Eastern Canada Lightning Tour

Wow! It's been a while since I've posted. Sorry about that. I am writing this from the comfort of my home in St. Louis, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I left Maine June 1st, and drove to Quebec City. Customs had fun tearing my car apart for half an hour. I have my whole life in my car. Searching it had to be a daunting task. By the time they opened the top box, they pretty much gave up. I made arrangements through couchsurfing.org for a place to stay in Quebec. If you aren't familiar with couchsurfing, check it out. It's a cool community. So, I got to Quebec in the early afternoon and called Francis, who I had arrangements to stay with. We met and he showed me his apartment and then we met up with some of his friends and went to walk around old town Quebec City. Quebec was originally a fortified city and the stone wall is still there around the old city. It's pretty cool. Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera with me, so do a google image search and pretend I took the pics. :-)

I had a very nice evening hanging out with Francis and company, then got up in the morning and drove to Ottawa, with a brief stop, on the way, in Montreal. I didn't really know where to go in Montreal, and ended up just wandering around the Olympic Park area, because I was lured there by this building:


I only had a couple hours, so not much time to explore. Oh well, I guess I'll have to go back another time.

I arrived in Ottawa around 5:00, and met up with Mike, who, once again, I hooked up with through couchsurfing. Mike had to go teach (he teaches English as a foreign language classes), so his roommate, Scott, showed me around the City. We walked down to Parliament Hill, then met with a friend of his and went to a pub for dinner and to watch Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals, which was great. I hadn't gotten to see any of the playoffs yet, and it was a great game.

Home of the Cats of Parliament Hill

The Library of the Parliament

The front of the Parliament building

Wednesday, I drove from Ottawa to Toronto, arriving at Danielle's in the early afternoon. I spent the next couple days hanging out with Danielle and exploring Toronto (well, more just wandering randomly trying to find my way back to Danielle's, but we'll call it "exploring"). Friday, we would leave for a brief backpacking trip in the Bruce Peninsula National Park, but I will get to that in the next installment....