Manche, which is a suspension bridge over a waterfall/river thing, quite pretty I guess. It wasn't that exciting and certainly not worth the walk for my hip which was complaining bitterly. Apparently you can swim here, but we didn't see anyone in the water. Though after the size and number of jellyfish at Terra Nova, I'm not that surprised...

Sat night we did use the bbq for some rainbow trout ... though it then didn't cook as it was a tad bent out of shape, so we had to resort to the oven again. Epic failure (though at least we managed to actually light it this time).

To finish off our packed weekend, we went for a final lunch out at the Rooms again, with some more gorgeous cod on the rocks - yummy. Then onto the mall for the film "All About Steve" - funny enough.

Four more days left in St John's!! Counting down to being freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

xxx

Photos from Terra Nova

Some more photos with the kayak ones. Very pretty scenery.

Some photos from the weekend that the computer has finally agreed to upload! The kayaking ones are on a different camera, so will upload those later.

So these are: the lighthouse at Twillingate, some views of Twillingate harbour in the daytime and at night. The foresty ones are different parts of Terra Nova. The second to last is the Doctor's Inn fantastic B and B, and our duvet cover - the only moose we saw!!

xx

The Great Moose Chase ...

Four Day weekend!

We got the hire car on thursday night so we could head out at 8am on friday up towards Twillingate. After a few short stops on the way at nowhere particularly exciting, we got into twillingate at around 3pm and checked into our B and B.

Our first stop in town was at the local Auk Winery, for a "tour" of the old infant school gym which now houses large vats of wine fermenting. They use local berries and some imported grapes (shiraz and chardonnay) to make the wine. This means that whatever is in season gets combined and created - e.g. partridge berry and blueberry. Then we got to taste some wine, most of it was way too sickly due to the vast amounts of sugar involved. There was one nice one called jelly bean row, so we stocked up on a bottle of that to drink back here in st johns.

Dinner was a local restaurant/diner called R and J... Rich got the special of crab dinner, then had to be shown how to crack open all the legs - much to the amusement of the locals, who found it really funny.

We had planned to do a whale watching tour on the saturday morning, but turned up to find it had been cancelled due to high winds and therefore unsafe motor boat conditions. So instead we made a stop at "Prime Berth", a small fishery museum run by a local fisherman with some rather strong opinions. It was informative and we got to watch him split and salt a codfish - rather gross, complete with a stomach autopsy so we could see what the cod had been eating.... yuk.

We headed back towards st johns to Terra Nova National Park for two nights, with the plan of doing some moose and beaver spotting. First stop was the visitor centre, where we organised a kayak rental for sunday and got some hiking maps. Southwest Arm Pond was recommended as a good one for beavers so we decided to do that before heading to the B and B. It was a 3km hike, I had to use my crutches and leftie found it pretty hard going. Frauke and Rich managed to see a beaver briefly heading towards its dam, I missed it! They then hiked back 3km and drove around to pick me up. We saw a couple of red squirrels too.

We checked into the "Doctor's Inn" B and B, amazing place with great owners (phd Doctor not MD)! They were heading out to a theatre show so left us bottles of wine with crackers and cheese to help ourselves too!! We had a good nights sleep and a fab breakfast, both hot and cold until we were stuffed and ready for the day.

Sunday morning we hired a double and a single kayak and went on a two hour trip around Newman Sound. We were told there was a 7 month old Fish Eagle called Crash who lived around the tickle we went through, we didnt spot him though. We did manage to find hundreds of jellyfish in the water though ... urgh urgh urgh. Luckily we stayed in the kayaks ... Absolutely beautiful to be on the water surrounding by the national park and definitely the highlight of the weekend.

The kayak rental guy told us that good places to spot moose were the side roads, so off we trundled to do a few hours of moose spotting... unfortunately he didnt tell us the roads were more dirt tracks with large rocks in the way. We kept going hoping there would be an end to the road, but luckily we passed a truck who told us to turn around. Our car was an impala, a normal size car with normal size tires .. which didnt appreciate being driven over large rocks. It somehow survived with a few scratches across the bottom of the engine oops. We did not see a single moose. We did get overtaken however by what resembles a monster truck, that jsut mounted the hillside to get around us ... and this is a normal size car in canada - now we know why!!! A couple more hours on beaver hunt was also unsucessful so we headed back to find some food, only to drive about 20km in the dark to discover the restaurant we wanted was closed.

Today we did another 3km hike around a 'pond', supposedly a good spot for beaver and caribou. Nada and not worth the hip pain. Boring hike, and we only saw a frog which I almost squashed accidently with my crutches and a grouse. The cafe had clsoed for the season so we headed back to st johns this afternoon.

All in all a good weekend, just a serious lack of animals!! Apparently we are all super good at repelling them! Will try to get photos up soon,

xxx

Dildo Photos

Finally I managed to get the laptop to load some more photos...

This is us saluting Captain Dildo the Original!

Oh NO, we missed the Dildo Days!

Being Sperm Whales in Conception Bay...