because it's there

You will have to excuse my typing.  It is a little shaky, I know, but I have a good excuse for that.   It is called the Cabot trail.   For most of you the Cabot trail would be a beautiful drive with breath-taking scenery, vast expanses and huge amazing vistas, yadda yadda yadda.  I am sure that is true as far as it goes.  For someone like me who has a fear of heights it is a terrifying, heart-pounding, roller-coaster ride.  The only  vistas I saw were the side of road and the dashboard of the car.  Breath-taking indeed - breath-releasing not so much.

There were three areas that kicked in my primal, falling out of the tree, self-preservation instincts.  The first was French mountain, the second was Mackenzie mountain and the third was Cape Smokey (I knew that damned cat was going to come back to haunt me! - Telen had a cat named Smokey who hated me)  The rest of the trip was actually very interesting and picturesque.   Those three spots,however, almost did me in.   

Why would you build a road that goes straight up a mountain with sheer cliffs dropping down to the ocean on one side and sheer cliffs going straight up on the other?  Then why would you twist that road like a politician's promise?  Then why would you suddenly drop the road straight down toward the edge of cliff that falls 1600 meters to the crashing rocks of the ocean below and at the last minute put in a ninety degree left turn?  Who thinks like that?

We did French and Mackenzie mountains yesterday.  They were on the western side of the cape which is supposedly the most rugged with the Atlantic side being the more gentle side.  Last night we stayed at a nice B&B in North Cape where I spent the evening shaking, sweating and snivelling.

We did Cape Smokey today and, of course, Telen was driving.   I think she was getting impatient with me and my phobia.  

"Stop your whimpering, sit up straight and take your thumb out of your mouth I can't understand a word you are screaming.  And open the window.  What is that god-awful smell?"   

I think she was just touchy about having to drive again.

My favourite place on the Cabot trail was a town called Chetticamp on the western side of the island.   It is an Acadian town that sits right on the ocean.  It has a unique appearance in that the houses look like they are just popping up out the ground with nothing else around them.  The accent of the people there is much softer than the Quebecois and very gentle on the ear.  We had lunch there and had Acadian meat pies with home-made vegetable soup while a fiddler played in the background.  It was an extremely pleasant experience.

Interestingly enough, this morning at the B&B when we had breakfast we were the only ones who spoke English.  Everyone else at the table spoke a version of French.  One family was from France, one family was from Quebec City and one man was from Germany but spoke French.  It was strange to be the lingual minority.  Normally most people have some English. I know that sounds arrogant, but English is fast becoming the lingua franca of the world. English is a pidgin of many other languages and so it becomes the common language for people who wish to communicate.  The English-speakers have managed to alienate so many other people in the world that they have learned the language just to be able to curse us out.  It is not that I haven't a desire to learn another language but there is a gap between my desire and my ability.  Weirdly enough I could read the Gaelic on the signs and posters in the B&B better than I could understand the French spoken at the table.  How sad is that? 

Tonight we are staying at a little cottage in Wreck Cove.  After going over Cape Smokey the name of the town seems singularly appropriate. I am not sure if there is anything in Wreck Cove other than this cottage.  I have noticed in Cape Breton that a small community of five or six hundred people will have an enormous church and a huge cemetery.  I guess Bretons go to church and die a lot.    

Praying is probably important to people who have to drive those roads all the time.

Telen writes:

Rand deserves a T-shirt that says "I survived the cliffs of Cabot Trail".  I feel empathy for him as I have a strong phobia towards spiders and snakes.  I know he feels this is a major attack to his moral character but I see this as a rather sweet human trait.  After completing the first day on the Cabot Trail traversing 3 mountain passes yesterday, Rand started asking a number of people about the degree of steepness of Cape Smokey which we would need to traverse the next day.  He asked our B&B host Hansell.  He asked the chef who greeted us last night at dinner.  He asked the lady at the front desk of the restaurant.  The cliffs and the steepness of Cape Smokey became worse and worse with each consecutive description.  I had to stop Rand from asking any more people as I felt that this action was not helping to reassure him :)  Rand coped very well during the drive.  He was unusually quiet and did not try to give me any driving instructions like he normally would do.  The only thing he said as we were going through numerous mountainous hairpin turns was "Telen, it is still 30 (km/hr)" i.e. "don't speed up".

I enjoy the Celtic and Acadian culture on Cape Breton Island.  A large number of people can trace several family generations all the way back to the early 1800's.  Although the villages are small, I see the presence of young people and children walking around.  These villages are alive and thriving.

Cape Breton

We have arrived back on the mainland.  We thought that we had seen the last of the sculptured lawns and the considerate, friendly people.   Nope.  They exist here on Cape Breton Island too.   We need to take a quintessential essence of the people of the Maritimes and, using a huge fleet of crop dusters, spray it over the rest of Canada.  It is not that we have found the rest of Canada unfriendly, far from it, it is just that you think Yohan Blake is fast and then Usain Bolt shows up.

As far as the sculpted lawns go; the Maritimes can keep that bit.  Mowing lawns to me is like putting lettuce in salad.  Everyone does it and it makes the salad look good but there always seems to be a lot of it and it takes a lot of time.  I have similar feelings about lawn mowing and lettuce.

The ride into Baddeck today was refreshing.  It was quite a bit cooler than it has been with a few rain showers now and again.  Since we have been existing in a heat wave since late June it was nice to have the cool showers.   I didn't even put my rain jacket on, I just enjoyed the sprinkles.  Luckily it wasn't until I arrived here in Baddeck that the rain began to get down to business.  Since it was raining and cool we had to have another Lobster dinner.  Sigh.

This morning I got a phone call from the Ferry service that runs to Newfoundland.  Apparently the Newfies heard Telen was coming and are scurrying to hide all their mussels.  Prince Edward Island talked. The Newfies came up with the excuse that one of their ferries is malfunctioning to give themselves more time.  So, our reservation to get to Newfoundland has been delayed by two days.  That set us to scurrying because we are now arriving in Newfie on the labour day weekend.  Accommodation is going to be scarce.  Fortunately the place that we had booked already was able to accommodate us.  Whew!

We have two days to kill.  I have been reluctant to do the Cabot trail because I have a fear of heights.  Every time Telen mentions it I squirm and whine but she has been supportive by suggesting that I was being childish and cowardly.  So I hid under the bed and stuck my tongue out at her. She won, of course, and so tomorrow we start on the Cabot trail.  I can hardly wait...

Cape Breton has a very Celtic flavour.  A lot the road signs are in both English and Gaelic.  Almost every face here is pale with lots of freckles.  It almost feels like we are back in Ireland again, including the rain.  The area was colonized by mostly Scottish immigrants, though, not Irish.  (Hence the name Nova Scotia) Since there is such a huge Scottish influence here I thought the lake here needed a monster.  I can fix that. I will go for a swim...

Today we went for lunch at Wong's Bras D'Or chinese restaurant and were served by a young lady with red hair and freckles.  Served our food by a celtic lady in Chinese restaurant with a french name.  Only in Canada, you say?

Cape Breton is really mix of Scottish and French.  A lot of the Acadians that were expelled from New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and parts of Nova Scotia by the Brits ended up here in Cape Breton.  This is creating a new mix that is unique to this area.  It should be interesting to explore.

By the way - the Cabot trail is mis-named.  John Cabot's real name was Giovanni Caboto.  He was from Italy.  It should be the Giovanni trail and they should serve Spaghetti.

In my world they would.

musselbound

Prince Edward Island is green.  There are a lot of trees and vegetation here which makes it green, but that is the same with most of Canada with the exception of the prairies which is mostly yellow.  They recycle, reuse, eat organically, and compost so that makes them green but, again, that is true for most of Canada except Alberta.  They envy richer provinces so that makes them green, but again, that is the same with most of Canada.  What is so green about PEI?

Their obsession with Ann of Green Gables and grass!  There is nowhere you can go without seeing some reference, picture, play, doll or precious little gifty  having to do with Ann of Green Gables.  And she did not even exist!  She is fictitious!  Kind of like Stephen Harper.  The whole province is head-over-heels for a character from a children's book.  Time to move on PEI.

The other thing they are obsessed with is grass.   Granted, in BC we are obsessed with grass as well, but this is different.   I am talking about lawn.  You would not believe the lawns here in PEI.   I have seen tidy little houses sitting in the middle of a hectare of lawn.   NO DANDELIONS!   I think the province has outlawed them.   Judging by the conspicuous lack of dandelions I think the penalty might be execution.  The ride-on mower people have done the same brainwashing here that the pick-up truck people have done in Alberta.  The money lost to the economy from people missing days at work, leaving their families and committing crimes to pay for their lawn care must be staggering!

We rode out to a place called Panmure Island the other day.   That was when I saw a whole town sitting on a huge lawn...  but I digress.  Panmure Island is an island which up until the mid-century had a causeway to it that was only accessible at low tide.  They then created a causeway that was useable at all tide levels and over time a large beach formed from the famous red sand of PEI.  Almost nobody has heard of the red sand, but  it is famous!  So, we rode over the causeway to visit the lighthouse on the island and paid a few dollars for a tour.   The tour consisted of us climbing up to the top of the lighthouse and looking out.  The young lady who was our tour guide didn't seem to know much about the lighthouse but she took our picture at the top and that was that.

Climbing up a lighthouse in cycling shoes with cleats is not recommended.  Climbing down is even less so.  Cycling shoes are kind of like a duck's feet.   In the right environment they work really well.  Otherwise, you walk like a duck.

We visited the beach and put our feet in the Atlantic (Northumberland strait, actually) and gazed at the pink sand.   I am still having a bit of trouble with that.  The problem with walking on the sand, putting your feet in the ocean and then putting your cycling  shoes back on is that the sand sticks to your feet.  Riding after that is like wearing sandpaper socks.  And there is a kind of weird smell to your feet when you take your shoes off at home.

Also on the causeway there was a little outdoorsy, fast-food place where we stopped for lunch.  Only in PEI is lobster and seafood chowder considered fast food.  There were a lot of flies around the eatery so after the young lady closed her little window after taking your order or passing out your food we were serenaded with the sound of fly swatters coming from inside.  Kind of put you off your feed a little.

We rode in to Saint Peters yesterday from Montague.  The map shows the route as straight as an arrow almost the whole way and the write-up that accompanies it says the same thing.  It is true, the road does not deviate left or right for about 40 kilometers.

They did not mention the up and down bit.

Yesterday and today we are at the little town of about 500 called Saint Peters on the PEI north coast.  The original name was Saint Pierre but that got changed when the touchy-feely English chased the Acadians out, leveled the forest and alienated the native people.  Now the primary industry here is mussel farming.  Telen is in heaven.   If we stay here any longer  there will be no mussels left.  The only place to eat in this little town is a chippy called, strangely enough, Rick's Fish and Chips.  They serve mussels there as well as an occasional bit of fish.   The chips, of course, are made from famous PEI potatoes.

Yesterday when I went to upgrade my operating system on my computer it got part way through the upgrade and crashed saying that my hard-drive was corrupted.  I am writing this on Telen's I-Pad and so I don't have access to any pictures on my computer, so I am sorry about no pictures on this entry.  We are not in any large towns for the next little while so it may be some time before I can get my computer fixed.  My hard-drive has been hanging around with the wrong crowd!

Telen writes

I am enchanted by the people and pace of life in PEI.  The 3 bed & breakfast places that we have stayed in do not lock their doors at night.  No one locks their bicycles outside either.  Cars would stop half a block away if they see us with our bikes on the side of the road, to give us room!  My cycling experience on PEI is definitely one of the best.
I think  I need to back off from mussels for a while as I have eaten so much of it.  PEI has been successfully cultivating mussels since the 1970's and it is big business along with the potato farming.  Just outside of our windows at the Tir Na Nog Inn, we can see hundreds of buoys marking the mussel "socks" in the St Peters Bay.  A mussel sock is a mesh bag about 20 meters long, for the mussel to grow on.  It takes about 2 years before the mussels reach the commercial size.  We found that a lobster needs to grow for about 7-8 years before reaching the size of about a pound, before marketing.

Prince Edward Island

Up until now we have been staying in assorted campgrounds, cheap hotels, hostels and some places that belie categorization.  Now is the time for luxury.  On the PEI leg of the trip we booked a self-guided tour through an outfit called McQueens in Charlottetown.  I realize that self-guided seems like a bit of an oxymoron. However, what they do is give us a map, transfer our belongings and set up the accommodation.  We are leaving the car in Charlottetown and taking just what we need for a week.  Last night, tonight and for the next few days we are staying in very fancy B&B’s, at least, fancy compared to our previous accommodations. (Not saying much!) Not only that but we get to ride together!  Pretty decadent, I know. 

We like PEI.   It has a very nice feel to it.  When you want to cross the road people stop their cars to let you cross, unlike Alberta where they aim for you.  Everyone has that Maritime friendliness and a laid-back attitude.

Kind of like Victoria on pot.

We did a ride around Charlottetown yesterday and saw the sights.  For a city that figured so heavily in Confederation it is quite small.  People here are still a little puzzled by bicycles – not exactly sure if these new-fangled inventions will catch on.   Our helmets and cycling gear have raised no end of eyebrows.  But, in typical PEI fashion they are willing to give it a try, so they give us lots of room and lots of puzzled looks.  Ontario, sorry to say, but PEI also kicks your ass.   How does it feel to have your ass kicked by the little kid with the big glasses in the corner who eats the crayons?

Telen riding the PEI roads. 

Last night we went out for dinner at a Japanese restaurant.   So, an Irishman and a Chinese lady in PEI were served Japanese sushi prepared and served by an Indian man from Korea.  Only in Canada, you say?

Our ride today was from Charlottetown (l love the name!) to Montague by the back roads.  We rode past very many potato farms and small villages.  The red soil is a bit disconcerting – we always expect rich soil to be black.  Apparently the red colour comes from a high percentage of iron oxide in the soil.   I guess no one in PEI suffers from anemia.  But what really twists my mind is the pink roads.  I guess if you make asphalt from the local red dirt you get pink asphalt.  It takes a little getting used to.  Telen liked it because she said it matched her socks.

Telen and the famous red dirt of PEI.  

We ran into a weird obstacle today.   A loon standing in the middle of the road.  I am talking about the bird, not some crazy politician.  It was really strange because he was not about to move for anything – not even cars.  He did poop when he saw me coming but then that happens to lots of people when they see me in spandex.

Telen has not been on her bike for quite a while because my initial idea for her riding was, like most of my ideas, workable only in science fiction.  So, yesterday and today were her first rides of the trip.  It was a little frightening.   I would power up a hill and slow down at the top to wait for her and she was right behind me yelling at me to “Get out of the way, you idiot, what are trying to do, cause an accident?!”  Okay, for those of you who know Telen you know that that is an unlikely scenario.  She didn’t use the word “idiot”.

Okay, not all the roads are pink!
 This is a picture of some fool against the beautiful countryside of PEI

Telen writes:

I enjoyed cycling with Rand these past 2 days.  I keep my eyes on his back while he reads the directions from our tour guidebook.  My legs are complaining tonight as we cycled over 50 km today.  We are staying in a little town of 1,500 people called Montague tonight.  The town is situated on the east coast of PEI.  It has a lovely harbour and well kept houses.  Near the edge of the harbour, I noticed a fancy 2-story building with a Canadian flag flying outside.  The lady from the Tourist information bureau said that it is a research centre for alcohol and drug addiction (not a detox centre).  She said that no one ever seems to know what goes on in there and no one comes to talk to the locals.  How odd I thought!  I wondered what kind of research is going on in there…  Anyways, the centre is scheduled to close down next year.

My goal is to taste some famous PEI mussels before we leave.

  

Halifax

Lobster Dinner!

People from the Maritimes have a reputation for friendliness.   I guess a good example is what happened in Newfoundland right after 911.  I am here to tell you that this reputation is well deserved! I was riding along between Saint John and Moncton when I saw something red off the side of the road.  I was riding in my own little headspace and it took a few minutes for it to register.  Oh, my gosh, that could be someone injured on the side of the road or something equally macabre!  I stopped and walked my bike back the 20 meters or so to have a better look.   It turned out to be just a piece of red cloth that had likely blown off of someone’s moving truck, so I got back on my bike.  I looked up the road and there was a car backing furiously down the shoulder toward me.  Two guys hopped out and one of the men said, “Are you ok?  I am a bike mechanic, I could help you fix your bike!”  Contrast that to the incident a few years ago when a group of us were riding to Calgary and Bob fell and broke his shoulder and 16 vehicles went by before a couple of Newfies stopped and drove him to hospital.

The bike-mechanic, whose name was Dana, and his friend Peter, chatted with me for quite a while.  Dana had ridden across Canada a few years ago.  Has everyone ridden across Canada?

Everywhere we have been in the Maritimes the people have been warm, friendly and accommodating.  Maybe it is the diet of lobster.  The diet on the west coast is beef and crab… 

On the map there was a scenic road called the Fundy Scenic route from Saint John to Moncton so we decided to head that way.  50 km of teeth-rattling road with nothing to see but a few farms, lots of trees and fog.  Not a fun day after all.  Strangely I was happy to get back on the smooth, wide shouldered main road even though there were large trucks.

In Moncton we went to watch the Tidal Bore come up the Petitcodiac River.  A wild pig running up the river before the tide!  Wow!  The Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world so when the tide comes in it pushes up the riverbed raising a wave before it.  No pigs and no tedious conversations, just water.

The Tidal Bore (Yawn)

We have made it to Halifax.  Lobster again.  Sigh.  Telen is looking for mussels as well.  I have been wandering around flexing and posing but apparently mine are not good enough for her?  Geeze!

Halifax Waterfront

Telen on Halifax Waterfront

I guess we have crossed the continent but we are not done yet.  In a few days we will arrive in Charlottetown and begin 5 days of actually riding together.  I think Telen has been relishing the time I have been on the bike because she gets away from my crankiness.  On PEI she is going to be with me 24/7.  I just hope the werewolfiness we discovered on Manitoulin Island will be held in check.  Mind you, that lupine side may have surfaced because of the great rip-off of Gordon’s Park, where we stayed.  Nevertheless I am going to eat lots of garlic… or is that for vampires?  Maybe I should just eat lots of lobster and hope for the best.

Wait a minute, she loves lobster…

Lobster Dinner

Good news!  The doctors have given me a 50-50 chance of survival after eating the Poutine, Montreal Smoked meat and Sugar Pie.   Telen was given a 60% chance because she is cute.

Quebec is the place to ride your bike.   They have a great “Vive le bicyclette!” attitude towards cycling.  After riding in Ontario, where they have only a slightly better attitude than Alberta towards cyclists, Quebec has been a refreshing change.   Ontario, I gotta tell ya, Quebec kicks your ass!  Victoria, the supposed cycling capital of Canada, could learn a lot as well.

I rode the Chemin du Roy from Montreal to Trois Rivieres and I felt like a king.  What a fabulous ride!   The route was right along the St. Lawrence River and very scenic.  Every town I rode through had big signs indicating the cycling routes and one town even had shoulder high pickets separating the cycling lanes from the rest of the traffic.  I rode along doing the royal wave at everyone but I think the heat must have gotten to them because the only one to wave back was an old lady in a motorcade.  She was waving to everyone, though.  I was riding on the Route Verte but I had to question the naming as I rode by two nuclear power plants and a pulp mill.   After that, though, I rode past a lot of farms and the smell was more what I expected. 

The day was very hot so when I was almost at Trois Rivieres I decided to pull over under a bridge in the shade to give certain parts of my anatomy a rest and to rehydrate.  That way, when I came to where Telen was waiting, I would look strong, fit and sexy.  After a suitable interval when the numbness had faded I remounted my bike and pedaled about 100 meters and there was Telen waiting for me.  She agreed, when I asked her, if I looked strong, fit and sexy.  She said, Yeah, yeah, yeah.” 

I thought I had at least 10 kilometers to go!   I swear the last road sign I had seen said “Trois Rivieres 20 K”.  Perhaps Quebec is learning its directions from Ontario.

We stayed in an Auberge in the heart of Quebec City.  Auberge means Hostel.   We like the atmosphere in hostels.  We had a private room with our own bathroom but we shared the kitchen facilities.  The kitchens in the hostels that we have been in are almost like professional kitchens.  It is always interesting to see what everyone else is cooking.  The only unfortunate part of this hostel was the number of stairs to get to our room.   We had to go up quite a few, then down some and up again.  Anyone who is a cyclist knows how much we hate stairs – especially just after a long ride!   Telen was very supportive and kept reminding me of how it was building my character and to quit my infernal whining.

Telen in Quebec City

Quebec City is like a little European City.  It is the only walled city north of Mexico.  There are a million places to eat and cyclists are everywhere.  Since Quebec City is on a hill I suspect these cyclist are very fit.  The roads in old town Quebec are cobbled so I think these fit cyclists may have few if any teeth left.   They will all probably become hockey players.

Things you don't want to see on holiday

We crossed into Noveau Brunswick.  Sorry, Ontario, but New Brunswick kicks your ass as well.  How does it feel, Ontario, to have your ass kicked by the nerdiest little kid on the playground?

Remember me lamenting the hills?   Well, I found them.  We are in the Laurentian Mountains now.   Back home we would not call these mountains, we would call them hills.  Since they are so low and worn down the road builders don’t bother to find passes to run the roads through, they just go straight up and over the “mountains”.  The hills are not as long and arduous as going through the passes in BC but there are a lot more of them!

We are currently in Saint John NB.   The Atlantic Ocean is just outside the cottage we are staying in.   We are not finished our cross-Canada trip yet, by any means, but we have gotten to the Atlantic.  So, we went to the market and bought 2 lobsters for dinner!  The part of the Atlantic outside here is the famous Bay of Fundy – the highest tides in the world.  Again, here we go with the superlatives! 

But really Canada has a great many superlatives the greatest of which is its people.  Having travelled this far I am impressed with the people we have met.  All of them are imbued with a certain quality that makes them Canadian.   I cannot say exactly what it is but you know it right away.  It makes me proud to say that I come from the same country.

Telen writes:

I really enjoyed travelling through Quebec.  I was rather apprehensive i.e. how to communicate in French, how to navigate by car as I have been warned about the “crazy Quebecois drivers” etc.  It turned out that everyone we met was friendly and spoke better English than our French.  Some of my grade 12 French returned which permitted us to order things in restaurants, for example.  There is a distinct cultural difference here.  At times I felt like I was in some parts of Europe which I have fond memories of.  A lot of street and town names begin with Saint …   One sign was “St Louis du Ha! Ha!” (with the exclamation marks).   I thought it was a joke but no!  It is the name of a real town.  I would like to return to Quebec for future vacations.

I think this lifestyle of having fun and no work suits us.  The muscle knots in my shoulders are pretty well gone.  The biggest decision each day is to decide what to eat or cook and where to go tomorrow.   Rand is looking even better nowadays with a much trimmer profile.

Montreal

This is the third large city we have visited in just a few days.  Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal.  Enough already!  I think we are ready to leave “big city Canada” behind and head into more manageable territory.

our reception crossing into Quebec

Ottawa is a fairly nice city.   I am not saying I want to live there, but as far as eastern cities it is not bad.   There is certainly a greater sense of history here than we don't have in Victoria.  The houses are all brick and very picturesque and there are monuments scattered around everywhere.   We did the usual tourist things; explored Sparks street, saw the Houses of Parliament and went for a bike ride along the Rideau Canal. It started to rain when we got to Parliament.  I thought that was fitting.

Riding along the Rideau Canal

The ride along the Rideau Canal was very nice.   It was as if someone had put a bike trail through Beacon Hill Park.  But dead flat!  Take the prairies; add a few trees, some rocks, a lake or two, and a huge dose of humidity and you have Ontario.  Since Calgary we have been riding through a heat wave. When we got to southern Ontario they just added humidity to make sure the perspiration did not evaporate. 

I am kind of missing hills – I have not seen many since the Rockies.   There are rolling hills around Lake Superior, but from Sault Ste. Marie on there is nothing.  I know, I know – be careful what you wish for.

The ride from Ottawa to Montreal was a great ride, albeit wet.   Quebec has developed a series of bike maps that they call the Route Vert.   These are roads chosen for their rideablity and scenery.

waiting on the ferry to cross onto the Loyalist Parkway

(yes, I know it is out of chronological order- but, hey, it was a good photo!)

 And Quebec has paved shoulders!   Yes!  Remember I said it started to rain when we got to Parliament?   Well, it rained all the next day with a strong wind coming from the northeast.  Translation:  rain and wind in my face for the whole ride.  The Semi’s driving by tended to give me a nice cool shower as well. I am not complaining!   The ride was great!  When we got to Montreal I will admit to being wet and kind of cold but also quite loaded with endorphins. 

I had a riding partner for a while.  Her name was Mary and she was riding across Canada unsupported and fully loaded.  Made me feel inadequate!  She is from Portland, Oregon, had started from Glacier National Park and is headed for St. John’s NFLD.  It was nice to ride with someone for a while so that there was some conversation.   As much as I am comfortable with my own company I do find the conversation quite predictable and boring.

One weird thing:  I look for McDonald’s restaurants when I ride.   I don’t normally eat there but when I see one I know that there is a clean rest room, air-conditioning and (currently) free coffee.  Just like in Ireland when I would be looking for pubs even though I don’t drink.  Interesting how your priorities change under different circumstances.

Today we explored Montreal.   Our hotel is right on the edge of “the Village”.   The Village is Montreal’s version of Vancouver’s West End except bigger, more flamboyant and more swish.  We went down to Old Montreal and poked around there for a bit.  It really reminds me of a European city with its narrow, cobbled streets and tall stone buildings.

Telen in Old Montreal

The Canadian souvenir shops with their junk and really tacky t-shirts spoil the ambience somewhat.  Not to mention the glaring signs advertising poutine and Montreal smoked meat sandwiches…

  We then explored Rue St. Catherine and Rue St. Denis.  We saw the St. Denis Theatre where "Just for Laughs" is held.  Rue St. Denis is loaded cheek to jowl with small shops and restaurants for as far as the eye can see.   Most of Rue St. Catherine is closed off to vehicle traffic and is cheek to jowl with people.   Maybe Government Street could learn by example…

So, tonight we are off to find Montreal smoked meat sandwiches and poutine.   I hope we survive.