Showing posts with label Train. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Train. Show all posts

Friday, 21 September 2007

18th September – Sudbury, ON

How we love thee Facebook. Today we received a Facebook message from friends that we used to live and work with in South Australia in the lovely mining town of Roxby Downs for three years back in the late nineties and early noughties. I still look at this photo in amazement and can't believe we lived here for three years! However, we lost contact over time.

As luck would have it they are both now living in Toronto. So, fingers crossed, we are going to leg it out of Sudbury Saturday morning and head to Toronto to see them on the weekend if we can swing flight changes etc. Otherwise, Sudbury it is (sigh from both of us) for the weekend.

We went to Respect is Burning for tea for the most fabulous meal. This is one of the finest restaurants in Sudbury with modern italian cuisine and big serves.
Who knew that Sudbury had it in them. Back to Peddlers for a drink and then walked home where we had to wait what seemed like ages for the worlds longest train to cross. Oh well, the boys had fun with a short ride.

Sunday, 16 September 2007

13th September – Montreal, QC – Quebec City, QC

Quebec City, here we come. We headed off to the train station this morning in Montreal to catch the 12.30pm to Quebec City. If a train station can be nice, this one certainly was. See Dan below doing the hard yards backpacking with his laptop and chocolate croissant!! It had a massive food area in the main foyer of the station (the platforms were underneath and it didn’t feel like a train station) where we stocked up on some supplies for the trip. (The food here is to die for).The three hour ride went fairly quickly. The scenery was lovely with many lakes and cornfields on the way. But surely the most breathtaking part was seeing the change of colours of the trees as fall commenced in Canada. Now when I say the change of colours, this isn’t an Australian autumn. We were starting to see the change of colours from green to brilliant reds then onto oranges and yellows and eventually the trees will become bare ready for a long cold water. We arrived in Quebec City which is a UNESCO area and the old city housed within walls. The view up the hill looked fabulous but first we had to tackle the enormous hills to get to the top. Normally probably not too bad but when you are carrying around a combined 50kg between two people it was hard work! We finally made it to our hotel “Au Petit Hotel” in a lovely quiet area but still only a five minute walk to downtown. We were right at the top and in true French fashion, no elevator, so another three floors to walk up and we were there. Yah! It was late in the afternoon and we decided to make the most of the light and go for a quick wander around the town. Quebec City, it became obvious, is the sort of town where you leave your map behind and just go wandering. Everything is just gorgeous and this would have to be the most beautiful town we have seen in Canada so far. We wandered down Rue de Tresor, which was a narrow alley which housed many local artists and their art. Whilst there were still quite a few tourists around, but it wasn’t over run with the end of the summer season here. We wandered to the Dufferin Terrace, a massive timber boardwalk along the waterfront part of the town and looked back at the Fairmont Chateau, which although undergoing renovation, was still beautiful. Actually, much of the town is undergoing renovation as it will celebrate 400 years in 2008. The boardwalk housed some of the many cannons left behind in the town by the British and I had to do my best Cher pose. With the sun starting to set we wandered along the streets and came to one of the gates that allowed entrance into the city and just admired the beautiful buildings and streets.Later that night we went on a search for the pub with Dan declaring "he could sniff our a pub a mile away". It took us a while and we found it and struggled through in our limited French to order drinks. It was here that we discovered this important 1st festival that will be held. The toasted cheese festival – go figure?? Some people will have a festival for anything.