Day 4 - Pembroke, ON to Montpelier, VT

Sydney - my nephew




45-minute wait at the border Canada-USA

Self-explanatory

Restaurant in Quebec

Rain, rain and more rain

Always preparing - breakfast at the Sleepy Haven Motel in Pembroke

Alice wrote: spent a good night in Pembroke, Ontario despite the snoring coming from the other bed!

Since we had a microwave and real dishes we got to eat hot oatmeal, which I insisted on taking along, while planing out the route for the day.

We wanted to go visit Montreal, have lunch there and then head south toward the USA.

It rained for most of the night and kept on going when we left so sometime on the road we decided that Montreal wouldn't be much fun in this kind of downpour so at a service station we bought a Quebec map and decided to take back roads through some of the smaller towns.

Off we went into the rain! After crossing the St. Lawrence River into Quebec and driving under this huge power plant, the roadsigns suddenly changed from English/French to French only which we thought was pretty outrageous and arrogant, but we all know the French, so bitching about it is pretty useless. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em so I'm sure glad I brushed up on my French! At least I was able to impress Tim a little, since he's capable of speaking French big time and as the navigator I had to distinguish est from ouest, which I have a hard time doing even in English.

Anyways, at least Quebec is a lot cleaner and better upkept than Ontario, so it was fun driving back country roads. We even found a town called St. Timothee, which we thought was worth stopping in and having lunch.

Of course we wanted to order everything in French and totally blend in with the locals which worked for about 30 seconds - then we were lost.

The waitress was nice enough to speak English so we sheepishly caved in and ordered the coquilles fruit de mare (me), and baked ham in the language we knew better.

We then cruised the countryside a little more in the rain, noticing that a lot of the towns looked like in France, except for the pickup trucks.

After a few hours we had enough and headed toward the border which we had the privilege of staring at for 45 minutes before we were finally let through.

The drive to Vermont was quite interesting, crossing a bunch of bridges over scary waters. No wonder the taxes in VT are so high, with the great roads and visitor's centers they have - lots of free organic, fair trade coffee and muffins. Volkmar is now rolling his eyes, but tough luck - we loved it!

Around 19.30 we arrived in Montpelier at my sister's Janette and her husband Dave, being enthusiastically greeted by nephew/granddog Sydney.

After a great meal and lots of wine we're now saying: "Gute Nacht!"

p.s. we drove 367 miles today.