The IT Nerd

We got up bright and early at 6AM to start the journey back to Toronto. We have a 7 hour ferry ride from Port Aux Basques Newfoundland to North Sydney Nova Scotia. In short we’re taking the same route that we took to get to Newfoundland. But what’s different is that we are staying in Sidney Nova Scotia which which should be a different experience to “The Bates Motel” based on what my wife says.

First, the drive down to the ferry was very scenic which was great seeing as our drive from the ferry to Corner Brook was rainy. Here’s what we got on the Nikon Nikon COOLPIX W300 camera:

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The drive from Corner Brook to Port aux Basques is about 2.5 hours. And once you check in and get your boarding passes for the MV Highlanders ferry, you have to line up:

From there you will be directed to drive onto one of the three car decks that this ferry has:

Here’s what it looks like to drive onto deck three the ferry:

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From there, you put your car into park, put on the parking brake, get out and lock your car. Then you head up to the passenger decks.

Top Tip: Take everything that you might need for the 7 hour crossing including medication. The ferry crew will not let you access your car for any reason once you leave it.

Now unlike the crossing to Newfoundland, we didn’t have a cabin. That was due to the fact that I screwed that part up. But my wife and I did grab a table and a couple of chairs at the front of the ferry and we found that to be more than adequate. As the ferry left Port aux Basques, I took these pictures from the observation decks:

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I’ll let my wife take over at this point to describe what happened during and after the ferry ride:

The highlight of our return ferry ride was a sighting of some pilot whales along the side of the ferry. Once we docked we headed to our hotel for the night Cambridge Suites Hotel Sydney. We have noticed that some of the east coast hotels have their washroom divided into two rooms: one for toilet and tub and the other for the sink. I’m not sure why this is but I am sure someone local could explain it to me. For this place IT Nerd had a lot to say about the hotel room but what I will say is that we were lucky enough to have a spectacular view of the river from our room and the suite was by far the most spacious room we have had on this trip.

Here’s a picture of the view:

I do have a lot to say about the room from a tech perspective:

On top of a very spacious desk, there was this plug that gave you two AC outlets and two USB charging ports. This was very cool to have as it meant that we could easily keep our devices charged.

Yet again, I found a clock radio with a 30-pin iPod dock. This despite the fact that Apple no longer makes a device that use this type of connector.

#Fail

But that wasn’t the big fail of this hotel. The WiFi that the hotel provided was shambolic. It was slow, and it seemed to actively block connections to iCloud which meant that I could not download pictures off the camera that we brought with us and have them automatically upload to iCloud as a means of backup. Nor could I share them with my wife and nothing I did would resolve the issue. Now Cambridge Suites Sydney uses these guys to serve up their WiFi, and interestingly enough, so did the Greenwood Suites in Corner Brook NL. I did recall having an issue uploading and sharing photos to iCloud on the second last night of our stay. But it cleared itself up after about 90 minutes. Thus I suspect that the humans who provide WiFi for these hotels have some sort of issue, or they are doing something to block access to iCloud. I can’t tell which. Either way, they need to do something about it as I’m pretty sure others would encounter this issue and be none too pleased. In my case, it took a really good hotel experience and knocked it down a couple of notches.

#FirstWorldProblems

I’ll let my wife take over and describe the rest of our stay in Sydney:

Since we arrived early enough, many places were still open for dinner so we managed to snag a reservation to Flavor on the Water which was within walking distance of our hotel. The IT Nerd had a burger with fries, and although I was looking forward to switching from cod to lobster, apparently I am a few weeks behind the lobster season and missed it. They did however have a lobster club sandwich and I paired it with their beet or beetroot (as they call it out here), walnut and goat cheese and argula salad. It was delicious. I then ignored my inner calorie counting mind and ordered their carrot cake with coconut cream cheese frosting. After dinner we enjoyed a walk along the riverfront.

Walking on the riverfront along the boardwalk allowed me to snap a few pictures:

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Two notes:

• The picture of the giant fiddle that you see in the slide show above is where the restaurant was located.
• The picture of the piano has a bit of a story. Apparently it moves about and is left in a location for people to play. Though according to my wife who plays piano, it needs a tune.

Tomorrow we head to Moncton NB with a slight detour along the way to pick up some local “flavor.” Details on that tomorrow.

Today was a bit of a down day for my wife and I as tomorrow we make the drive back to Port aux Basques NL to take the ferry back to North Sydney NS. But before we left, we had time for a few more adventures in town as my wife will describe:

We had dropped by Cycle Solutions after our ride yesterday and made a mental note to check out this cool looking coffee house right beside our hotel called Brewed Awakening:

They roast their own coffee beans daily! Any place that starts their day by roasting all their own coffee to serve their customers should have our vote and it did not disappoint. If you are tea drinker they have a good selection of loose leaf to offer you. Most of their baked goods seem to run along heartier fare such as oatcakes.

That led us to yours truly doing some laundry. I got the bright idea days after my wife did her laundry that maybe I should do the same. The catch was that the place that we went to a few days ago was closed. Thanks to Google, we found this place which was 10 minutes from our hotel:

I will say that it is weird going to a laundry that is also a tanning salon. But it did have machines that worked and got our clothes clean, so I cannot complain.

So while I was typing up this blog entry, my wife decided to do some exploring:

I had some free time this afternoon to explore the area around our hotel and I remember there was a mention of some city trails nearby. Three Bear Mountain was the trail closest to me.

If you enjoy a guided tour in your travels download Tales Along the Trails app on the app store before you head out. This app will use geolocation to describe what you’re looking at as well as give you stories and background info. It was created Corner Brook Stream Dev Corp.

This is a free app available for Android on Google play and The App Store for iOS.

Three Bear Mountain trail offers walkers a panoramic view of the City of Corner Brook. This short 1 km loop walk will bring you to information panels highlighting various scenes you are able to view from this vantage point. This trail can be accessed from the parking lot of O’Connell Centre located at 1 Hospital Hill. Here’s a selection of pictures taken with the Nikon COOLPIX W300 camera:

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I just realized that we have been enjoying our morning breakfasts and several meals but have not mentioned our hotel restaurant called the Crown & Moose. First cook Dean and his colleagues in the kitchen along with the lovely staff have served up terrific eggs over easy and buttermilk pancakes for our breakfast everyday. We have also enjoyed a few dinners here as well including our first night when they stayed open late so that we can have a hot meal before heading to bed after a long drive from the ferry. Hubby’s favorite here by far is their fish n chips. This is a good choice as the fish and seafood is local. For me their seafood chowder, pan fried cod, and their seafood gratin. The seafood gratin served with melted cheese was my favorite as I ordered it with extra steamed vegetables as I had dipped the steamed vegetables into the creamy cheese sauce. Delicious.

One question that I did ask the staff was why don’t they serve dishes with moose if Moose is part of their name? We were informed that to serve moosemeat you would need a special license similar to liquor license. That piqued our curiosity and we Googled this a bit and from what we can tell the license to serve moose is free but I suspect the paperwork to do so may be a pain. You would need to purchase the moosemeat from a licensed moose hunter. I personally do feel that the Crown & Moose have missed an opportunity by not offering a moosemeat daily special such as moose meat pie or a moose meat burger. Having said that I did pass on the opportunity to sample the moose burger offered as a daily special at the Madison restaurant did offer moose burger as I was told it was a bit dry as the moose meat like other game meat is very lean. This told me that perhaps the chef should instead served the moose burger with a fatty ground pork or pork belly as that should impart some tenderness to the otherwise very lean moose meat.

As we pack up to leave tonight I will leave you with a list of other restaurants that we just didn’t have time to check out but considered:

• Newfoundland Sushi
• Gitano’s
• Sorrento
• The Cove

Expect our next post to come from Sydney NS as we are taking the ferry back to the mainland. Stay tuned.

Today is our last day in Gros Morne National Park. On the menu for today is a 50 KM bike ride that will largely be flat and scenic. Though it will be windy as we’ll be next to the ocean for much of the ride. This time, we won’t have any issues finishing all 50 KM as there is no construction in this section of the park. The plan was to start from Sally’s Cove NL and ride to Cow Head NL and then return to Sally’s Cove the same way. We parked our Hyundai Tucson at the Snack Shack in Sally’s Cove that my wife visited a couple of days earlier. The pictures are taken with the Nikon COOLPIX W300 camera:

Top Tip: If you want to park your car on private property so that you can go for a bike ride, ask for permission first.

We then set from there heading north to Cow’s Head. Here’s a couple of shots of my wife first heading to Cow Head:

And then back to Sally’s Cove:

And here’s the data that I collected from my Garmin Edge 520 cycling computer which was then automatically uploaded to Strava:

This ride took us 2 hours and 11 minutes to complete which isn’t bad. After that ride, my wife had some fish n’ chips from the Snack Shack before we headed back to the hotel. Later in the evening, we went to a place called Madison’s at Marble Inn which is 11 minutes north of our hotel in Corner Brook. I’ll let my wife tell you about dinner:

After our 50 km bike ride between Sally’s Cove to Cow Head along the Viking trail inside Gros Morne, I thought we would enjoy dinner at Madison Restaurant at Marble Inn as it was 11 min drive to our hotel in Corner Brook. I chose this restaurant as I thought they would be able to meet hubby’s burger/pasta and my foodie tastes. The restaurant is located close the city but is in a little nook nestled amongst trees and has a log cabin feel which makes sense as the resort offers fishing tours for their guests. Looking at their seasonal menu offerings consisting of fresh ingredients and ethically sourced seafood and game. I thought it was quite refreshing and bold.  For example one of their daily specials was a moose meat burger with fries. I saw a Poke bowl (which is a sushi grade tuna, avocado, rice bowl) for guests not ready for raw tuna they even offer to sear the tuna for you. But I digress hubby ordered the more traditional beef burger and I ordered their West Coast mussels cooked in wine, garlic and butter. I love the idea of chowing down on West Coast (of Newfoundland) seafood while on the east coast of this country. For dessert I tried one of their signature local dishes – vinegar pie.   It looks like a sugar pie or pecan pie but as soon as you take that first bit you can definitely taste the vinegar in the pie.  

Tomorrow promises to be a more sedate day before we begin the return trip back to Toronto. Stay tuned!