The Great Thing About Skipping Thanksgiving...

Is that you get to go away.
The Mister and I skipped the stress of Thanksgiving this year and went to Montreal and Quebec City. We stayed at La vie de château in Montreal, and then did a day trip to Quebec City.



This was our room.
Apparently, every room has a theme. Our room's theme was
"Afro-Carib".

The painting above the bed is of a woman from Martinique.







Breakfast in the beautiful dining room was included, and it was a lovely spread of fruit, croissants, various breads, ham, cheese, coffee and orange juice, along with fresh crêpes prepared by our host. A wonderful atmosphere with 1930's and 1940's jazz playing to compliment the Art Deco feel of the decor.
If you look carefully, you can see him in the mirror of the dining room.





Our host Jogues was charismatic, and jovial.
He willingly gave us the history of the house.
It being the house of Mdme Voyer a work shoe tycoon, and society woman.
The house was built at the turn of the century to be a smaller replica of The Canadian Club on Ste Catherines Street of which Mdme Voyer was a member. Jogues and his wife Domenique bought it and restored in in 1998.
They did a great job.
When I took this shot, I said: "Say cheese!" and Jogues said, "SEX!" instead...oh, those Frenchmen!





After breakfast on Sunday morning, we drove up to Quebec City.
Pictured on the hill is Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac. A high falutin' hotel overlooking the St. Lawrence.





Here's the route we took to get there...and the view when we got there:




We went to Le musée de la civilisation and The Mister was roughed up by Sherlock Holmes and Detective Columbo who were there to promote the Autopsy Exhibit.




I had dragged The Mister in soley to see "Concours Vie de tsar". Because the giant Babushka nesting egg in front of the museum drew me to it like a 'ho to shiny things.
You gotta love them Russians. Always tellin' you what to do.
Uja's Quick Russian Joke:
"In Russia, there are two channels...channel 1 which plays propoganda, and channel 2, which shows a guy telling you to turn back to channel 1"
Badda Bum.





Quebec City is very beautiful, and old.
Everyone there is friendly, and thinks they are a comediens, oui?..although, that guy is probably from Ontario.








On the way out of Quebec City, a nice person who was sent by God, told us that we had a bubble in our tire, just before we got on the highway to go back to Montreal. We spent an hour and a half at Canadian Tire getting it fixed.
It's amazing that I can stop a non-English speaker, and simply say "Canadian Tire", and they start with the pointing and giving of directions. We found one very quickly.
We were back on the road in no time.




The Mister and I had a great time doing a lot of other great things while we were in Quebec. Too many things to bore you with here.
But, I'm glad we gave the stress of Thanksgiving a miss this year and did something for ourselves.
Just the two of us.
For a change.

The Poconos

So, The Mister and I spent the weekend in the Poconos.
(Yes Kat, I too was surprised that there was NO "K" in Poconos)
It’s a beautiful place.
While we’re talking, I’d like to point out some differences between PA and Ontario.
You can smoke in places that you haven’t been able to smoke in Ontario for over a decade.


No.
Really.

I was shocked to see cigarettes being sold in Pharmacies!
Not happening here in Ontario.
In fact, pretty soon it'll be illegal to smoke in your own home or car here in Ontario.
I imagine that eventually there will be Tobacco houses where smokers will have to go if they want to smoke.
Like the Opium Dens of days gone by, in the basements of shady establishments...anyhow, that's another post.

Also, we saw a lot of couples with small children who looked very close together in age (the children, I mean...not the adults).
Every couple seemed to have a minimum of 3 children.
The parents were looking perpetually pissed off, and the children were perpetually running wild.
It was actually kind of entertaining.

Anyhow….
We stayed at The Shawnee Inn. Looks nice, huh?

The Mister booked a room on the net.
No fears of this since we found a fab bed and breakfast in Montreal this way a few years ago.
Well, we stayed in a room like the one pictured.
A real throwback to the 1970’s with the décor, no?

Now, The Mister is a little quirky when it comes to things, and he didn’t imagine Lucy and Ricky beds when he was booking the room.

This pissed him off.
The fact that this room wasn’t located in the main building pissed him off too.
See, the website is misleading.
When they do the bookings, they don’t tell you that there’s “The Big House” (as we got to calling it) and then there’s the “Slave Quarters” which is a little motel like structure far, far away from “The Big House”, named The Delaware somethingerother that smelled like a $65CD Bobcageon Motel room for $160AD.
Here’s the kicker…it cost just as much to stay in “The Big House”
This mightily pissed off The Mister, who was already pissed off.

So, we took the looooong walk up to “The Big House” to speak with the Manager on Duty.
Who was very apologetic and nice and suggested we speak with the Grand Fromage the next day.
The Shawnee Inn is a beautiful old building that has been in operation as a golf resort since 1912.
It's really pretty impressive.




There was a beautiful old elevator obviously from the 1920’s or so with a brass grill.



The view from The Big House was breathtakingly beautiful.


The view from The Slave Quarters, was not worth photographing.
It overlooked the 14th hole.

We took a drive over to Bushkill Falls where we took a steep hike to see the falls.

Very beautiful.

On the way back, while driving through Lackawanna or Cheektowaga, we passed a replica of the famous photo of workmen eating lunch on a beam during the construction of Rockefeller Center in NYC Remember that photo by Lewis Wickes Hine?


The hotel it was in front of was a little cheesy and overdone, but I really liked how they did that though.





Well, a grand time was had by all...school tomorrow, and I'm off to bed...sob!

The Assembly Hall - Kipling & Lakeshore


"You should see our sea of cabbages"

"We go to the garden when we are sick, depressed or are in need of inspiration"

"There is something revelational about walking daily in a familiar place"

You know, there is beauty everywhere...if we just stop to look for a second.
I was on my way to a workshop this morning, and this was the pathway to the Assembly Hall where it was held.

Road Trip #2

This is the Ste.lco Plant in Hamilton from the Burlington Bridge...heading towards Niagara Falls.


Other than showing our Drivers Licenses and popping the trunk for a thorough search, we were accross in a minute.





Downtown Buffalo has some beautiful old architecture from the 1920's and 1930's. Some of the buildings are quite impressive.
However, downtown Buffalo remains a ghost town, even on a long weekend Saturday afternoon.
It's sad to see so many beautiful old buildings burnt out and abandoned.
It's been a long time since The Mister and I have been to Buffalo.
Certain areas seem more run down than we remember.

We drove through Niagara Falls and came accross the Queenston/Lewiston Bridge, and I didn't take any pictures of the Falls because; let's face it, I've got too many already.
I also didn't take any pictures of Lundy's Lane.
It gets more Funland/Freakshow/Ridiculous looking every time we visit.
Gigantic neon signs and gorillas and monsters hanging onto the main road, and then the circus abruptly stops about 6 blocks up and everything becomes normal again.


The end.
No more road trips for a little while

:(

Road Trip #1

Heading out on the road to who knows where.
The Mister driving west.


We passed through Shakespeare, Ontario.
It's right next to Stratford, Ontario...the snotty, Yuppie, Shakespeare Festival town.
We saw no ethnics...I think that perhaps the only black person in Stratford was The Mister and Othello...but I think Othello only comes every couple of years, and even then only between May and September.


I suspect that when the urban types took over Stratford, the regular folk high tailed it over to Shakespeare. Where they wouldn't have to buy organic, jog, and could just have regular Tim Hortons coffee at $1 for a medium regular, instead of having to buy burnt tasting grandes or talls at inflated prices ...I'm making this shit up. I have no idea.
But Shakespeare appears to be: i-pod jogger-less, Starbuck-less, health food store-less, Bistro and Patisserie-less and hoity-toity restaurant-less.


In Shakespeare we visited The Pork Shoppe...

With all things pig...and a little lamb too.

In Shakespeare, the streets are named for Shakespearian characters.


On the way back, we stopped in Waterloo, Ontario at a lovely Nursery



We ran accross something called a "money tree" and laughed because it looked like Marijuana, and we wondered if that's how it got it's moniker.


We met Sequoia the Macaw who "Talks but is very shy" and has been living at the nursery since 1974. She was grooming herself the whole time we were standing in front of her, but every time I said her name, she would look up.

Stay tuned for Road Trip #2

I hate Hummers.
But this one made me laugh.
The driver had bling up the ying, with a cell phone glued to his ear.
Which would explain why he was going slower than the rest of traffic, and twice inched into my lane before I passed him.
He finally cut off the driver behind me when he suddenly decided he would actually need that lane.
Are all Hummer drivers idiots?
Or just the ones that I've driven behind?

Cynical-C Goes to Vegas

The Kalendar Cafe

I'm in this one...





I love this place.
I love the old wood.
I love the dark rich feeling of the place.
It feels Deco old.
The food's not bad either.