Day 2 - Hawkesbury, Ontario to Edmondston, New Brunswick - July 14, 2010

Checked out of the Best Western L'Heritage at 9:15am and drove into town to find some breakfast. We had a full days drive ahead of us through Quebec and we didn't want to have to make any unnecessary stops. We found the L'Escale Restaurant which looked nice. You can tell the French influence spills over into Ontario once you get close to the Quebec border.

I had the $6.99 breakfast which consisted of scrambled eggs,bacon, ham and sausage, (which was the best ham and sausage I have had in a long time) home fries, pancakes, toast, and all kinds of fresh fruit. The plate was loaded and I couldn't even come close to finishing it. John had the blueberry waffles and the waitress asked if he wanted cream for on it. It's an english cream and I wished he would have at least tried it, cause it sounded different. His plate was overun with blueberries and he had maple syrup on the side. He couldn't finish his either.

We didn't sit outside because we didn't want to be bothered with the bugs. That is a window behind me in the photo, but unfortunatly the doors were open and there was quite a few flies inside. Needless to say, it was good food at a great price.
There was a group of about twelve little old French women who came in for breakfast. Had we known this, we would have sat outside, as you couldn't even hear yourself think. The restaurant had a beutiful view of the Ottawa River.

Filled the car up with gas and were on our way at 10:38. We kind of doddled so we wouldn't go through Montreal at rush hour, but we were not so fortunate.
We crossed over a bridge on the Ottawa river and were heading for the crazy traffic of Montreal. We were stuck in traffic for almost two hours.

Then we had to cross the St. Lawrence seaway to get accross to the eastern side of Quebec, and that would be through a tunnel to La Fontaine. We had heard on the news the night before that there was a freighter that went aground and they were trying to contain a spillage and the seaway was closed. The tunnel was scary, only because it looked like it was falling apart and had chunks of concrete falling off the sides. We were finally out of the traffic at 12:24, almost two hours later for a stretch that should have normally taken 15 minutes.

Once on the other side of the St. Lawrence the terrain took a whole different look. Strange looking mountains in the middle of nowhere. Actually the further north we got, Maine was not too far away.

The photo below is a view of Quebec City on the western side of the St. Lawrence taken from the eastern side.


We saw this license plate from the Northwest Territories, which is shaped liked a polar bear. They were far from home!

Further north the St. Lawrence really opens up. It was beautiful! (below photo)

Crossed over the border into New Brunswick. Our cell phones automatically jumped ahead one hour for the atlantic time. Arrived at the Quality Inn in Edmundston, NB at 5:30 pm which was now 6:30 with the time difference.

The restaurant, Victoria Steakhouse was excellent. The best steak we ever had. We had an Angus Old Montreal Filet and could subsitute a caesar salad for the vegetables, which we both did. John opted for fries and I had the baked potato. As I was finally in a Maritime province, I had to finally try some seafood and ordered some fried scallops with my meal and they too were great. We were offered ployes insted of bread but took the bread since we didn't know what ployes were. We were told they were some kind of crepe like thing. Two drinks each and our bill came to $64. which is really good considering the prices we usually pay in the Toronto area.

Again since the province of New Brunswick borders on Quebec, there was a lot of French influence, but at least they have to speak English to you. And again they were noisy in the restaurant and in the hallways in the morning.