Month: August 2007

We awoke and grabbed some bagels from down the street and brought them back to the apartment to eat. We starting later in the travel day but this wasn’t a big deal. We are on vacation!

We hopped on the subway (which was hell for awhile because for some reason the ticket machine never took Miguels’ credit card!) and headed towards Brooklyn Bridge. After a few people offering us help to find the entrance, we finally climbed the stairs to the famous Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge is pretty neat in that you don’t walk along side with the traffic, you walk on platforms ABOVE the traffic on the bridge! It was pretty cool to see the engineering that went into making this bridge. It’s also a sight to see Manhattan from the middle of the bridge, very reminscient of the ferry ride to Ellis Island.

After crossing the bridge, we made our way down to a wharf to buy some ice cream and wait for the Water Taxi back to the other side. When the Water Taxi arrived, it was a quick trip across to Manhattan and we continued our trek towards Greenwich Village and little Italy in search of a list of stores Miguel wished to check out.

Let’s back the story up for a moment to speak of how the day before, I was in H&M and spied a great brown corduroy jacket but decided not to pick it up yet as I had the entire city to explore.

Well, considering it was the last day and I hadn’t found anything, I decided to seek out an H&M to pick up this jacket. We first went to the Vice Store (which was closed up) and then we went somewhere else to look at vintage clothing (which was ridiculously overpriced) and we hit upon an amazing, AMAZING clothing store called Uniqlo (sp?). Miguel was saying this store was from Japan and is just starting to make it big in North America. They had some amazing clothing items and I was really interested in a jacket they had a slew of t-shirts they had. I find I’m getting back into a t-shirt craze I had years ago. I can pinpoint my clothing line for the past decade: t-shirts, then button up shirts, then golf shirts, now the circle is complete and I’m going back to t-shirts.

In the end, I was screwed out of all clothing options because they had NO large or even medium sizes in ANY of the t-shirts I wanted (I gave them four choices!) and no good size on the jacket I was looking at. I was pretty miffed. I ended up picking up this sweet t-shirt designed by Yoshitaka Amano (of Final Fantasy fame) but felt kind of silly doing so as Miguel had also picked up the same shirt. However, I justified it considering it was THE ONLY CLOTHING ITEM IN MY SIZE! I still can’t get over the fact that they were out of medium and large sizes in all the things I chose. This became the running joke of the day. Strike One for Palmer.

We then stumbled upon H&M and we went in looking for my jacket but it turned out to be some store with no mens section! What the heck? Strike Two for Palmer.

At this point, we just kept traveling around the area, eventually stumbling upon Little Italy. I was getting concerned for Vero at this point as she was looking like she was going to pass out and we figured she had dehydration (which wasn’t uncalled for considering the hot weather and the amount of walking we were doing). However, I guess when someone is dehydrated, they aren’t too thirsty so she wasn’t accepting any of our water. I must admit that I just let her be during this portion of the trip as she was getting pissed off at the amount of attention she was getting. 😉

We stopped into a pub for a drink and headed towards the Virgin Megastore in search for some Pumpkins vinyl. Vero ended up looking like she was going to pass out any second so we got her some drinks from the corner store but she didn’t really feel like drinking them. We were all pretty concerned for her and knew we had to go take a break fast!

On the way to the Virgin Megastore, we stumbled upon a clothing market of up and coming fashion designers. We spied some excellent t-shirts. I really wanted one of this great collection of animals playing in a band. I thought it was amazing, but lo and behold, the clothing Gods were against me and they DIDN’T HAVE MY SIZE!!! Strike Three for the Palmer. So mad!

Katie and Miguel went ahead to Katz’ Restaurant for a pastrami sandwich while Vero picked out a few shirts to buy. They are pretty cool. I ended up mixing up the directions BADLY to get to this pastrami shop. Essentially I walked all the way to the area of the shop, thought I had gone the wrong way so walked a bunch of blocks backwards before realizing that we were in the right spot before! We were both not impressed with my navigation ability at that point. When we got there we sat down to find out that Miguel had paid $16 for this pastrami sandwich! (actually, I asked Katie how much it was and she wrote back the following: “I know it was $14.95, because I PAID!) Ludicrous! They are just cashing in on their fame (they were in the film “When Harry Met Sally”). I vowed not to buy a sandwich of such extraordinary prices so we hung out for awhile (the place reminds me of Nate’s in Ottawa) and then headed out to the Virgin Megastore.

I couldn’t find the Pumpkins vinyl but managed to grab an Arcade Fire album and then we were heading towards dinner when Miguel pointed out this great comic book shop called Forbidden Planet. It was pretty intense inside and I managed to grab a few other Fables graphic novels (as I had read a few on the trip and loved them) as well as the Making of Star Wars book which I had my eye on all the time on the trip as I would save $30 buying it in the States vs. Canada. Vero even noticed I got a student discount if I showed my student card! Bonus.

We went to an Asian tapas restaurant for dinner. Tapas (as far as I was explained) is where you order dishes which are shared amongst your table. The restaurant was very cool inside – had a good vibe and good lighting inside. I liked the décor on the walls. I also enjoyed the fact that this was the first time I had ever gone to a BYOB restaurant! I went in there with my six pack, they put it in the fridge and got me another bottle whenever I wished! Turns out they they didn’t have their liquor license at the time so this was the other option. I found that odd as I had always assumed having a liquor license allowed you to have liquor on the premises, not just sell it. Either way, the drinks were great (Samuel Adams!), the food was amazing and we all had a great time. Especially when they threw out some random rap song which had a booming “SAY HELLO TO ALL THE NIGGAAAASSS IN DA HOUSE!” or something to that effect. All the tables looked at each other and started laughing. What the heck? Who is controlling the music back there?!

Vero was feeling in top shape after a great dinner and we split up from Katie and Miguel to once again try and find Marvel Comics (I found the correct address this time around). Unfortunately for us, we STILL could not find Marvel Headquarters and I was pretty upset. Vero is a dear and cheered me up by taking pictures in front of a random building which we made-believe was Marvel Comics Headquarters. We walked over to Times Square which never ceases to amaze me. It was 11:30 at night and the signs light up the area like it’s the middle of the day. PLUS, it was this late on a Sunday night and the streets are still packed with people!

We took the subway home, gave our spare tickets to some people, went into the apartment and got ready for bed. It was going to be an early morning…we went to bed around midnight and had to wake up around 5AM as Katie and Miguel were leaving on a plane in the morning. Ouch.

The final stretch. We’re heading towards New York City! An amazing feeling was coming over me on the trip up to the city. I mean, this is NEW YORK CITY that we were going to!

We drove from Boston to New York City in the morning as we wanted to get there to do some tourist stuff before Katie and Miguel came into town in the evening. On my drive in, I realized that I must have become acclimatized to big cities…I had imagined that New York City would be huge and something that would make my jaw drop, but in the end, a city is a city. They still had buildings the same size and the traffic was the same. It’s a strange feeling to describe…years ago I would have been in awe during the whole trip, but now I see the little differences each city has and not just the grand scale of it.

We ended up in gridlock when driving through the highway through the Bronx. This was not a good start to our day. It was FREAKING HOT when we got to the city also. Say goodbye to the cool days and nights along the East Coast! I think it was 40 degrees with the humidity.

We finally ended up in Manhattan at a parking garage I had found a few blocks away from where we were staying. We are staying at Katie’s manager’s apartment (which he still owns, but lives in Toronto). It was an amazing opportunity to stay in Manhattan and I am sending out a big thank you to him for letting us stay there! The parking garage was my best bet for staying in the city all weekend long and in the end, it only cost me $120 to spend the weekend there. While I could argue the finer points of charging me for an entire day of Monday when I left at 5AM, I figured the money was well worth it.

After ditching the vehicle, we headed to the subway to go out to the Statue of Liberty. I’m glad we picked up that handy guide book for $2 at that flea market in Moncton because it had a bunch of maps within it. The subway was uneventful (other than this amazing person who came in with jeans with cargo pockets on it. It was like a scene from Vice Magazine’s Dos & Don‘ts.) and we arrived in the sweltering heat to get in line for the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

We got in line and went through the metal detectors before boarding the ferry. This ferry was a rocking from the waves! We had to hold onto something while walking down the hallways to make sure we didn’t crash into a wall! We managed to get a great seat on the top and when we pulled out there was an amazing sight of the Manhattan skyline. Pretty sweet if you ask me.

Approaching the Statue, we realized that it was smaller than we both imagined. I was imagining something as large as a skyscraper and it wasn’t nearly as large. The photos we took don’t really explain our perspective, but we so kind of disappointed…to the point where when the ferry was letting people off, we decided to just keep going to Ellis Island. We didn’t have tickets to get into the Statue anyhow so I didn’t see much sense in walking up to it.

Ellis Island is where all the immigrants landed when coming to the States from parts unknown. This was home to the immigration centre and from there they hopped on a boat to the city of New York. It was pretty amazing to walk through the building and imagine tens of thousands of people lining up to get a chance to come into North America. We went up to the second level which was home to the original lineups of people and the hall was vast. There were pictures of it full of people and luggage and I couldn’t get over the amount of people. There was a jar of jellybeans somewhere which indicated it was the equivalent number of people who were processed in the highest processing date in their career – over 10,000 people. 10,000 people?! I don’t think a team of a hundred could process 10,000 emails in one day, let alone actual people speaking in strange tongues!

We walked around a museum of old rooms with artifacts which told the story of Ellis Island – how you were marked on your coat if they suspected anything physically/mentally wrong with you, how translators were on hand to try to figure out what language you were speaking to help you answer some questions. The translators would have to just speak all the languages they knew until the immigrant recognized a word!

There were three levels of the complex and we spent our time in the second level and decided it was too much to go to the others. We had already spent two hours there and it was time to catch the ferry back to the mainland. I stood in line to get an ice cream for the both of us (which was melting fast by the time I got it to Vero in the ferry lineup!) but the funniest thing happened while I was waiting in line.

This boy was walking away with his hot dog and this seagull made a dive for it, scared the bejeezus out of the kid and made way with his wiener and sat on top of a wall! Then a bunch of employees of Ellis Island who were taking a break on a picnic table started yelling at this seagull – “Jared, dang it, leave those kids alone!” “Oh, Jared’s done it again!” “Jared, when you going to learn?!”. I was having a good laugh considering this bird must be notorious for these attacks. One of the employees came to the counter and said “Jared did it again! Give this kid a hot dog, will you?”

After getting back to the mainland, we grabbed a slice of pizza which didn’t live up to my New York City pizza standards, toured around the downtown area, saw Wall Street, the former site of the World Trade Center, a giant bull statue (I have no idea what the significance was). We then headed back home as it was getting late and we had to meet up with Katie and Miguel.

We had great timing as we got there five minutes before Katie and Miguel arrived by taxi. We grabbed stuff from my car (which was strange as the car was not locked inside this parking garage. This freaked me out a little but I suppose the place is secure (aka, secure like the parking garage in Ferris Buehler!). We checked out the great pad we were staying in and relaxed a bit before heading out for dinner at a great Italian restaurant which was recommended by Katie’s manager. I enjoyed the Italian restaurant thoroughly as it was a small place with some great atmosphere and tons of action going on with the waiters scurrying around and taunting each other. After an excellent bottle of wine and a great meal, we grabbed a few bottles of wine, toured the area, went to a pub for a few more beers and headed home for the night in anticipation for the next big day. Miguel did introduce us to the great show of Flight of The Conchords on HBO however. This was an amazing show and I ended up falling in love with it in the coming weeks from downloading the first season.

At this point in the trip to New York City, we noticed that there really wasn’t that many people in the city. I was imagining being overwhelmed and bumping into people constantly but this was not the case. Perhaps everyone was away for the weekend?

Yes, that is me with Spider-man.

While waiting for Vero to shower, I packed up the car and sat near the water and just took it all in. I think I’ve pretty well decided that I will move to the sea when I’m ready to retire. The water is amazing and mesmerizing at the same time. I just sat there, read a book and enjoyed the cool breeze hitting me.

Salem was calling our name in the morning and we went to the tourist center, grabbed some maps and sat for half an hour to watch a documentary on Salem. We thought it was a good film but were very disappointed that they didn’t have any burning witches! Near the end of the film, we descended into laughing fits after voicing our own commentary about witches after each of the narrator’s comments. Example: Salem is a land of beauty and marvels. Then we would add “OF WITCHES!!!”. Ha ha…you had to be there. After the film, we got a photo taken of us in full-on witch garb! This photography shop dresses you up in costumes and then gives you different props to use while they take 20 photos. Then you can go choose which ones you would like to print out. Considering it cost a pretty penny, we decided on getting only one printed out which Vero has now at her place. It was fun to do and I would recommend it to anyone who wants a hilarious memento of their trip to Salem.

Vero also picked up a great shirt which had the outline of a witch on a broom and says “Salem, Massachusetts – A Witchin’ Good Time”. She scored that for a measly $5.

We headed out to tour around and went to the Witch Dungeon Museum which included a recreation of an actual witch trial and a tour of a mock dungeon. Supposedly there was an actual dungeon discovered 50 years ago but heritage sites weren’t a big thing back then and it was destroyed. All that was left is a piece of wood which hangs in this fake dungeon. The dungeon shows us the size of the cells and how the prisoners (the witches!!!) were imprisoned there (or burned! Burn the witch!). It was an alright tour, but I liked the recreation of the witch trial more (which were from actual transcripts). They also had posters around the room which explained the history of how the hanging of witches came about. It was pretty crazy. Essentially, if someone said you were a witch, chances are you would be hung with no questions asked. This ended when someone declared the Governor’s wife to be a witch and the Governor stopped the whole ordeal. But by that time, a slew of so-called witches had been hung (or burned?).

We then headed to a spell-casting seminar which had only Vero and I as participants. We both thought this was a great seminar as it had an honest to goodness witch teaching us to cast a spell. I doubt my spell will come to light as I think I was yelling out the wrong word! Woops! Maybe somewhere out there someone will have a curse on their heads instead! Anyhow, the spell caster was amazing and she had a great room with a smoke machine. We were really into it. I can see my Dad going to one of these events and thinking it was the lamest things he has ever seen. 😉

At that point, it was around 1PM so we decided we had seen enough of Salem and headed towards Boston.

I love Boston. I fell in love with it a few years ago when we went to visit Pam. We had the craziest snowstorm the weekend we visited so I was excited to see the town in its summer splendor. After parking underground, we started walking around the city core and headed towards the Cheers replica bar. We checked out a few buildings for their architecture and before hitting up Cheers, we saw this amazing group of dancers from Brooklyn who were entertaining the crowd. My favourite comment from them was “Alright, now you know we’re looking for some money from you. All we ask is that you take out your wallet, take out $5-$10, and then give us the wallet.” Ha ha. Turns out that this is a common joke amongst these dance troupes as I heard the same thing in New York City a few days later!

We walked to the Cheers replica bar which was a good time for a rest. Of course, I ordered a Samuel Adams beer. I thought it was neat that the bar looks exactly like it does in the TV show. The area surrounding it doesn’t look exactly the same but that doesn’t make it any less exciting. Vero ordered an iced tea and realized that in the States, they don’t put any sugar in it! I had forgotten that from our last time down in the US.

After Cheers, we decided to follow the Freedom Trail which is a red line which takes you on a tour of Boston through all the historical hot spots. I thought this was an amazing tourist attraction and would recommend it to Ottawa. It was so easy to follow a red line around the town. I don’t think Vero was too impressed with Boston in the end, but I think it had to do with the fact that I just kept walking and walking and walking and we didn’t get much of a break along the Freedom Trail. If anyone wishes to do the trail, give yourself the day and not a few hours. We ended up at the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) which is the oldest commissioned ship which is still afloat in the world! It was quite the site and I was disappointed to find out that we had just missed the time limit to board the ship for a tour. However, I can’t be too disappointed as I know that I’ll be back in Boston again one day.

After realizing that we were both tired of touring around, we headed back towards the car. Along the way, we stumbled upon a giant BBQ which is recounted in this original entry:

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I’m just putting these photos up for placeholders really since I don’t have much time to dedicate to updating this thing. However, tonight we are taking it easy in a motel instead of camping – mainly because my ROAD ATLAS SUCKS and it’s only shows major routes and couldn’t show us the actual road to the park it was showing in the middle of nowhere.

That being said, today was one of the highlights of the trip for me as it brought back memories of traveling Europe. We stumbled upon an Italian festival where there was a giant BBQ going on. Upon asking one of the locals, he said the St. Anthony’s Festival was running all weekend long but the neighbourhood always holds a free BBQ the day before it starts and he invited us to have some of it. We felt honoured and grabbed a burger and hot dog (before realizing that the entire neighbourhood was waiting for the Italian sausages to come out!).

This is where the magic lies…not in tourist attractions on a map, but in exploring the city for yourselves and stumbling upon goodness.

Tomorrow brings us into New York City to meet up with Katie and Miguel for the last leg of our trip. This was essentially what spearheaded this trip to the East Coast…it’s been quite an adventure and I will document it all properly in the previous posts in the future. For now, enjoy the few photos I’ve sent along, revel in the fact that Vero and I are fine and well, and enjoy the rest of your summer.

I suppose I should look up directions on how to navigate around NYC. I have a feeling this may be a giant obstacle awaiting me. Just call me David.

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After getting to the car, we navigated out of the city in search of a campground which didn’t happen so we decided to get a hotel room for the night. It’s kind of disappointing to go from paying $20 a night for a campsite to $130 for a hotel room for the night. However, we were tired, we were cranky and we realized that it would do us some good to just relax for the night before hitting NYC. The receptionist was hilarious as he had been working a 24 hour shift and was just spewing out hilarities left and right. I enjoyed the bathtub as I had a slew of bugbites on my legs and sat in there with a beer for awhile. Life was good! The room also had wireless Internet which helped me map out how to get to NYC the next day. I also realized that if you are ever in search of a WiFi connection, it may be a good idea to just pull into a hotel parking lot as they would probably have a connection around!

Overall the trip to Boston was alright, but after only spending a few hours there and just walking all day long, I realize that it wasn’t as fun as it was the first time around when we took our time to tour around. I will remember this for next time – it’s better to take your time and tour instead of rushing everything.

After we arose from slumber, we packed up everything and headed to Wal-Mart for some supplies. I didn’t notice much difference with the Wal-Marts in the States, although they had some good deals on movies and music. We also managed to find the Leaving Las Vegas film that Vero supposedly appeared in (read the Quebec City entry for that reference.)

Hitting the road, we traveled down the barren (read: in the middle of the forest) 95 highway for a few hours. Of course, Vero slept a little more. She makes a good point when she notices that I like to listen to my music in the morning rather than talking with someone. That’s just the way I am. There was nothing special with the highway…much like the New Brunswick highways – not much else other than a strip of concrete through woods.

Around lunchtime we stumbled upon the town of Bangor which I swore was mentioned by Carole as a place to drop in for some outlet mall shopping. With that in mind, we hit the city centre and along the way, went into Indigo where I got my Canadian dollar’s worth in books. I had meant to order a bunch through Amazon a few months back but I figured I may as well stock up while I was there. As a matter of comparison, a paperback novel I bought was $7.99 USD instead of $11.99 CDN. The book market is atrocious for their exchange rates and I think I’ll start driving down to the States whenever I want to stock up. I ended up picking up a few Star Wars novels, the new Dune novel (!!!) and a few graphic novels of the comic book called Fables (which is amazing. It has characters from fantasy living in New York in secrecy. Like Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, the Three Little Pigs…)

We then headed to the downtown core which looked pretty bleak. We didn’t even bother getting out of the car as we realized that maybe we had the wrong town for the outlet malls. In the end, we stocked up on some much needed groceries (after the bologna incident) and we stumbled upon an amazing salad bar inside the store! We filled up our trays and had a great little lunch along the water at some picnic tables. Let us not forget the amazing barrel of pickles I stumbled upon! I picked a huge pickle up and am proud to say that it was so big that it took me three separate days to munch on it before I had to throw the rest out! That is what I like to call the big pickle. 😉

After checking in with work on my laptop (which was disappointing as I found out that work would not let me go away on an assignment to another Branch and I had to make a decision as to whether or not I would leave my Branch), we hit the road again towards Boston.

Because I’m writing this entry a month after the trip, I can’t recall some aspects. I’m pretty sure the trip to Boston was fraught full of TOLL BOOTHS! I’ve never witnessed a toll booth and the first one wasn’t a big deal.

What was a big deal was the fact that there were numerous toll booths along the way! I thought they would just charge you once to get onto the highway, but NO!!! They charge you on your way out of the highway also! I thought this was unfair. I figure we must have hit 10 toll booths in total along the way. I wasn’t too impressed and in the future will think about taking some extra time and taking a secondary highway. Can someone please explain me the reasoning behind an entry and an exit for a toll booth?

Once we were nearing Boston, I knew that we would want to find a campground which wouldn’t be found within the city itself, so we spied a campground on our map and headed off road towards it. After not seeing any signs, we stopped into a gas station to ask and they didn’t really know of one but there MAY be one down a certain highway. The directions they gave us were confusing and we ended up traveling through a slew of small towns along the way.

Along the way, fate intervened and we drove by Guitar Center. Now, along the way on this trip, I had decided to look at getting a new six-string acoustic/electric guitar with some money that my Grandmother had given me for my birthday. I knew that we had gone to this amazing store outside of Boston the last time we were there and I had planned to hunt for it on the laptop as soon as we got to the campground. Like I said, fate played a hand and had me driving right by the exact store! We pulled in and I spent a good hour testing out a bunch of Takamine guitars. I fell in love with one of them and talked with the gentleman in charge…Chazz. Awesome name for an awesome guy! Chazz understood my predicament of getting across the border with it and we tried to figure out if it was worth it to buy it in the States or not. He did try to help by bringing down the price significantly but it still wouldn’t have helped if I had to pay the duty on the instrument. I remember the next few hours as a pain in the ass as I sat out in the car with my laptop and looked at prices in Canada and laws on duty charges when crossing the border. Vero must have been annoyed from waiting all that time but she was very supportive in my decision in not buying the guitar at that time. Ah well. I thanked Chazz and we hit the road to find the camp site.

It was getting late at night (due to my impromptu visit to Guitar Center) and we were still having a hard time finding the campsite. We ended up in Salem, Massachusetts which was odd as I had been thinking of bringing Vero to it but thought it would be too far from Boston. Clearly my sense of distance isn’t that good as it’s not far at all! I started telling Vero how Salem is famous for burning/hanging witches back in the day and this got her pretty excited.

We ended up at some boardwalk which was pretty cool. It was along the beach and it was the main hangout for teenagers. It would have been cool to have one of those when we grew up. It was a boardwalk full of confection stands, arcade game rooms and billiards. It was like it was from a film from the 50s. We ended up asking someone where we could find a campsite and they though it may be around the bend so we hopped back in our vehicle with hopes to find a spot before the sun went down.

We ended up at a campsite along the water which was a bonus. The old gentleman handling the park was VERY nice to us and gave us tips as to where we should go in Salem and in Boston the next day. The campground was definitely overpriced though and I think it is because it may have been a municipal campground. I think the grounds cost us $30USD for the night. We were going to camp at one spot but decided against it as there were kids partying near there so we ended up in a dark corner of the woods where we must have been next to a pond because the frogs kept me up all night long! I didn’t have the best sleep that night, but I can’t complain too much as it was less expensive than a hotel room.

The gentleman gave us directions to a grocery store which headed for to get some food for supper (this is around 8PM). Our trip to Salem began very eerily with all the folklore of witches and whanot and our drive there was creepy. We pulled into the parking lot of this supposed ‘grocery store’ and were getting looks from the locals who were out having a good time in the neighbourhood. We walked into this ‘grocery store’ to find out it was a small convenience store which had nothing for us to eat. It was kind of freaky as the shelves were pretty well empty. We hightailed it out of there and decided that it would be best to just tour the town and grab a bite to eat.

I parked the car and we witnessed a ghost-walking tour around the town which we would have enjoyed to go on, but we arrived too late. Consulting the handy-dandy map the old gentleman at the campsite gave us, we started walking around downtown until we found a small diner.

This was probably the highlight of my trip as I sat down, ordered a Samuel Adams (best beer ever!), and a chicken Parmesan meal with spaghetti which was only $4!) Incroyable! How can you get a meal for under $5 nowadays? It was filling! I was having a great time at this little pub/diner and it put my spirits up for our trek through the haunted town of Salem.

After our meal, we walked around a bit and were mesmerized by the creepy feeling we got from the town. They really play up the Hallowe’en angle and everywhere you walk has witches, goblins, you name it. At one point there was a giant wall and Vero wanted to see what was on the other side and she was so excited to find the scariest locale one could find – the cemetery! We went around the corner to the entrance and skulked around the tombstones (which was actually not allowed after dark) and caught the tail end of the ghost tour and got a bit of history of the town before the end of the tour.

Satisfied with Salem, we headed back to the campsite so that we could get a good night’s sleep before spending the next day in Salem. We were on a trip with no destination so we figured if we had a great time in Salem, so be it and we could check out Boston some other time.

After waking up to a beautiful, BEAUTIFUL vista (my favourite so far), we packed up, grabbed some supplies at the grocery store (including the holy grail of meat products – a roll of Maple Leaf bologna to fry up over the fire!), we headed to the beach and ate some food, admiring the view, before heading out on the road again.

We didn’t really know where we wanted to go in New Brunswick so we opted for a whirlwind tour. First stop – Moncton to see Magnetic Hill! The highways in New Brunswick are strange…you can go 110 km/hr (sweet!), but it feels like you are driving through the forest the entire trip. It’s definitely not like the 401 in Ontario where you have a truck stop every 50 kilometres. In fact, I found there were little to no signs along the way and there definitely weren’t any signs for gas stations! I realized I would have to be conscious of this on the trip through New Brunswick.

We got to Moncton and after a wrong turn towards Magnetic Hill we ended up downtown. We toured around the main strip and got some gelato and I used the wireless Internet to check on some things concerning work while she sat on some Freesmason Temple steps.

We then rolled into Magnetic Hill after paying our $5 entry fee. The scoop with Magnetic Hill is that you park your car at the bottom of a hill, throw it in neutral gear and your car will roll towards the top. Sure enough, we were travelling around 20km/hr at one point UP the hill! It was such a fascinating mystery that we had to try it a few other times.

Fast fact: After our trip, Dad was telling me how it was all an illusion. Sure enough, the hill actually heads downwards but appears to be going upwards! It has something to do with the horizon and the treeline which makes it look like you are going up. I would like to actually go back and walk the hill myself. I still don’t believe that it is an optical illusion!

We found a great little flea market before hitting the road where Vero bought a new pair of sneakers (to replace the ones which were still soaked from Perce Rock) and I found an ancient version of the Clue boardgame (circa 1965) and a tour book of New York City (which would end up helping us immensely even though it was 2 years old).

Hitting the road again, we headed towards Fredericton. We ended up there around 5:30PM and the town had essentially shut down for the evening. We dropped into the tour area and they said the only thing of interest would be the changing of the guard at 7PM. We toured around the main strip, then sat down to watch the changing of the guard which was a good time. There was a concert afterwards but we decided to head for the United States border that night and camp on the other side. Considering there was a timezone change, we figured it would save us time to get on the other side.

After we hightailed it out of Fredericton, Vero made me a great bologna sandwich (second one of the day!) and we almost ran out of gas before strolling into the smallest town imaginable. When I got to the pumps, the gentleman had to turn the pumps on and it wasn’t working! Just my luck. I stroll into the only gas station for miles and it doesn’t work! He switched the pumps on and off again and there was success! He said there was someone coming out to fix it but they were a few hours away.

After getting some helpful directions from him to the border, we headed to the Maine border. The sun was going down fast and I made a decision to just keep going instead of hitting up a campsite (the Yogi Bear campsite!) before the border. This was the biggest mistake of my life.

We approached the border to the United States. He asked us some standard questions like where we were travelling from, where do we live, where do we work. Then he asks if we have any meat in the car.

Me: “Why yes, I think there are a pack of weiners in the car for camping.”
Border Guard: “Oops! We’ll have to take that from you. Hoof and mouth disease, you know.”
Me: “What, really? Alright, well go ahead.”
(Border Guard is going through the cooler in the backseat)
BG: “Hey, look at this bologna! This has to go also!”
Me: (thinking) What the heck?! I forgot about my huge roll of bologna! NOOOOO!
Me: “Really, you need to take that?”
BG: “Yep.” (throws the weiners and bologna in the trash.
BG: “Oh, here’s some pepperettes!”
Me: “HOLD ON ONE MINUTE! I let you throw out my bologna, the least you can do is let me eat those three peperrettes!”

He was gracious enough to let us take the remaining pepperettes. If only I had that option for the sweet, sweet bologna that I was going to fry up that night!
He also threw out a Granny Smith apple which was from South Chile and made a comment about my firewood in the trunk of the car, but he said he would let that one slide. Personally, I wish he would have took the firewood and left the bologna.

He then let us know about a campsite down the road called “My Brother’s Place.” I replied “How convenient that it’s your brother’s place!”. We all had a good laugh.

While the border guard was amazingly nice, I was disappointed with their policies. I mean, if there is fear of hoof and mouth disease (aka the mad cow disease), how would it spread from my bologna? Couldn’t I just sign a piece of paper indicating that I would not feed it to an American? That’s what I’m talking about!

Distraught, we pulled into the campground (which was super cheap) and found out ginormous lot to set up camp in the dark. It was also getting chilly out so I set up a fire while Vero handled the tent. In the end, we sat around the fire while I fried the only meat I had (a pepperette) and drank a few beer. Oh yes, the border guard said there was no problem with my beer. What the heck? Why not take my beer and not my bologna?!

Clearly you can tell that I was very disgruntled about losing my bologna. I think Vero thought it was amusing.

—— (original posting while in Moncton using the wireless Internet)

Moncton has free wireless Internet.

Cool.

I guess I have time to add more to this entry. I’m in Moncton with Vero after a wrong turn towards Magnetic Hill (7th Wonder of the World?). She’s sitting eating some gelato on some Freemason temple steps so I figured I would get some time in to see if work emailed me about some human resources stuff.

Driving along the coast is fun. I find that it goes well with the iPod on shuffle with the Beatles.

Gotta run, Vero’s back. On the road again.

Taken from Wikipedia:

Percé Rock (French rocher Percé, “pierced rock”) is one of the largest and most spectacular natural arches in the world.

It rises sheer from the Gulf of St. Lawrence just off the tip of the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec near the village of Percé. It is a massive limestone stack 433 metres (1420 ft) long, 90 metres (296 ft) wide and 88 metres (289 ft) at its highest point. The rock gets its name from a large 15 metre/50ft high arch near its seaward end.

If you go to Gaspe, you must go to Perce Rock. With that in mind and the nice day ahead of us, we left Gaspe and headed to the Rock. The only problem with heading to the rock is that the tide is your enemy so you never know when to head out to it.

The village of Perce Rock is beautiful, yet very touristy. It consists of one main strip of restaurants and souvenir shops. You can head down to the docks (which offer a great spot to take a picture of the rock with your girl) or walk down the beach to the stairs leading down to the rock itself.

Once we arrived closer to the Rock we realized that all we had to do is remove our shoes and we could navigate across to the Rock! I have never been to the hole in Perce Rock and it was my hopes to do so on this trip. However, we never really planned ahead. From a distance it looked like the tide was too high to cross over but it wasn’t until we got closer that we realized we could walk through. But here we were with my jeans and sneakers on. Oh well, hike the jeans up and carry the sneakers in your hands, here we go!

I must admit that with the chilly water and the sharp rocks, my feet had seen better days. It was really hard on Vero and once we got to the Rock itself and decided to keep going she decided to put her shoes back on and get them soaked.

To get to the center hole of the rock, you have to walk along the edge and jump from rock to rock and get wet. We were doing alright but it was starting to get harder as the water got deeper and the waves kept pounding us against the rock wall! I think it would have been fine if I put some sandals and a bathing suit on but I was trying not to get my wallet wet and it was hard navigating with bare feet. In the end, we were close, but decided to leave it for another trip.

On the way back I was in a precarious spot and Vero kept telling me “If you put your foot there, you’ll fall in!” and I dismissed her warnings as I plotted my course like a seasoned video gamer playing a hard level of Super Mario Bros. As I put pressure onto my left foot to swing myself over to the other side of the rock I did in fact lose all friction between my foot and the rock and found myself in the water! I was not impressed as my wallet had become the victim after all this work.

In the end, we had the most fun part of our trip at Perce Rock as it was a nice day (although the water was chilly) and it always feels like and adventure when you’re surrounded by saltwater and seaweed.

We headed for shore and I convinced Vero to walk all the way back to the car so I could change my clothes and after some complaining we got there, changed, headed to a restaurant and had some great fish and chips before heading back out on the road.

Continuing on the coast, I set my iPod on The Beatles and shuffled the songs. I found it to be a great mix for the drive around the coast. Just some happy music that I can lose myself into. I let Vero drive for awhile and I think she appreciated it as you get to stare at the ocean along the road for all that time.

We crossed the border into New Brunswick, readjusted our watches and headed for Dalhousie to find a campsite. The campsite is right in town along the water and was…interesting. It was very modern and there were not many places to actually set up a tent. You’re very close to your neighbour.

After sarcastically speaking with the kid who rented us the lot for the night, we set up the tent and went on the hunt for some wieners and wiener sticks. We had to go to the grocery store up the hill and take a bunch of fliers to use for the fire and when we got back the sun was going down over the water. Just in time to set up the fire and set our wieners and marshmallows into!

Me: Hey, why are our shoes steaming? I guess they must be really hot.
Me: HEY, WAIT A MINUTE! (grabs shoe to discover the leather has melted on the back of it.

That’s right, my new shoes took a hit from the fire. Ah well…it’s not too bad and I can still wear them.

After a few beer we put the fire out and headed to the tent to watch an episode of Jekyll on the laptop. I found it amusing that they had a giant lamp over our tent so it was bright all night long. Very strange if you are used to camping in the deep dark woods at night.

iplaying: Rain King – Counting Crows (August and Everything After)

We hightailed it out of Levis Quebec so we could get to Gaspe in some decent time. It was still a good seven hours away so it would be one of the longer hauls on the trip. We’ve been trying to keep the long road trips to a bare minimum for sanity.

Vero continued to sleep most of the way there while I enjoyed the scenery and listened to some tunes. The scenery definitely increased as I hit the highway along the coast. Imagine driving for hours with only the ocean by your side. This is how to live! I didn’t even care if it’s a lower speed limit than the major highways.

We stopped off in Matane for a bite to eat the Casse-Croute. For those of you who don’t know what the Casse-Croute is, think of a chip stand. Now, I asked Vero about the name and she said croute meant hunger so I guess the literal translation would be hunger-killer or hunger-breaker. Interesting how someone ixnayed that idea and just called it a chip wagon in english.

Let us also point out that I had forgot how bloody cold it is along the ocean! I had to go grab my jacket from the car as soon as we stepped out.

After a tasty burger and Vero getting an excellent vegetarian poutine, we hit the road again. I stopped at the turnoff sign for Gaspe. Some people may wonder why there are two arrows to Gaspe. If you look at a map, you can see that if you keep going straight you can keep driving along the coast (longer trip but still scenic), or you can cut through the hills into Murdochville (where my Father is from).

Considering I had already had my fill of the coastline, we turned right and discovered a wilderness and windy roads. I always remember cruising down this highway at top speed and Mom yelling at Dad about something to do with reliving his youth. I also sped down the windy turn and imagined myself in such great James Bond flicks such as Goldfinger.

We got to Murdochville and filled up the tank of gas and luckily Vero had some cash with her as the credit and debit card machines were down for some reason! Otherwise, I would have been scrubbing toilets for a weekend to pay off my gas. We drove through Murdochville which lasted 2 minutes and headed out.

I was asking Vero if there was anything she wished to do while in Murdochville but she was confused and say “No, I’ll wait until the rest of the weekend.” which I thought was strange considering it was an hour away from Gaspe. Turns out that for some reason she thought we were staying at my parents cottage in Murdochville!

We arrived around 3PM and met Dad who had been downtown. After touring the cottage and relaxing a bit we headed into town for some Mastro’s Pizza (excellent pizza) and Mom and Dad gave Vero, Nanny and I the tour (which is funny to say considering Nanny lived there for years). We went to the docks, Camp Holdimand, up to the Sanitorium and toured around the neighbourhood trying to find some new condos that had gone up. We then headed home and had a few beers before retiring.

Let’s talk about how it got dark really fast in Gaspe. One could argue that the Gaspe coast needs their own time zone as it is pretty far on the map. Whereas Ottawa may have the sun going down around 9PM at this time in the year, Gaspe was pitch black around 8PM! Very strange and it must have been even odder for my parents who have summer nights lasting until 10PM back home.

The next day was cold, rainy and cold. Ugh. Not the best day to be in Gaspe. We skipped the idea of going to the beach and headed to Snowman’s for some lunch. We then went to tour some old forts along the coast and along the way stopped into Fox River (hence the Michael Scofield reference in my previous post) to check out the damage of flooding. It’s unbelievable to think that a bridge was wiped out and houses were destroyed in a matter of hours after a flash flood.

We headed home after meandering around the area and got ready for a lovely supper put on by Nanny. I then brought out the laptop to map out where we would head to next and decided Halfax would have to be scrapped from this trip as it would be too much of a detour.

The next morning before heading out we headed to the cemetary to visit the family. It was the running joke that Vero must have had the best time in Gaspe – visiting dead people and hanging out in the cold rain! Hopefully the next time will be nice Vero!

After saying hello to Eric and Kay, we hit the road to spend an afternoon at Perce Rock. Thanks to the hospitality of my parents and Nannies at the homestead.

I love the province of Quebec. I find it so picturesque. The rolling hills, the sea, it has everything.

We headed out from the KOA Campground at a fairly decent hour and made our trek to Quebec City. This was the first time I had ever taken the 401 between the 416 turnoff to Montreal so I was interested to see how it looked. I suppose it doesn’t look any different from any other highway but it was an adventure!

I ended up in Montreal while Vero was sleeping around noon and was stuck in some nasty traffic. I’ll know for next time that I can take some alternate ways through Montreal to make it to Quebec City.

Tip Trip #2: Never wake a sleeping girlfriend for directions.

On our way into the area of Quebec City it started raining on us and we had to make the decision of staying at a motel or camp. We stopped into the information booth and they showed us the weather forecast predicated a cloudy evening.

Considering it was raining pretty hard on us we made the decision to take a motel for the night in case the weatherman was wrong (gasp!). I don’t think either of us care for this decision as I am cheap so I preferred the $20 campground for the night. But I also didn’t want to set up a tent in the rain or sleep in the rain either.

We ended up driving to Levis, Quebec on my father’s suggestion as it’s cheaper to stay across the river and just get a ferry into the city of Quebec. We found this amazing motel for only $80 a night! At the time, neither of us knew if that was a good deal or not, but Dad informed us that it was a steal of a deal. In fact, we may have stayed at the same place they did the last time around.

It was funny when we went into the motel lobby…

(in French)
Vero: How much is it for a room for the night?
Guy: (looking at the two of us…points to a flyer showing the honeymoon suite with a jacuzzi tub for only $160 a night!): I have the room for you here.
Vero: No, no! We just want a regular room. The cheapest you can get.

So we had a good laugh at him trying to pawn off his uber-deluxe suite on us. He ended up upgrading us to a king-size bed for free which was awesome.

After hauling our stuff in during the pouring rain, and discovering they had free wireless Internet (bonus!), we packed a bag and headed for Quebec City. The weather was starting to clear up so we were hopeful for good weather for the rest of the day.

We parked down in Levis and caught the ferry. What a great system they have. The ferry doesn’t take long at all and it wasn’t overly expensive either. This was Vero’s first time in Quebec City so I looked to her for guidance on what she would like to do. We hiked up the hill and headed for the Citadel where we got lost for some time but managed to make our way to the entrance inside the fort where they were offering guided tours. Because it is an active military base, this is the only way one can actually visit the site, so we decided to spend the $10 and go for a tour.

It was a great tour although it was pouring on us again and we were so high up that we thought the lightning clouds may have rolled right over us and zapped us! There was a woman from New Jersey who seemed VERY scared of the clouds so she hung out near the walls of the fort. The Citadel has a pretty fascinating history and it just renewed Vero and my ambition to learn more about our great country. After a couple of hours of touring around with our excellent tour guide (who had graduated from the same program as Vero), we headed back into town. Let us not forget how the tour guide was blatantly picking up Vero as he said she looked like Ann-Margaret from Viva Las Vegas! We had never seen the movie so he described her a sex symbol of the time. When we got back to the motel we checked out imdb.com and couldn’t really find the resemblance but I assured Vero that she is pretty well a modern sex symbol of our time. 😉

We checked out the Quebec City Parliament buildings and toured around the city. I LOVE Quebec City and the reminder of the European architecture. We were starving by the time the tour of the Citadel was over so we headed to a restaurant and ordered some good pizza. We loved our waiter, he was so sarcastically funny…I ended up bumping up the standard tip I usually give out due to his amazing demeanor.

We then toured around some shops that were still open (it was after 9PM at this point) and Vero found this amazing medieval type store and she found a ring that her friend had lost awhile back so it was nice to find a shop that carried it. We picked up a few things, headed for the ferry and drove back to the motel.

All in all, we both enjoyed Quebec City although it was pouring on us and we got there too late to do much. I think the next trip will be planned to spend an entire day there at least.

iplaying: Forever Yellow Skies – The Cranberries (To The Faithful Departed)

So, I don’t know how Vaughan, Ontario is pronounced ‘Vauhn’ (like Agent Vauhn in Alias!) but it is. I would think it would be something like Vohan or something like that.

Vero’s friend Emilie moved to Vaughan along with her boyfriend Ryan so we dropped by on our way back from London. Turns out that it was a packed house that night as her parents were also visiting! We managed to find the house easily and then we sat and talked for awhile before heading out to a winery in the area. Nothing too special to be seen at this winery tour…we got to see the manufacturing area and then the basement where the kegs of wine sat to be aged. Pretty neat. We then had a taste test of a few wines (which Vero hated by the second wine).

We then headed home where we met up with Ryan who got off of work. After picking up some beer and touring around Vaughan, we sat down to enjoy a few brewskis and had some excellent dinner.

Ryan also introduced me to the fact that snowmobiles can travel over water if you get up to a good speed. I couldn’t believe this when he was telling me. I was just sitting there going “Uh huh, uh huh.” when I clued into him actually saying he was going across the water in the summer! He showed me some videos on the Internet and I couldn’t believe my eyes! Has anyone witnessed this? I also can’t believe that this was happening all over Hearst but I had never heard about it in Kapuskasing.

Considering some people had to work in the morning, we called it a night (after having some sausages and herring…mmm…herring) and we witnessed the fastest blowing up of an air mattress ever! I couldn’t believe the power in this little rechargeable blower-upper tool. Emilie and I had a good laugh at how fast it blew up. We are talking 15 seconds here! Unfortunately we discovered that the mattress had a leak so I had to bail onto the couch during the middle of the night and then also nabbed a bed when Emilie’s parents left in the morning.

The morning after we had some great pancakes and headed to Emilie’s new school to check out her classroom. Vero and I then decided to hit the road and take us where the wind took us. Destination – Quebec City. After stopping in Brockville for a grocery and camping run (new air mattress and a sweet LED lamp) we realized that the sun was setting fairly soon so it may be in our best interest to find a campground. Let me tell you that my road atlas isn’t the best thing money has bought in terms of finding camping areas. We found on on the 416 and having thinking about it, we decided to camp there even though it was only 45 minutes more of a drive to our actual houses in Ottawa! Hey, we’re on vacation, let’s make it a vacation. In the end, we found a KOA campground (which wasn’t listed in the Road Atlas…boo…hiss!), set up our tent, went for a swim and then retired for the night while playing some games on my computer like Connect-4, and Marsala. Vero thinks she kicked my ass in these games but she was seriously mistaken.

Trip Tip #1: Check more carefully at the road atlas that you bought for $20 to make sure it lists A LOT of the campgrounds along your route and not just the Provincial Parks.

It was nice to see more of Emilie and Ryan as I had only met them a few times. Excellent friends to have!

iplaying: Waiting All Day – Silverchair (Young Modern)