I can't wait for Spring to arrive, has it really only been three months since we had bare ground? All these questions that go unanswered EVERY year and will continue to go unanswered.........to be optimistic...Spring is...just around the corner, which corner remains to be seen! lol
In September last year my friend and I decided to hit the happy trail and head for Quebec. I had never been on a train so we thought we would "enlighten" me and we booked our tickets, an eighteen hour trip later, (ONE WAY), and we were there. I had my train experience and for longer trips it may have been my last for a while. It may have been different if we had traveled during the day but as luck would have it we slugged our selves to the train station at 3:30 am, (yes), and excitedly waited for the train. We had a few good laughs as we thought we may be at the wrong station, (our town has two), we could here whistles blowing at the other station! Eventually the big moment came as we watched the light grow bigger as the train neared the station. At that hour of the morning they don't blow the horn. All aboard and we were off.
We had many stops along the way, Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa, Montreal to name a few and then Quebec city around 9:30 pm that evening....whew!
We hit the ground running and headed for our hotel. Our main destination was to the Ile d'Orleans in the St. Lawrence and the next morning, bright and early, we cabbed it over to pick up our rental car and we were on our way. Perhaps we should have read up on driving in Quebec, you think since you live in Canada driving is the same everywhere....wrong, lol, so we muffled our way through and found the main though-fare leading out of the city. The Chateau Frontenac is a site to behold, it is the main focal point as you enter and leave the city.
With the Montmorency Falls on the left and the Pont de Ille, (bridge to the Ile d'Orleans),on the right we knew we were heading in the right direction. Such a majestic bridge with a wonderful view of the St Lawrence.
At the end of the bridge our first major decision was to go left or right, the guide book said it would take us a leisurely hour and a half to do the entire 36 km route around the Island, 8 hours later we were rushing to finish the trip. LOL, that's generally our "speed", there was so much to see. We stopped in all the little villages along the way, we found some really great antiquing spots and had a constant view of the St. Lawrence on our travels. We had a leisurely lunch at a restaurant overlooking the St. Lawrence. It was so close to the shore line that we could see the sea glass just waiting for us to unearth it from it's sand bed. We could hardly contain our excitement as we are sea glass collectors as well. We made a good haul and continued on to the next "little adventure. I would go back there in a "New York Minute", I loved everything about the Island, it's secrets, it's stores, every unique and eye popping "thing" we found but couldn't bring back on the train.....darn!
Even the fruit stands were well worth stopping at. They sold everything from warm, mouth watering strawberry turnovers, (which we ate for breakfast), pumpkins, flavored vinegar's and last but not least the Islands famous maple syrup. Baskets of apples still fresh from the trees brought back memories as they still had that dull finish on their skins waiting for me to shine it up on my jeans. They promised a crisp bite and juice dripping from my chin!
For more details...your just going to have to go! Happy trails.
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