Wednesday 19 September 2007

16th September – Quebec, QC – Sudbury, ON

Today was sunny and reasonably warm (OK 15 is our new definition of warm). We packed up, checked out and headed out for brekkie here. We then walked up towards the Citadel just taking in all of the sites of this beautiful place. We walked into the old school which was massive and where priests now resided and saw that the fans of “The King” really are everywhere!
Then past the Latin Quarter where many of the building have old paintings from the 1800’s which are renovated on the side of the stone.
On the way to the Citadel we went past the oldest building in Quebec City built in the 1600’s. Everything is so well maintained. We headed off to the airport to catch our flight to Sudbury where we will be for a week whilst Dan is doing a Datamine V3 and Advanced Geostatistics course. We were seated separately but the flight was only one hour ten to Toronto so it went quickly. Dan took this shot leaving Quebec and you can really see the fall colours well. We had a bit of time at Toronto Airport to kill so went to get a coffee. Toronto airport is massive!! It takes ages to taxi to your designated spot once you land. It was a bit later on that Dan realized that our plane was actually meant to be boarding 10 minutes ago and we were on the other side of the airport so we had to run through the airport to our gate 107 (tells you how big it is!!) to find that the plane was sitting in pieces on the tarmac and we weren’t going anywhere. Air Canada found another plane and we were delayed slightly but off at last for a quick 45 minute flight to Sudbury.

We landed in the party town (not the case at all as we would soon find out) of Sudbury and had to wait an hour for a taxi meaning we got into the town around 9.30pm. You can almost hear the silence and crickets chirping in this photo – what a happening place. Think 1970’s Kalgoorlie but bigger and spreadout and you get the picture. We got asked by the other people waiting in the taxi rank “what on earth are you doing in Sudbury?” Not a good omen?? Once we made it to the hotel, we were starving. Of course at 9.30pm in redneck central the hotel restaurant was closed and there was no room service. We had to ring for dial-a-pizza which we were told could take up to an hour. Air Canada doesn’t feed you more than a packet of pretzels on the plane. Pizza finally arrived and we called it a night. It’s so quiet in our hotel. We’re next to the train track and some kind of port where boats honk their horns all of the time. Ahh… Sudbury!

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