This might be a suitable place to add some maps to show where our travels took us
Although we drove almost 9000 kms in five weeks, Canada is vast and you can see from the box on the map above, that we only explored a very small part of it.
View Canadian Holiday in a larger map
We spent our last two days driving from Quebec to Montreal initially along the Chemin du Roy - completed in 1737. This road hugs the north bank of the St Lawrence and passes through some very early settlements such as Trois Rivieres where we stayed overnight after walking around its historic district admiring the grand old buildings.
We left the Chemin du Roy at Trois Rivieres and headed west towards Mont Tremblant looking for sugar maples in full fall foliage and then south to Oka and on to Montreal Airport.
I ran out of pages in my notebook and now I have left it a fortnight I am a bit vague, but I think it was somewhere near Oka we drove through a town which appeared to be largely First Nation people (I think that is the politically correct term). It was a bit down at heel and all along the road near the town there were humpies selling cheap cigarettes, cigars and cigarillos with the occasional fireworks stall.
We had allowed ourselves plenty of time to get to Montreal Airport but it nearly turned into a disaster, what with rush hour traffic, roadworks and the GPS losing the petrol station. Security at Montreal was chaotic. They were trialing some new scanners (gas chromatographs?). Air Canada does not provide food on domestic flights and as Montreal Vancouver is a five and a half hour flight we were not the only ones with our own sandwiches. The food was all detected and so they then had to go through everyone's carry on luggage. However on the plus side - while we waited for the delayed flight we were able to get 2 cups of good coffee for $2.50 total (our old friend Tim Horton again).
Fortunately Vancouver Airport is very well planned and although we were an hour late we had no problem making our connection and even requesting and both getting aisle seats with a vacant seat beside us which made the 15 hour flight to Sydney much more bearable.
I have enjoyed keeping this Blog and am glad to have the record of our trip. It has inspired me to attempt a retrospective Blog of the trip we made to Madagascar, Mauritius and Reunion last year. Hopefully that Blog should start on this site within the next month. Thanks for reading.
Manoir Boucher-de-Niverville in Trois Rivieres. The building dates from 1729.
This house is next door to the manoir in the previous photograph and there were many more impressive old buildings in the neighbourhood.
Elaborate Halloween decorations. I was intrigued by these. They started appearing at least a month before Halloween, October 31st. It seems Halloween comes from an old Celtic festival and I wondered why we have never really celebrated it in Australia, when our forebears also included large numbers of Scots and Irish. Maybe it is because it is partly linked to autumn and in Australia, October is in Spring.
Halloween again
You guessed it - Halloween
Sugar maple grove
A sugar shack. Spring is the time to visit one of these. I gather you get a party together and eat all sorts of traditional maple syrup fare and are entertained with music and dancing and even sleigh rides
A critter. I associate unspecified critters with North America and so I had to include one.
Glorious Fall
The last fall photo on a very grey wintry day
The Oka ferry across the Ottawa River not far from Montreal. The way Michelin described this ferry we were expecting something like a Madagascan ferry, but as you can see, the reality is far more sophisticated. Keep reading and soon I will post a Madagascan ferry for comparison.
No comments:
Post a Comment