Day 1: Rain? What rain??

We made it from Toronto to Gananoque yesterday through ZERO rain. We made it from Gananoque to Montpelier, VT through ZERO rain. We're very happy campers. ;)

Our adventure started by crossing the Canada - U.S. border at the 1000 Islands bridge. While we were waiting our turn, a friend of ours pulls up behind us and joins our line! Darlene had spent the night in a local B&B. After crossing the border, we stopped in Watertown. We would meet up with the rest of the group at the first gas station off the interstate. Or so we thought. As it turns out, they got off one exit before us and were waiting at a different gas station! We eventually met up for lunch after Darlene received a text message from the other group telling us their location. Once we met up, we rode together until we arrived at the hotel at 8pm. Once there, we had to leave quickly for dinner. Montpelier is a fairly small town. The restaurant we had dinner at closed at 9pm. Unfortunately for us, we arrived late enough on a Friday night that they actually ran out of several menu items. The majority of us ordered their clam chowder and spinach ravioli entree. A few of us also sampled some of their local beer.

Tomorrow's forecast for Bar Harbor, ME: 10% POP. Hahaha. =)

Good night!

T - minus 30 minutes. Destination: Bar Harbor, ME

Ride or drive? Ride or drive?? AAAUGH!! Hurricane Earl has been the bane of our existance for the week or so. Every night, we would come home and anxiously peer at the weather forecast websites that were predicting Earl's path of destruction.

We're riding ;)

Clearly, the Québecois make you sick...

Not a hugely exciting day this morning.  Woke up this morning with a rather sore throat, thinking it must be as a result of the rather dry air in our hotel room.  It turns out that it's more than that, as I seem to be suffering some *gasp* flu-like symptoms.  Good news is that I haven't started growing a snout just yet ;)

After having breakfast at a bakery, we hit up Épicerie J. A. Moisan to look for some cheese.  The store is quite neat, and is apparently North America's oldest grocery store.  In addition to cheese, we bought frozen peas; gotta keep the cheese cool for the duration of the flight, right?

Before Cath and her husband started heading back to Ottawa, they dropped us off at a mall, where we killed some time before catching a taxi to the airport.  We've got about 2.5 hours before taking off, but hey, the airport has free wireless!

Québec City: Plains, Citadels, and other closed things

We were up and around about 8am this morning and were out the door shortly after 9am.  Some people (*cough*Henry*cough*) filed a complaint about scaling the hills on the way to old Québec yesterday, so the plan today was to drive around.

We spent part of the morning looking for breakfast.  As we had noticed yesterday, November is very much a quiet time when it comes to tourism.  As such, many places are closed for the season (including our first choice for breakfast: Restaurant Toast!).  Thankfully, Cess was superbly prepared and had a second choice ready.  We ate at Panache, a restaurant inside a fairly swanky hotel.  Between the four of us, we had a variety of French toast, traditional Québecoise pancakes, and eggs.

Next up, we spent a couple of hours exploring the Plains of Abraham and the enclosed citadel.  Unfortunately, at this time of the year the citadel only offers one tour a day, at a time that was not going to work for us.  Regardless, it was still an interesting place to see, despite the rather cool and overcast weather.

One of the places that Cath had scoped for us to visit was Île D'Orléans.  We drove around the majority of the island, stopping for a light lunch at a bakery (La Boulange).  We also visited a winery where we got a couple of bottles of locally made Port wine.   Just like yesterday, we weren't really hungry at dinner time. We still ate at a local pub and then picked up some hot caffienated beverages at a nearby café.

Martello Tower, Plains of Abraham:

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.  ;)