Canada 2012 Day 13

Another radiant morning! The wind was strong and fresh during the
night, and dawn left a mantle of dew over everything, but the morning
was crisp and beautiful, and the sun promised to give us a warm day.
My first task, like I do every morning, was to heat water for coffee
and tea, but before I started I frowned upon my fickle stove, and
mused that after today I would no longer need it, and that perhaps it
would be best to leave it behind in PEI. Well, that little stove knew
what I was thinking, and felt panic at the idea of being left behind,
so it performed flawlessly throughout a complicated breakfast of
coffee and tea, a tortilla española, and another round of coffee.
Clearly it was trying to butter me up, but I felt little sympathy for
the miserable wretch, at least until I noticed that Annie had lost her
smug look of Schadenfreude. Hmm . . . maybe I will give the little guy
another try.  [The war of the stoves has now begun!]

We took a long walk along the Cavendish beach, basking in the sun and
feeling a little regret at the end of our fabulous adventure. We had
reached the end of the trip, and from here on all that was left to us
was to undo the traveled road and get back.

This time we biked back through Highway 13, under the same hellish
conditions but little affected by them anymore. After 20 km we came to
the town of Hunter River, where we stopped at a bakery for sugary
coffee, a chocolate chip muffin, and a lemon meringue tart. Never have
such a simple fare tasted better than on this sunny day, on the
terrace, and looking across the river unto a charming farm. We are at
peace with the world, and that may be the greatest gift this charming
island has bestowed upon us visitors. [TOTALLY!]

Right at Hunter River we picked up the main bike trail, with is lovely
gentle grades, and 24 km later we made our glorious entrance back in
Charlottetown. We went back to the Hostel of Red Gables, where this
time we get to stay in the small garret apartment. It is totally cute,
and a perfect place to end our tour of PEI. After getting settled we
did the mandatory visit to the Kosy Korner to start the return trip
with clean clothes, and indulged in a bit of souvenir shopping (Annie
got herself an Anne of Green Gables hat, with the corresponding red
hair tresses, to wear at school next Hat Day).

Today is Father’s Day, so Annie is celebrating me with a lobster
dinner, in small restaurant the hostel recommends (unfortunately
“lobster shacks” seem to be a thing of the past). I almost backed off
when I saw the price of the dish, but Annie held my hand and at the
end I totally enjoyed the signature dish of the island (still, next
time I am buying one alive and cooking it myself!).  [Ah - My H!]

Canada 2012 Day 12

The sun is up! And with its warmth it dispelled the nightmarish
memories of the previous day. We still had to contend with mosquitoes,
but by now we were deft hands at that, and managed to enjoy our
morning coffee and tea [I had a difficult time emerging from the
tent!], a hot shower (National Park Canadian campgrounds are very
reasonably priced at $25 for a tent site, and provide all the hot
water your heart may desire), and a romantic walk along the beach.

Breakfast was a bit more challenging, because the stove was in one of
its most cantankerous moods. Let me go back a bit and tell you that,
as we were planning this trip, Annie announced that she was going to
buy this hoity toidy campstove at REI, because “I could simply not
survive without it”. That rubbed me the wrong way, and I told her that
I had a perfectly good stove I had bought at a garage sale for a
dollar, and that was the one we were taking, and basta! My stove is
the tinniest thing in the world, since it is a simple burner that
screws on top of the propane cylinder we had bought in Montreal. Up to
this day it had behaved reasonably well, and I had cooked some fine
meals with it, but today it was possessed by the devil and it would
keep going off (the flame would just blow itself off, and I had to
relight it every few seconds). Trying to cook our breakfast was an
ordeal, and I used some very choice language as the main spice (f...,
f..., f...!, and f... a duck!, to mention but a few). And all along
Annie stared at me with her golden eyes, not saying a thing. Ah, but I
know what she was thinking! She was silently rubbing in the
infallibility of her expensive REI stove [I would NEVER do such a
thing!], which put me in an even fouler mood.  [‘tis true!]

Now, today the plan was to leisurely bike the length of the Green
Gables National Park, but looking at the map I noticed that the road
was not continuous. Rather, it was interrupted across the mouth of
every bay, so one would have to backtrack to the trunk road (Highway
6) every time. It made a lot more sense to follow Highway 6, which the
map showed to be a scenic highway, all the way from the east to the
west ends of the park. Well, it was a very scenic highway, but once
again there was no shoulder and we had to ride at the very edge of the
car lane, and the roller coaster topography was alive and well. You
might think that it would be fun to fly on the downside of the hills,
but I can assure you that the upside of the hills sucks out your
strength in no time whatsoever. As if this was not enough, a new
torture was added to our Calvary in the form of endless strings of
weekend motorcycle riders. Apparently the roller coaster topography of
the island attracts motorcycle clubs from all over the mainland, and
these weekend warriors revel in traveling in large packs, opening
their mufflers so everyone can hear the roar of their engines, and
scaring the living daylights out of innocent bicycle riders.

A delightful moment of peace came around 1 pm, when we reached the
small town of North Rustico and saw the placard for The Old Bakery
Shop. We have settled on bakeries as a great place to have a snack,
and this was one of the best we sampled. We ordered two cups of sweet
milk coffee, a meat pie (a delightfully flakey crust surrounding a
tasty stew of pulled pork), and a cherry turnover, and sat in the
veranda to admire the landscape. PEI is not about majestic landscapes,
but the sloping alfalfa or potato fields, the quaint farmhouses with
their copses of wood, and the bays extending their long arms unto the
land form a mosaic of quiet pastoral beauty. A very livable place
indeed!

Finally, by 3:30 pm and quite hot and bothered, we reached the Green
Gables site, in the township of Cavendish, and just about 30 km from
our Stanhope campground. I should preface the following by saying that
as a girl Annie was (and still is) a great fan of the novel of Anne of
Green Gables and its sequels, so coming to see the place where the
novels were inspired was a very exciting moment for her. The author of
the books, Lucy Maud Montgomery, was born in the nearby town of New
London and later lived in Cavendish, but the House of Green Gables
actually belonged to cousins of her. The house and the grounds have
been recently restored (at some point the grounds had been razed and
covered with grass as part of a golf course), so the aficionados can
not only go through the house, but also see Mathew’s barn, or go for
walks along Lover’s Lane or the Haunted Forest. I remember only
vaguely the local of the story, and kept asking if Anne had ever gone
to Charlottetown, or had complained about the mosquitoes, until one of
the young docents looked at me very seriously and said “you know, Anne
was a fictional character”. So now I have to go back and read the
books, to see how much of the island did L.M. Montgomery portrayed in
her books.

Having satisfied Annie’s desires for being locus quo where her
childhood heroine had been, and having spent a few Canadian dollars in
the gift shop, (I must add – it was more heavenly than I had even
imagined! Exquisite – and I could have stayed forever!) we biked the
short distance to the campground. We were given the choice of a windy
site overlooking the beach, or a sheltered site in the woods, we
selected—based on past experience—the windy site and had an easy
afternoon pitching the tent, cooking dinner (with many more expletives
on my side and a very condescending look on Annie’s side), and
watching the sunset. Once again, life is good.  [No! Life was
absolutely amazingly delicious!  Together in such a little piece of
heaven!  Ah!  And NEVER have I seen such a beach camping site! Right
there on top of the mini dunes overlooking the beautiful water!]

Canada 2012 Day 11

The weather is so, so. Cloudy and a bit nippy, but the clouds are thin
and the sun could burst through them at any moment. Since we have to
wait until 5 pm to pick up our tent we can afford to go spend time at
the Kosy Korner Cafe, which is a mix of greasy spoon diner,
convenience store, and coin laundromat. It is the laundromat that we
are interested in, because Annie cannot shake off the habit of getting
her clothes 99.99% dry using a drier (she will learn the bitter
lesson, in Mexico and China, that sun-dried clothes are the norm
rather than the exception).  [Annie: NEVER! From now on Annie will
insert her comments to my narrative in square brackets]
Sometime around 10 am we finally got going, in a preliminary
exploration of the bicycle path recently inaugurated in PEI. The main
path runs lengthwise through the middle of this long island, along the
alignment of the old train, but there is a major “spur” connecting it
to Charlottetown, which is on the central-southern coast. We picked up
this spur in town, and biked the 9 km to the main path, and another 6
km to the east, before turning back. Not bad. Easy 30 km and we were
back in town by 2 pm.
We had some time to kill, so we took the time to visit the House of
the Confederation, where in 1867 representatives from Canada
(comprising all states from Ontario westward) and from the old Acadia
(Quebec, PEI, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and New Foundland) met to
first propose the idea of a confederation. A second meeting took place
in Quebec a year later, where the confederation was formally agreed
upon, and a draft of the constitution was written. One more year
elapsed and the representatives met again, in London, to approve and
adopt the final version of the constitution. Finally, on July 1 of
1871, the Queen formally recognized the confederation and its
constitution, and the Dominion of Canada made its debut as a
self-standing nation (but with the Governor General appointed by the
Queen as head of state).
Satiated with knowledge about Canadian history we retired to a very
British pub, to eat fish and chips and drink a Guinness. Very tasty
indeed.
Finally 4 pm arrived, so we went to the hostel, picked up our
saddlebags, and pedaled to the bus station. Our friends from the train
were as good as their word, and as soon as the bus arrived we were
able to retrieve our tent and get on our way. Our plan was to pedal to
the north shore, to the eastern tip of the Green Gables National Park.
Now, I don’t want to point any fingers, and prefer to think that the
deception played on us was inadvertent, but the fact is that we were
sorely misled by the map of the island, which is printed in a small
piece of paper, with very large, easy to read symbols. Because they
are large, the symbol for the entrance cabin to the park is connected
to the bike path by a very small segment of highway 15, and is almost
side by side with the symbol for the Stanhope campground. We knew that
it was 9 km from Charlottetown to the bike path, so made the
reasonable assumption that another 10 km would bring us to the
campground. I was a bit worried about taking Highway 15, but the gal
at the bus station assured us that old roads had wide shoulders for
bicycles to ride.
Off we went, full of confidence and good cheer, even though the clouds
had not parted and the wind was freshening. Lo and behold, when we got
to Highway 15 we found not only a shoulder, but a well marked bike
path, which we tackled with such gusto as only abject ignorance can
provide. Remember I had mentioned the rolling hills of PEI? Well,
Highway 15 was laid straight as an arrow across the topographic grain
of the island, draping over the hills without any concession to the
realities of geography, so in no time our pleasure ride turned into a
veritable roller coaster. To complicate matters the wind turned into a
head wind, and the “wide shoulder” disappeared within a kilometer and
became a 10 cm wide white line (thank God that Canadian drivers are
very courteous and gave us as much space as possible). Oh well, we
could handle 10 km of such conditions. Ah yes, but is it only 10 km?
Much to our distress we found out that the notion of including
distances in the highway signs is all but unknown in PEI, so we kept
going, and going, and going, and the head wind kept getting stronger,
and stronger, and stronger. Finally, at the edge of our strength, and
after at least 20 km of roller coaster, we arrived to the park. It
must have been around 8 pm and we were bushed. Thank God the
campground was just by the entrance to the park. Or was it? Once again
they played the trick of showing the direction of the campground, but
giving no distance, so we kept going in what by this time had turned
into a gale, for kilometer after interminable kilometer. I had to keep
a close eye on Annie, who was doggedly hunched over her bike, ready to
keel over without a moment’s notice.  [True – I thought I would die!]
Finally, after 10 km within the park, we got to the campground, where
a friendly young woman rapidly assigned us a site in the woods, well
sheltered from the wind. Ah, peace and rest at last! But it was not to
be. Because it was sheltered from the wind the campsite had become the
meeting point of all mosquitoes within a 5 km radius, and they
hungrily assaulted us as soon as we had laid the backpacks down. Annie
had the brilliant idea of donning our rain suits to avoid the attack,
and properly suited we managed to erect our tent and thus create a
safe heaven for ourselves. I have no recollection of preparing dinner
that night (Annie thinks we just ate cheese and crackers, [and I sat
on top of the table so the little nasties would have less chance at
me].  We slept the sleep of the dead, having logged a good 70 km total
under rather challenging conditions.

Canada 2012 Day 10

Today was a travel day. We slept OK in the train, Annie across two seats and I sitting like a pharaoh, but also woke up real early because sunrise is at 4 am around here! I wish I could say that we saw lots of the beautiful landscape after that, but the truth is that we dozed in and out of consciousness all the way to our final destination, Moncton.

Unfortunately our tent didn’t come out of the train when we got there, but the train staff were very helpful, located it in the train, and will send it to us in Charlottetown tomorrow by 5 pm. No point getting upset about such a small thing, but we will have another death ride tomorrow after we pick it up, because we will have to go 30 km north before we hit the campground we want (but that is a story for tomorrow).

An hour after detraining we got picked up by the bus that will take us to the east shore of the province of New Brunswick, across the Confederation Bridge, and into the capital of Prince Edward Island (aka PEI), Charlottetown. We enjoyed the ride (again dozing on and off), but are now nervous because (a) the island is a lot bigger than we had assumed, and (b) the landscape is dominated by rolling hills, which means that for every down there is a following up. We are much better at flat ground.

 
Once in Charlottetown we easily found the hostel, in which we had booked the last two beds. It is in a beautiful Victorian house with red gables, and happens to be booked out because an adventure travel company, Moose Travels, is staying here tonight and they have saturated the small hostel. Still, it is a very welcoming place, so we went and bought the makings of a salad with fruit trimmings, clam and lobster chowder (which I made with the “famous” PEI potatoes), and delicious fish filets. We found out, however, that the supermarkets in PEI do not carry wine, and you have to go to the province-owned liquor store to buy booze. So we went there, and were both shocked by the prices in alcoholic beverages. The cheapest bottle of wine is $9, the average is probably $18, and many are priced at $30 plus. It is hard to maintain vices here in Canada!

Canada 2012 Day 9

We woke up to the sound of heavy rain falling on the eves of our little flat. This could put a serious cramp on our style! But being savvy travelers we rolled with the punch, and took the opportunity to stay for an extra hour in bed. It was the right thing to do, because after we had finished breakfast the storm had abated, and by the time we made it to the Naval Museum the sun was shining. The museum was fine, though nothing extraordinary, but the view of Quebec from the shore was brilliant (the rain had washed down whatever particulate matter that was on the air, and the atmosphere was crystal clear).

After visiting the museum we meandered through the lower Vieux Quebec, stopping at shops and taking many photographs. In one of the shops Annie saw fudge sausages hanging from the ceiling and we fell easy prey to the temptations of the candy store.

By this time the tourists were pouring out of their buses, so we haughtily turned our noses toward the upper Vieux Quebec, and concentrated our efforts in discovering new beautiful spots in the city that by now feels like home: The Convent of the Ursulines, the old buildings of the Leval University, the Anglican Cathedral, and the Museum of French-speaking America, to name but a few. Now and then we would turn a corner and come into a mob of school children, for many schools take advantage of the end of the school year to organize end-of-term trips to the provincial capital.

By noon time we were getting a bit tired, so we bought sandwiches, beer, and cider from a grocer, and came back to the hostel to have our lunch. At 1 pm we joined a tour led by one of the girls who worked at the hostel, to go see the citadel that keeps guard over the city. The French governor of Quebec had been pushing for construction of this fort for a long time, but the French king didn’t want to foot the bill, so when the big 1760 battle took place in the Plains of Abraham, adjacent to Quebec, the French lost to the British the Canadian coastal provinces. The Brits discussed the need for a fort, but nothing was done about it and the city was attacked by the Americans in 1778, as one of the military skirmishes of the Revolutionary War. More than ever the need for a fort became clear, but the treasury had no funds, and the city was once again attacked in 1812, during the American-English war. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and after that the fort was built (and Quebec was never again at risk, so the construction of the fort was completely superfluous; go figure).

Afterward we visited the Museum of French-speaking America, which is a bit weird in that to get to it you have to cross the chapel of Leval University. The chapel has been decommissioned (who has ever heard of a church being decommissioned?), so with altar in place, and sacred paintings and martyr relicts still hanging from the walls, it is now used for political events, marriage celebrations, or prom dances. It was really weird to see a set of musicians setting their instruments and speakers around the altar, ready to entertain a convention of heavy equipment manufacturers. But getting back to the museum, the displays were pretty good, but the poor Francophiles can do little more than pine for the loss of the French speaking populations in many parts of Canada and most of the United States (did you know that Detroit and Saint Louis were dominantly French-speaking in their early years?).

By this time I was sleepy and Annie was hungry. We compromised and went into a small restaurant where she could have a bowl (yes, a bowl rather than a cup) of hot chocolate with tons of mini-marshmallows and whipped cream, and some crepes with maple syrup, while I had a beer. On a nearby table were a woman and her young daughter, having a raclette early dinner. They attracted our attention on two counts. First, the 15 year old girl had the biggest beehive hairdo I have ever seen. Second was the fact that they were having raclette, which I assumed was unknown in the Americas. Consulting the menu I saw that it is an expensive dish, varying between 25 and 30 dollars per person, and they don’t even give you tortillas!

Having exhausted the touristic potential of this beautiful city, Annie and I prepared for our departure. We had to get on the bikes, go down to the ferry terminal, cross the St. Lawrence river, and then pedal 10 km to the train station in Charny. Well, we had a bit of a delay at the start, because we got separated. Fortunately we both think alike and met again on the way to the ferry. But then the ferry took forever to depart, and all of a sudden we were on a panic, thinking that we might miss our train. We landed at 7:45 pm on the Levis side of the river, and assuming two hours to get to the station that would be cutting it to close to the departure time of 9:55 pm. So we convinced ourselves that we had to pedal like bats out of hell, without breaks or photo stops. Well, by 8:30 pm we were in Charny, stopped for 10 minutes to buy munchies for the train, and by 9 pm we were at the train station, sweating profusely but on time!

We are now on the train, headed for the second part of our trip, in Prince Edward Island.

Canada 2012 Day 8

We took off by 8 am, much to the delight of Annie, who wanted to see me eat my words. I stand humbled, particularly since I wasted some of the new time getting a bit lost. It was a good getting loss, however, because we ended cutting across the hydroelectric project that provides Quebec with a good portion of their power. It is called Chutes de la Chaudiere, and is basically a dam that rises the level of the Chaudiere by 10 m, but still lets most of the water to cascade over the dam and over the natural obstacle formed by an upstream-dipping sequence of sandstones and limestones (they take some of the water and feed it to the hydroelectric turbines through a penstock, but most of the operation is underground). The result is a magnificent set of waterfalls, so we were happy with the detour.

We still had to bike a good 15 km on the opposite shore of the St. Lawrence River before we got to the ferry, directly opposite of the Vieux Quebec. This old part of the city has a striking and unforgettable aspect, with its fortifications, the Chateau Frontenac with its many turrets, and other copper-roofed buildings tightly clustered against the Chateau. The Chateau was never the residence of a distinguished personage. Rather, it was built in the late 1800’s by the railroad company, as a luxury hotel to attract tourism to this branch of the line (it worked very nicely, as plans go).

The Old Quebec is divided in two levels. The lower level is basically part of the flood plain of the St. Laurence, whereas the upper level is the top of the bluff that overlooks the river at this point (Quebec is a First Nations word for “the place where the river narrows”). From the standpoint of us cyclists this implied that we had to push the bikes up a very steep access to the ramparts, so by the time we came to the hostel at noon, we were very hot and sweaty. Once again we lucked out, and got a small Parisian flat on the third floor as our abode. Everything is cute about it: the fireplace, the wood floors, and the old fashion windows looking down two streets of Vieux Quebec.

After a quick shower we took off to enjoy our few ours as simple pedestrians, walking without fixed goals through this delightful and very European city. True, many streets are heavily geared toward pleasing the tourist, but the big hordes are not due for at least another two weeks, so we could window shop and gawk at our leisure. Slowly we made our way up to the battlefields and the fortifications of the Citadel, but decided to leave the serious business of visiting museums for tomorrow. Instead we enjoyed the park, ate ice cream, took photos, and eventually went back to the center of old town through the Promenade des Governeurs. This promenade is an impressive walkway, built hanging from the edge of the bluff, where you can get glorious views of the St. Lawrence, plus a lot of exercise going up and down the stairs.

Following Robin’s advice Annie decided to splurge in a good dinner, but we had to face the challenge of dozens fine restaurants to chose from. Finally we settled for Aux Ancienes Canadiens, a restaurant housed on a 1600’s old building (later we found out that it is included in most travel guides as a place to enjoy good Quebecois fare). The service was fantastic, and we enjoyed a “wild game” meat pie that is supposed to be a signature dish of old Quebec (the pie had bison, elk, boar, and something else meat, but of course you cannot tell the difference). I had a maple syrup pie for dessert that was absolutely delicious. We definitely recommend the place!

We went back to the hotel around 7 pm, to take a siesta, but promised we were going to get up at 8 am, to go for a walk and see the night lights. To our mild disappointment, when we got up (harder than we thought) it was raining. It was a mild rain to be sure, and a couple of pedestrians had nothing to fear from it, but to our other personas (the cyclists) it brought some concern. Hopefully the squall will be gone by tomorrow, because we have to bike a good 10 km to the train station in Cherny, where we will take the night train to Moncton. In any case, the night walk was pleasant, but the rain had scared away most of the people, so we missed on the zest of nighttime Quebec.

Canada 2012 Day 7

We did it! We started from Plessisville at our usual 10 am (someone I won’t mention will not be hurried) and by 4:30 pm we had cycled 72 km (42 miles)! Our plan was to take it easy and have our elevenses at Lyster (which we did, in the form of ice cream from the local eatery), then lunch in Dosquet (which again we did, with a picnic by the side of a bubbling stream, and then camp in Saint-Agapit (which we didn’t, because it was only 3 pm and we felt we could go farther.

So we pushed on to Saint-Ettienne, and from there to Saint-Redempteur, where we finally stopped at a supermarket to buy the fixings for dinner. We try to do our shopping just before we go to the camping place, because we have to lug the food with us, and that is no fun. Because we were staying in an unplanned place, I had not looked for campgrounds, but as always I got lots of help from the people around us. (But, being overfriendly, they always add additional info, and that makes it all the harder to understand the instructions. Note to self: When talking to foreign tourists keep it short and keep it simple.)

It has been a hot day, but now we are fairly close to Quebec, and plan to take off early (I shall report later if Herself sticks to the plan) so we can have an extra half day being tourists in Quebec.