Here it is folks. The much anticipated vacation post. I had two hundred and ninety five photos to sort though so cut me some slack. I'll give you the highlights and the play by plays of this action packed adventure!
I'll start us off entering Montreal where traffic was "Fluide".
If you have never been to Montreal I would suggest that you make a point of doing it at some point in time. Aside from being the fashion capital of Canada it has tons of cool architecture. You pretty much see something worth looking at wherever you happen to rest your eyes.
I have only been here a handful of times but I can honestly say that where atmosphere and things to see and do are concerned this is a place that I wouldn't mind living... That being said I won't be living there for reasons that I will reveal at the end of this post.
As we continue to drive we can see Quebec city in the distance on our way in to St-Anne de Beaupre. It's a small town.
With falls on the way in...
...and a HUGE church.
When I came to Quebec in grade 5... or 8. Can't recall which. We visited both this church and the falls. The falls stick out to me because we went to a lookout at the top and I remember having nightmares that night when we stayed at the nunnery in QC proper...
The church sticks out because our teacher told us to stay completely quiet when we entered. I was so overcome with the immensity of the main area that I said "Woaaaahhhhhh" and was promptly asked to wait outside. That teacher was an asshole. It was woaaaahhhhhh worthy.
All hail St-Anne! This is Christine and her mom in front of the cathedral.
Next we rolled in to La baie-Saint-Paul in Charlevoix to stay a night at La Pignoronde. It's an in with a great view of the St-Paul bay on the St-Laurence seaway.
The roads on the way in were awesome.
Ridiculously steep grades as we climbed hills and down-shifted to save brakes when coming down the back. I wish I had my car but I spent the week as a passenger and Christine driving. Yeah yeah... I'm a typical man when it comes to driving and the remote. Not everyone is perfect. Eat crap.
We stayed at the Pignoronde for one night. The great thing about the places we stayed is that breakfast and supper are included. It's not a continental breakfast or buffet I'm talking about. I mean super awesome home cooked meals. Yum.
This is the view from our balcony overlooking the bay.
This is a town of artists. This street is overflowing with paint galleries displaying the works of locals. I found 2 or 3 paintings I would like to have if I had the money. They offered financing... but I still couldn't afford it.
After our stay in the bay we moved on to Les Eboulements. Roughly translated that means the landslides. Apparently years ago there we earthquakes for several days that gave the town it's name. I wonder what it was called before... Les Cotes (The hills)? I guess we'll never know. This is Christine and I on the other side of the bay. The inn we stayed in the first night is over Christine's shoulder on the other side of the bay valley.
This is the view coming in to Les Eboulements.
Even the view from the parking lot of L'auberge de nos aieux (the inn we stayed at for the remainder of our trip) was breathtaking.
This inn also included meals and each and every one of them was delicious. Here are a few nice shots of the area that I took during our stay.
I found that bike along a path behind the inn. It looked like a BMX bike I had when I was a kid. I was fully intact but all of the paint had rusted off... and I think animals chewed the pedals off... For some reason this bike creeped me out.
This post is really long and I applaud you for getting this far. I've been sitting here hammering away at this for almost wo hours now. I've been looking through the photos and retouching them as I write. I'm going to get a drink. Damn I'm thirsty. I started this at one in the morning and it is now three in the morning. BRB.
Mmm. Milk. I would have had orange juice to drink but I'm out.
Anyways, on our second day in Les Eboulements we decided to take a trip to St-Irenee. I probably spelled that wrong but whatever. We went to soak our feet in the St-Laurence.
It was DAMN cold.
We found a river that ran down the beach and I tried to cross it. I only got about half way accross... I'll get you river... I'll get you if it's the last thing I do!
While I was playing in the river this train crossed over it diverting Christine's attention from me.
Those last three photos were taken by Christine... I just realized that I put my initials on them. Christine took them... not me. I'm not going to go through and edit them now.
I'm going to kick this post in to over-drive because I'm tired and this post is eternal. Here we go. Brace yourself.
We went to L'ile au Coudre. We took the ferry acrosss. It's about 20 minutes to cross.
On the island we drove past this mini-church. We saw a few of these driving through Quebec.
I think I will wrap it up here. I know I missed a lot but if I had written everything this would have been a novel and not a blog post. I had a great time with Christine and her mom and I got to practice my french at the same time.
I have a ton of photos left but I will post them over the next while as stand alone posts as I did manage to snap a few striking images.
I had mentioned at the beginningg of this epic blog post that I wouldn't mind living in Montreal but that it wasn't going to happen. The reason is that Christine and I got approved for a mortgage and we will be getting a home here in a newly developedd area of Orleans. We have some stuff to finalize but we are aiming to have the house by next summer. I will keep you updated as we progress along the path to home ownership. As it is we picked a model we liked and got a mortgage approved for it. We now need to talk to the builder about options and time lines etc.
I must go sleep now. I hope you enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed experiencing the things in it.
