Hello from Montreal

September 21, 2009

Hello everyone,

A lot has happened since we last talked. We were heading to Rhode Island to meet up with Emanuela and Fil. We had a chance to get together with them and they took us on a tour of Brown University where Emanuela is doing her PhD. She walked through their traditional Van Winkle gates with Emma Watson (Hermione) and Bruce Willis’daughter Scout!!! Apparently she sees Emma Watson quite often! Wow! I was hoping for a glance, but no such luck. We stayed the night in their place, then it was off to Boston where we checked out the MIT museum. Very cool! The museum holds stuff that is/was made by people going to MIT. There were jumping robots and a robot named Kismet that responds appropriately to human speech intonations! So crazy! They also had these crazy art sculptures that would move with gears. Crazy stuff. We also stopped by Quincy market and had some atlantic lobster, clam chowder and Trevor had oysters and clams. Very yummy. I also managed to get us a parking ticket because I was parked too far from the curb! At least there wasn’t any face to face cop action happening with us. Laura, I know you warned us about how crazy Boston was, but it wasn’t until I was super angry with Trevor that I remembered you telling us! Next stop was crossing the border back to Canada!!! We were welcomed back by a very unenthusiastic and uncaring border officer. That was nice. Trevor found a lovely campground at 5 am atlantic time (we lost an hour crossing into the maritimes) that we parked at for the night in New Brunswick (though unfortunately I slept through the arrival, the park and most of the departure from the campground). We then stopped into Saint John where we had some breakfast and I felt a bit of nostalgia from being there back in 2002 for nationals. Then it was off to Nova Scotia to meet up with Moriah and Jared. Their place is AMAZING! They have a river in their backyard! Just insane. This is the kind of place I want to live in. Very cute house (small) with a netted back porch that looks out into the small yard and river flowing by. That river meets with the ocean only a few hundred meters away. You can walk about 2 min and swim in the ocean!!! Unbelievable! We celebrated Moriah’s birthday and went to bed for the night and the next day headed over to Peggy’s cove, a cute tiny village with randomly placed and randomly colored houses. Trevor and Jared jumped around on the huge boulders and Moriah and I took pictures of them and the lighthouse. We headed then into Halifax and walked the boardwalk (apparently the longest in somewhere…Canada maybe?) We stopped into a restaurant there to have oysters (well, Trevor had oysters and mussels, I had the chowder and the crab dip). You got to take advantage of the seafood while on the coast. That night we drove all the way to Charlottetown PEI! It was a cute small town and for some reason all the hotels were completely booked up but we managed to find a deal on Orbitz for this one hotel (that when asked inside told us all they had was suites that would cost $150). Turns out they were all booked, so through the deal on Orbitz we ended up getting a suite!! Very cool! It was a two story hotel room, very spacious with a microwave. The next day we went to their international shellfish festival where we indulged in mussels, Trevor had a ridiculous amount of oysters (some of them for free!) and clams and we both got to eat award winning chowder!!! They were having a competition and after the judges got served the chowder, everyone could go up and get a sample. We sampled 4 different kinds! We also got a free taste of a lobster dish that was being demo’d. We watched her cook it and then we ate it! How fabulous! And then we were off. Off to Quebec City. We made it 50km out from the city and parked in a rest area for the night. Today we walked the walled city and checked out all the cute little shops. It was like Europe (not that I’ve been, but I assume from the pictures I’ve seen). So very cute. We had crepes for breakfast and had poutine for lunch from chez ashton, apparently one of the restaurants claiming to have invented the poutine! We then drove to a chocolate museum (very small little chocolate store with a display) and then it was off to Montreal. We figured we wouldn’t do much in Montreal so we went to dinner and ate and were heading back to the hotel when a couple stopped us and offered us free tickets to the Canadien’s hockey game that had already started (because they had to leave early) so luckily our hotel is right outside the bell centre, so we went. We watched the Canadiens score 3 goals against Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh score 1 on the Canadiens. It was very exciting! (The score was 4 vs 3 for the Canadiens, but we missed the first two of Pittsburgh and the first one from the Canadiens). Now we’re hanging out in the hotel. Tomorrow we are heading to Ottawa!

HOPE EVERYONE IS DOING GREAT!

SMILEJ
The Travelling Prentices