The Trip: Scoop
Well, I was gone on a trip since the 10th. Went up to Ottawa and from there, me and my sister went on a trip with my grandfather up into Gaspésie, up to as far as St-Anne-Des-Monts. Our first stop was at Notre-Dame Du Portage, where we actually had our hotel (Auberge Sur Mer) where we had an awesome room with a balcony overlooking the sea. We ate there that night in the dining room to a very fancy dinner, but unfortunately the service was very slow! We were in there starting at 9:45pm only to get out of there after having eaten everything at 11:30pm.
Then the following morning, we ate breakfast there and a very good breakfast at that. Just about the best breakfast I ever had. Then we went on to Rivière-du-Loup where my grandfather was born and grew up where he told us stories of his childhood and showed us the home he grew up in, which is now a halfway house. Apparently the house has a lot of history attached to it. I do love the town and the old houses though. If I could, I'd want to own a cottage in that area.
So after our little tour of Rivière du Loup, we went on towards St-Anne-Des-Monts where we found another good hotel (Motel a la Brunante). The price wasn't too bad to begin with, but it was also a little on the expensive side, but my grandfather had managed to charm one of young ladies who worked at the reception. Throughout our trip, me and my sister were sharing our hotel room while my grandfather would be getting a room of his own, and we wanted them side by side. Unfortunately, the hotel only had one simple room that wasn't non-smoking, but he said he'd take it anyway and lowered the price to around $60, and then remembered that elsewhere, there were two rooms together, but what they hadn't told him was that it was a room with two beds, so he got more for the price!
And this hotel really impressed him. It was the first hotel room that had a bar in the bath to help him get in, and you wouldn't believe it, but it impressed him so much that he kept talking about it with everyone he met. My sister and I both found that really funny and cute. For example, we stopped off at a tourist center in Matane where he went to go to the washroom, and he had been impressed that that one had a hook to put his clothes on. Those two things somehow seemed to be the highlight of his trip. This guy is 92. He congratulated that tourist center on having a hook and went on to tell his story about his bar in the bathroom at the hotel, and that wasn't the only place he did this.
What impressed me about that hotel was the fact that they had a red light in the bathroom to help dry clothes and towels and to help with the cold from stepping out of a shower on a cold day. I'd never seen anything like it before. But that might also be a disadvantage. You see, the normal light hadn't been working for some reason, and so I decided to turn on the red light, which turned itself off in the middle of my shower. Now picture someone in total darkness in a foreign shower trying to feel their way around. Hmmmm.
That night we ate at a little restauraunt attached to a gas station which ended up having some pretty nice food, and what surprised me was that for some restauraunt like this to have escargot. It was kind of funny because it didn't seem in character for a restauraunt of that type, but then again, what do I know of that area?
Breakfast that morning was very good. It was at a little restauraunt next to a windmill park (coincidentally the one with the biggest verticle windmill in the world) called La Maison D'Eole, and I had a nice big house style omelette with mushrooms and bacon in it. The toast was made out of some thick bread. Hmmm, just thinking about it makes me hungry for one.
Ahh well, so we went all the way from St-Anne-Des-Monts the next morning all the way to Lévis where we stayed at the Hotel Kennedy, a very reasonably priced hotel owned by a family. Our room had a coffee maker! This I was impressed with, and the following morning, I made coffee. I learned that not every room had one, but that should change as the hotel is still quite new. It's only a few months old, and they're still adding things to it.
The next morning, we went to Quebec City, visited Vieux Quebec which I did for the first time and found the treasure of a store called Archambaud where I found what I had been looking for for ages where I hadn't been able to find in Ontario (this will be detailed in a future post). Then we went to Montreal where my sister would be visiting a friend for the night while my aunt who lives there would be driving us back to Ottawa. And then I spent the rest of my weekend in my aunt and uncle's cottage in Ottawa and came back home on the 21st.
Pictures will follow soon.
