Day 5: A Hectic Day down a Lazy River (or two)

We started our day with a quick breakfast and then we were on our way! We arrived at Karczma Starożyn's establishment within an hour. Not only do they run a restaurant and inn, they also rent out kayaks to visitors. We hopped into their truck and drove down some back roads until we reached our drop off point to begin our kayaking adventure.

We had 2 kayaks: one for myself and Matt, the other for Ewa and Piotr. We were given some padded seats to make ourselves more comfortable during the journey. Matt and I had never done any kayaking before so we were true novices. I think we did fairly well despite our lack of experience. We probably wasted a great deal of energy by zig zagging down the river instead of taking a more direct line. Some of the challenges that we encountered included navigating around partially submerged trees and logs (we probably rammed a good number of them), getting stuck in the banks of the river numerous times, other faster and more experienced kayakers, having to paddle across a large open body of water, and portaging across 3 closed locks. 

At the third lock, we met a young man who was  travelling alone in a canoe, an American. We chatted briefly with him. It turns out he had just landed in Poland a few days ago and had planned to canoe and camp over a 4 day period. We told him where we were headed (back to Karczma Starożyn) to have our evening meal before returning to Warsaw. We then parted company and continued on our way.

We had another hour of paddling before we travelled through 2 working locks (yay! no more portaging!) before we concluded our journey. We were quite tired when we stepped out out of the kayaks for the final time today. It turns out we paddled around 20kms today. WOW. After dinner, we headed back to Warsaw. I think we will need to self-medicate later tonight. Ugh.

The amusing part: Piotr did not mention how far we would be paddling and we did not ask. 

Masurian region as seen from a kayak:

The one functioning set of locks we got to go through:

Update on Friday, July 9, 2010 at 6:45PM by Matt

For anyone who is interested, here are some details of the route we followed in the kayaks today:

• Our starting point was from the riverbank of the Czarna Hańcza river just south of a town called Dworczysko
• We followed the river southeast, near the town of Rygol and then turned west through the Mikaszewo lake
• Finally, we arrived at the entrance of the Paniewo lake, just east of Płaska.  This is where we finished up.

Day 4: Castles, Churches and Nazis, oh my!

Today we got up bright and early in order to have a leisurely breakfast before continuing on our journey north. Breakfast was a small but filling buffet of fried eggs, sausages, crepes with assorted fillings, devilled eggs, and deli meats and cheeses. We were able to pack some small sandwiches for our "second breakfast" later in the day.

After breakfast, we sped off to Malbork Castle. Piotr stopped on the other side of the river to allow Matt to take some nice pictures of the castle from a distance. We probably spent about 3 hours exploring the castle with the aid of audio guides (ipods!) and some very knowledgeable staff members throughout the castle. Malbork was built in the 1300's by the Teutonic Knights and has never been successfully defeated. The castle has been under constant renovations for quite some time. The Chapel of St. Anne suffered great destruction during WWII. It was only restored to the point that visitors were allowed entry to it in 2001. It is currently unclear if the chapel will be fully restored or if it will remain in it's current condition to show the damage that occurred during WWII. New sections of the castle are opened to the public as restorative work progresses.

Our next destination was Święta Lipka. We had a quick meal of pierogies (alas, not the bilberry filled ones that Piotr had wanted) and then hurried to attend an organ performance at the Our Lady's Church. It was a huge surprise to us that such a small town would have such a grand church. It is one of the finest examples of baroque churches in Poland. In the summer, organ recitals are given several times a day. Although they do not charge for tickets, they request donations. During the recitals, the figures on the organ become animated and move with the music! The church and recital were a very pleasant surprise for us.

Our final stop before arriving at our accommodations for the evening was a more sinister one: Hitler's headquarters in Gierloż, or "Wolf's Lair". During WWII, Hitler had a number of concrete bunkers constructed to house himself and about 2,000 people. The bunkers were camouflaged by green rooftops (moss and other plants) and were equipped with guns. He eventually returned to Germany and ordered the bunkers to be destroyed in January 1945. This lair was not discovered by the Allies while Hitler was living there.

Malbork Castle from across the river Nogat:

St. Anne's Chapel at Malbork Castle, heavily damaged during WWII:

Bunker at the "Wolf's Lair" in Gierloż:

Another bunker at the "Wolf's Lair".  All bunkers were destroyed by sappers when the Nazi regime was withdrawing from Gierloż:

Day 3: Chasing the Knights

Today we left Warsaw and headed north. Our first destination was Toruń.  Although it is notably the birth place of Copernicus, the appeal for us was the amazing architecture. Toruń was founded by the Teutonic Knights in the mid 1200's. The city still retains the original street layout and is very pedestrian friendly. There is quite a contrast between the old architecture and the modern shops that they now house on their main floors. We had a quick lunch at a quiet restaurant with an outdoor courtyard before setting out with a local guide for a 2 hour sightseeing tour. We saw the Crooked Tower, the ruins of the Castle of the Teutonic Knights (including the Latrine tower), the Church of St. James, the Town Hall, Copernicus House, and the Cathedral of Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist. Although there is an Old Town district and New Town district, they only differ in age by about 30 years.

Next, we drove to Chełmno. Chełmno was established around the same time as Toruń. However, Chełmno was a much smaller fortification. This tiny city boasts an almost completely preserved outer wall which measures a length of just over 2 miles. Surprisingly, there are 6 Gothic style churches within the city walls. After a hearty dinner at a local restaurant, we continued on to Kwidzyn for a very brief look at the ruins of yet another Teutonic fortification. The most interesting feature noted was the exceptionally tall latrine tower. After a few quick shots, we piled back into the car and continued to our final destination of the day: our hotel.

Matt and I have already accumulated about 400 photos. No wonder we're feeling so tired!!  Early tomorrow morning, we are off to Malbork; the largest remaining Teutonic Knight castle.

View of Toruń from across the riverbank of the Vistula river:

Teutonic Knight Castle Ruins in Toruń:

Québec City: Bonjour!

Bonjour, mes amis!  Hier nous sommes arrivés sans risque à l'aéroport.  Ma soeur et son mari nous ont pris et alors nous avons conduit à l'hôtel. 

Translation: Hello, my friends!  Yesterday we arrived safely at the airport.  My sister and her husband picked us up and then we drove to the hotel.  (Yes, I cheated and used Babelfish.  My French is a little, um, lacking.)

Let's just backtrack a little to before arriving in la belle province.  Matt and I had a little adventure getting to our gate at Pearson.  We drove around Pearson twice because we missed the sign telling us where we needed to go to drop off our rental car.  We wandered around Terminal 1 for a good 10-15 minutes until we finally figured out that oops, WestJet flies out of Terminal 3.  When we finally got to Terminal 3, we were unable to use the automated check-in machines and were forced to check-in at the counter where the customer service representative rolled her eyes at us and sighed heavily.  After going through the security check (where they swabbed our one bag for "bomb residue", good times), we walked quickly to our gate.  On the way there, we got a really nice text message from my sister letting us know that they would be picking us up at the airport  Sweet!

After we settled down at our hotel, we went out to in search of food.  We ended up at this nice place called Mo Resto-Bar and had a really nice meal.  I had a veal burger and Matt had a duck confit pizza.  After dinner, we wandered over to Brulerie St-Roch and had a cappuccino and a hot chocolate.

Today we started out by having breakfast at De Blanchet where I was "volunteered" to order breakfast for everyone.  Croissants and coffees all around!  After breakfast, we walked about 10 minutes to catch the Ecobus to the lower part of Vieux Québec.  We spent the day exploring the area on foot.  There were tons of little boutiques interspersed between historical buildings and churches.  We had a huge meal at Le Cochon Dingue and continued exploring.  It is now 9pm and we're STILL not hungry.  I think we're going to skip dinner. 

A Tale of Two Cities

As a combination birthday and name day present, we sent Matt's parents to Québec City for a mini vacation.  They left on Thursday evening and returned on Sunday evening.  When we picked them up from the airport on Sunday, they were all smiles.  What a fantastic experience for them!  And if they're reading this, maybe they would be willing to share some photos and write a few words about their trip so that we can post it here.  Heehee.  =)

Since Matt's parents were out of town, we took a short trip of our own.  After a quick breakfast on Saturday morning, we headed out to Prince Edward County.  Our first stop of many that day was at Huff Estates Winery.  After purchasing a few bottles, we decided that we should find somewhere to stop for lunch.  We wandered into the Marshmallow Room Bakery & Tea Shop.  With a name like that, who could resist!  We purchased 2 slices of tarts (a sour cherry, peach, and chocolate slice for me, I can't remember what Matt's slice was right now) and 2 oatmeal raisin cookies.  Pastries for lunch, mmm.  After gobbling down our tarts, we headed across the street to Slickers Ice Cream for dessert.  Campfire crème.  Yummy!

After lunch, we stopped in at Black Prince Winery.  Next, we stopped in at the County's only micro brewery, Barley Days Brewery.  We left both places with a few items.  Good thing we had lots of room in the trunk! 

Next, we stopped in Picton.  We parked in one of the free parking lots and then meandered up and down Main St. and some side streets.  We managed to wander into Buddha Dog.  Yes, there *is* such a thing as gourmet hot dogs.  =)  They're small on size, but big on flavour once you add locally produced cheese and a sauce dreamed up by local chefs and made using locally sourced ingredients.  (Lucky for us, there's a Buddha Dog in Toronto, with their own locally sourced sauces.  I think we'll have to go investigate it at a later date.)  After finishing our gourmet dogs, we went to Bean Counter to pickup some caffeinated beverages.  It is located a couple of doors down from Buddha Dog.  Although they had gelato, I resisted temptation.  After more wandering, we went back to the car and headed to our accommodations for the night to check-in.  Seeing as it was only about 4:45pm after our check-in, we hit up one more winery, Waupoos Estates Winery.  A winery on waterfront property.  Wow.  It was very picturesque.  A few more bottles found their way into the trunk. 

Seeing as we didn't make any dinner reservations, we thought we might have a better chance by having an early dinner.  We arrived at Harvest just before 6pm.  We were told they were fully booked, but we could come back at 9pm.  Yikes.  Next, we tried Angéline's, located across the street from Harvest.  It was a little fancier than we were prepared for.  We ate dinner at the Barley Room, a lively local pub.  We indulged in an almond encrusted brie for an appetizer and baby back ribs basted with a blackberry smoked barbecue sauce.  Very tasty!

In the morning, we enjoyed a lazy breakfast at our B&B.  As we were getting ready to head out, we discovered that the husband of our host had a passion for classic cars.  We had an impromptu tour of his private collection, what a treat! 

After breakfast, we stopped in at Fifth Town Artisan Cheese Company and Black River Cheese Company.  Amazing cheeses.  We'll be making some day trips in the future to get some more!  For lunch, we went to Blumen.  We lucked out and had their gazebo area all to ourselves.  Our final stop before heading back to Toronto was at Sandbanks Estate Winery.  They had a self-guided vineyard tour that allowed us to explore their grounds.  We purchased our final bottles, and finally headed home.

Matt feedback on the wines:  It was a hit and miss; there were some decent stuff but overall at a higher price than Niagara equivalents.

So what did we have for dinner that night?  Why, a platter of fine cheeses and a variety of meats along with a bottle of wine.  ;)

We're not dead yet!

Matt makes it sound like we died on our trip (re: Matt's postmortem).  Of course, that's somewhat fitting as it looks like I'm a corpse on a picnic bench.  Thanks, Matt!  ;)  So let's see.  What sort of trip summary can I come up with?  My apologies in advance; mine won't be as neatly organized as Matt's.  And certainly more long-winded.

It was somewhat amusing that we decided to do this trip after replacing our bikes and not before.  Suddenly we had "high performance bikes" that were new and unfamiliar to us.  They had bigger engines, but smaller gas tanks and demanded high-octane fuel.  And then there was Matt's little "incident" with my new bike that resulted in road-testing my newly installed frame sliders and bar ends and a trip to Mount Sinai's emergency room.  Yes, life got very exciting, very fast.

Prep work and pre-planning were certainly made less tedious because we split up the work.  Matt worked on the route while I worked on researching accommodations and sightseeing.  Matt gets all the credit for making sure our bikes were prepped (how sexy are those windscreens and frame sliders!) along with researching and acquiring the majority of our bike luggage.  I must say, having luggage on the bikes was a bit of an eye-opening experience.  It probably took us easily 45 minutes the very first time we loaded up the bikes.  By the end of our trip that came down to 5 minutes or less.  Where did I fail with the luggage?  I over packed!  But that's not unexpected if you know me.  I have a much better idea of how to pack less and pack more efficiently for next time.  Really!  I mean it! 

I have absolutely no doubt our Frogg Toggs and H2Out gloves made our rain days far less disgusting than they could have been.  Although we weren't 100% dry, they offered us far greater comfort than if we were without these items.  Our Scala units were absolutely fantastic.  The only time they let us down was on the two really long days (Gananoque to Portland, and Trois-Rivières to Toronto) when they ran out of juice, and really, that was our own fault.  The second long day wasn't so bad because we were on our way home and riding on familiar roads.  That first long day?  Wow.  We were riding in the dark, in heavy rain, at the end of a really long day, in the silence of our own helmets, on unfamiliar roads.  I found it to be mentally exhausting.  In future, we'll know to figure in some riding time with the intercom turned off to ensure that we'll be able to use them throughout the day.

Oh right!  The trip: I had a wonderful time.  Despite all the rain, the construction zones, and our impromtu off-roading moments.  It was an awesome experience.  Touring on a Ducati Monster was pretty comfortable.  Of course, I think I have a bit more padding on my seat and my butt than Matt.  Hahaha.  =)

Will we go to Nova Scotia again?  Yes!  Will we go on more multi-day bike rides?  Yes!  Hmm.  When and where?  Give us some ideas! =)

Useful links

Here are some useful links that we referenced before and during our East Coast trip.  Enjoy!

• Nova Scotia travel guide, maps, and more
• Nova Scotia motorcycle tour guide
• Nova Scotia Bed and Breakfast listings
• Nova Scotia gas stations
• Nova Scotia culinary adventure guide
• Québec accommodation guide

Day 10: Thar she blows!

 

We went to bed at 11:00pm last night. If you know us well, then you know that is unheard of. Why did we do such a thing? We had to get up at 5:30am so that we could be in Gaspé for 9:00am to go whale watching. It was exactly 3 hours away from where we were staying in Gaspésie. Not only that, we only got there on time because we asked the locals what the most direct route was. On the way back, we took our originally planned route and boy were we happy we didn't try to go to Gaspé on that route. Construction, construction, construction. It would have been a disaster!

We arrived at the pier with minutes to spare (we had left at 6:15am and the boat was scheduled to leave the dock at 9:30am!). We dropped off our helmets, picked up our supplied rain gear and hurried onto the boat; we were still dressed in all of our riding gear, sans helmet and gloves. The cruise was 2.5 hours long. I managed to snap a few shots of a blue whale. We could see their long, pale shapes in the water. They were longer than the boat we were on! I didn't get very many shots. Too many annoying people in yellow rain jackets that just would not sit down. Grr.

After the whale watching cruise, we stopped for lunch at Le Café de L'Anse du Centre culturel Le Griffon, about 45 minutes westward along the northern coast from the tip of the Gaspé peninsula. We were starving! We were a little concerned that we wouldn't be able to communicate with the staff (je ne parle pas français!), but it worked out. We enjoyed a tasty meal. On our way back to Gaspésie, we stopped to refuel and buy some groceries in Sainte-Anne-Des-Monts.

Matt made a yummy dinner in our kitchenette that we enjoyed with a nice bottle of wine. One thing that we need to remember: every time we plan ahead and have accommodations that have a kitchenette, we should actually plan to bring some basic cooking condiments (salt, pepper, sugar, olive oil, etc.).

Oh right. One last thing: Matt's camera woes. It turns out it is the lens that's messed up, not the body.  I suppose that's the better of two evils.

We're expecting rain (oh noez! not again) so we're going to take off and post up photos when we arrive at our next destination.

Update on Sunday, August 2, 2009 at 10:54PM by Matt

Day 10 route:

Blue whale:

Lighthouse on the eastern section of the Gaspé peninsula:

Scenery outside Le Café de L'Anse du Centre culturel Le Griffon:

Waterfall along Route 132:

Day 8: Would you like a refill?

This morning, we woke up to ... wait for it ... a forecast for more rain!! Yes, today would be another test of our rain gear. After breakfast, we rode out from Tatamagouche and left Nova Scotia under gloomy skies. As we rode, the skies got darker. We debated pulling over to put on our rain gear, but decided to wait until we got into Moncton, New Brunswick. In Moncton we paid a brief visit to Atlantic Motoplex, the only Ducati dealer in the Atlantic provinces. The store was huge! We talked briefly to a salesperson who used to live in Toronto (coincidence or what?); he was very pleasant. We stopped off for a hot caffeinated beverage at Tim Hortons before hitting the road again. I swear, the dude who served us looked like he was 10 years old. Unreal. After Matt finished his coffee, we put on our rain gear and headed out once more. What a crazy ride. It poured. When we didn't get buckets of rain from above, we got soaked by walls of water from the opposite lanes of highway traffic.

And then it finally happened. I'm going to blame it on fatigue from riding in the rain. I have a fresh scratch on my brand new clutch lever from laying it down pulling up to the pump at our next gas station stop. =( Oh well.

We missed a turn on our final leg of our journey to Dalhousie, New Brunswick. To get us back on track, our GPS rerouted us along a road that suddenly became unpaved.  That unpaved stretch was several kilometres in length.  And covered in mud.  Let's just say that had to be the longest and most tense stretch of road in my life.  But we both made it, whew.

Needless to say, we have very few photos for today.

Day 8 Route:

Atlantic Motoplex:

Day 7: Choo choo!

Our first event of the day was having a private tour of the Glenora Distillery at 9am.  Ok, it was only a private tour because no one else was in our group.  There's nothing like having a sample of 10 year old whisky at 9am. ;)  After the tour, we loaded up our bikes and rode out of Cape Breton and stopped in Antigonish for lunch.   At our first gas stop after lunch, we met a couple who were riding two-up on a bike with foreign plates.  It turns out they were from Belgium!  They had shipped their bike to Halifax and were touring the Maritimes for 1 month.  They put us to shame with the tiny amount of luggage they were carrying.  Here we were with two fully loaded bikes and we're only travelling for 12 days.  They were travelling for 1 month, two-up, with about half the amount of stuff.  Wow.  Talk about seasoned pros.

So where are we staying tonight?  We're in Tatamagouche at the Train Station Inn.  How unique is that!  Our room is a converted train car!  It turns out we have one of the nicest cars.  We have the only one with a full tub.  All the others only have showers.  What luxury! 

It's late and we're planning an early start in the morning.  The photos for the day will be in a follow up post.  Tomorrow we'll be leaving Nova Scotia.  Bye bye, Nova Scotia.  There are lots of things that we didn't get to see or do.  We'll be back!

Update on Thursday, July 30, 2009 at 9:49PM by Matt

Day 7 route:

Glenora Distillery Stills:

Inside our "room" at the Train Station Inn:

Train Station Inn rail cars:

Inside the "lounge" car: