New Brunswick and Halifax Yes, it’s been a long time coming but here it is… the last stage of our cross Canada trip… So after Montreal we ended up spending a week with the Hallyburton family in New Brunswick. It was great to stay in one place for more than a couple of days! Also managed to do some catching up with friends --lived it up at a nice little “Welcome back to the Maritimes” party courtesy of Pamela (thanks a bunch, chickie!) and enjoyed spending some time visiting Sarah & Matt at their new diggs in St. John (oh, the [View Full Entry]

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Andrea’s musings on the Maritimes • Tax - the tax here is a bloody 13% and I never know how much anything is going to cost. At 5% I could do the math in my head and have a basic idea of what am item will cost with tax. But here I’m clueless and it always amazes me when you bring up an item that’s supposed to cost $18.99 and it ends up costing 72 dollars. Seriously, the tax just kills me. It always sounds like a good price until you take it to the till. o The only good thing [View Full Entry]

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•Montreal: Oooooh....SO great to have beer and pizza waiting for you after a long and stressful drive (TO and Montreal in the same day - shudder). And not just any pizza - super delicious pizza from a private little mom & pop’s place and drool-worthy black currant beer (by Montreal’s Ephémère microbrewery) - thank you, Chris!! Ah yes, it’s all about the Montreal eats and sights - thanks for giving us the tour, Chris - and for driving - thank the gods we didn’t have to deal with Montreal traffic! The second day in Montreal found us consuming [View Full Entry]

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Well, one thing that driving across the country does for you, is it really teaches you your geography. We had no idea that Manitoba and Northern Ontario had so many lakes. And although we’d seen Ontario on a map before one has no idea of how BIG it actually is until we tried driving across it - it took us a week to cross Ontario alone! Hm - we may never understand why people live in southern Ontario (too big, too many people, too much traffic!!) Northern Ontario was actually quite lovely. There are so many lakes and beautiful things to [View Full Entry]

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So I have to say that driving into Toronto was one of the scariest things that we’ve ever done. Careening around the expressway with an overloaded car and an occasionally retarded GPS - now there’s something to get the adrenaline pumping and the sqabbles going! We love our GPS and we hate it. It’s wonderful, but for gods’ sake - don’t forget your MAP and some COMMON SENSE, ‘cause the GPS can be awfully short on the latter at times… But hey, the beauty of Niagara Falls and the winery routes made navigating the perils of the TO highways TWICE (had [View Full Entry]

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After we left Manitou Beach, SK we stopped in Yorkton, SK and Rhein (pronounced Ryan - anybody see how? Me neither) to visit my cousin and her family and my two uncles. It was really good to see them again - we spent some time visiting and what was supposed to be a quick stopover (I was thinking one or two hours) turned into an entire evening including supper and a trip to get ice cream. It was nice - I don’t see that side of my family often enough, and the realization that I was moving even further away and [View Full Entry]

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MANITOU BEACH, Watrous As I write this, we are burning down the vast expanse of highway 365 in SK….a grand highway with 1.5 lanes of dirt road! Also some gravel drift going on….please keep us on the road, Andrea!  Our first stop was spent lounging in luxury for 2 days and nights at Russ & Dani's place (they feed & house us - this is quite luxurious by camping standards!) :) We will miss parties & games with you guys! Second stop: Manitou beach, home of the famous salt lake of Saskatchewan! We were looking forward to bobbing around in [View Full Entry]

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Andrea: It's a strange thing to leave a city after 31 years of living there. Anna and I had a going away party on June 30th and a ton of people from my past and present turned out to say goodbye. It was great to see everyone and I'm so glad that I got a chance to talk to so many people before I left. Having never lived anywhere but Edmonton it's surreal to think that I just can't call up my friends and go for a beer or a movie or something. I'm going to miss everyone so much, and [View Full Entry]

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