The IT Nerd

After leaving “The Bates Motel” and getting some breakfast at the last Starbucks for hundreds of kilometers, we made our way to the ferry dock to catch the ferry from North Sydney NS to Port aux Basques NL. The cost of the crossing was $533 return and I would recommend booking in advance at this website. I’ll let my wife tell you all about the experience and supplement it with pictures from the Nikon COOLPIX W300 camera:

We are now hours away from our destination of Newfoundland and have arrived at the ferry docks on time for boarding. We can see our ferry The Blue Puttees and it’s the biggest ferry dock and ferry that I have seen. The Newfoundland Ferry is organized with the efficiency and security of a border crossing. Boarding the ferry for the first time is an experience in itself and I am taking in the view as we drive up to the mouth of this large vessel. Prior to boarding we had booked a 2-person berth cabin and we had packed our carry on for the 8 hour ferry ride accordingly. Hubby and I both packed our jackets, laptop bag and phones. Additionally, I had packed snacks, a blanket and a novel to read onboard.

One thing that I should note is that once you drive onto the ferry, you are not allowed to go back to your car for any reason. Thus you need to make sure you take everything that you need for the 7 hour crossing. Now back to my wife’s account:

Our cabin was kitted out with amenities such as shower, bathroom, outlet (for our electronics), ferry radio for ferry announcements, TV with cable with two single beds complete with linens and fluffy pillows.

The ferry was fully equipped with observation decks, smoothie café and drinks bar, fully licensed restaurant, vending machine, gift shop, and kids play area. We enjoyed lunch aboard the restaurant. I had the baked cod served with mashed potato and steamed vegetables. Hubby had their burger and fries.

One amenity that is missing is onboard WiFi. There is WiFi that you can use while you line up and wait for the ferry, as well as inside the ticket office. But once you’re on board, you’re out of luck. The closest thing to having Internet access was a Rogers 3G and LTE connection that was present in the first 2.5 hours and last 2.5 hours of the crossing.

We arrived soon enough and began the drive to our hotel. It was late by the time we arrived at our hotel to check in however the hotel restaurant was kind enough to stay open a bit later for those of us who needed dinner after a long day traveling. At the Crown & Moose (the hotel restaurant) I had ordered their seafood chowder and fish n chips.

The hotel in question was the Greenwood Inn & Suites in Corner Brook. It is decently priced at $179 a night and it fit our requirements of allowing us to keep our road bikes in our room. Plus it’s in the center of Corner Brook which gives you options for restaurants and the like. Oh yeah, the WiFi is speedy. Downsides? There aren’t enough places to easily plug in your laptops and other gizmos. Case in point:

This is underneath the desk that I had my laptop on. This is where I ended up recharging our Garmin Edge 520 cycling computers, our rear safety lights for our bikes, or as pictured above our Belkin and Asus battery packs.

There was a power port just above my laptop which I could have used for recharging our various gizmos. But I was using it for the laptop’s power adapter which barely managed to stay plugged in. Besides, anything that didn’t have a long cable would hang down and cause the charger to fall off the wall. Thus making the floor underneath the desk the better option.

There were a couple of oddities as well:

This is the first place since this place in Australia that has built in Ethernet.

The other thing is the design of the bathroom. The toilet and shower is on the left side of the room next to the door. But the sink and vanity is on the right side of the room directly across from it. I’ve never seen that before and found it to be odd.

Tomorrow we’ll head up to Gros Morne to begin our hiking and cycling adventures. Stay tuned for that!

Our trip to North Sydney took a spontaneous detour through PEI. I will let my wife tell you what happened during that detour:

After breakfast we started to make plans for our day. I could not leave Monction without checking out the natural phenomenon that is Magnetic Hill. At one point in time Magnetic Hill was one of Canada’s top 5 tourist destinations and you can still see remnants from that time when you see the shuttered up brightly coloured amusement park.

Here’s a video of a car going up Magnetic Hill taken with the Nikon COOLPIX W300 camera:

From there we headed for PEI to see all things Anne of Green Gables of which I am huge fan. I am happy that Parks Canada celebrates LM Montgomery who is beloved by millions and a person of national historic significance. En route, I was excited to cross the Confederation Bridge:

Our first stop was the Birthplace of LM Montgomery:

One of the key pieces of the collection was a replica of her wedding dress and the shoes she actually wore on her wedding day. As you walk through the home I was struck by the gorgeous intricate wall paper design and how simply people lived in terms of furnishings. The Franklin wood stove is quite the showstopper.

One note for Apple Maps users: The directions from the Confederation Bridge to this location via Apple Maps were not correct. Here’s a screenshot of what Apple Maps directed us to do. The arrow is us:

Slight problem though. There was the church and this house that kept us from going straight. And even if they weren’t there, there was no road to drive on:

#Fail

We had to make a left turn and then a right on the road to the left of the church to get back on course. I’ll let my wife tell you about our next stop.

We then headed to the Green Gables Heritage Place (GGHP) used our Discovery Pass for National Park for the first time. The staff at the GGNP were ready for crowds as the place was packed. Normally we would have to circle for a while before even finding a parking spot. In this case they had a crew of people who directed you to parking when it became available. I mention this as I would like to thank them for taking care of the hundreds of visitors that will come through this summer. There is a self-guided tour through Green Gables House due to the crowds which became a single file as you walked through.

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Give yourself the time to enjoy a stroll through Hauted Wood Trail and Lovers Lane/Balsam Hollow Trail it’s beautiful. Kids can have fun and try on period costumes in the Barn and check out the Turnip Pulper and Seeder.

From there, we had to get to North Sydney Nova Scotia. Because of our detour, we had to take the ferry from Wood Islands, Prince Edward Island and Caribou, Nova Scotia. After paying the $77 fee, we had to line up to get on the ferry:

But once we were on board, we got this sort of view during the 75 minute ride to Nova Scotia:

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One thing to note is that this ferry had a snack bar as well as an antique video game and a charging station for all your devices:

I also managed to impress a 10 year old boy with my video playing skills from back in the day.

From there, we made the long drive to North Sydney. It wasn’t an uneventful drive as we came across an accident on the road:

Apparently, this car lost control on a curve on the narrow and uneven roads and bounced off the guard rail before going into this ditch. Now, something that posed a problem for us was the spotty cell phone coverage. Something that we would frequently encounter on this trip. Thus we had to drive a few kilometers to get a cell phone signal so that we could phone the RCMP to help them. After we called for help, we checked on the victims of this accident to make sure that they were OK.

Now let me highlight something as a bit of a public service announcement. The roads in many parts of the Maritimes are rough and twisty. And what I just said doesn’t take into account the hazards caused by the moose population which are often hit by cars when they venture out onto the roads. Which in turn can seriously injure or kill the people inside said cars. These roads require your full attention at all times. That means no texting while driving or anything else that may distract you from driving. It also means that you should drive conservatively. I am pointing this out because prior to coming across this accident, I was driving like a bit of a jackass. At one point I almost overshot a corner by carrying too much speed into it. At another point, I was pushing the Hyundai Tucson a bit too hard and almost lost control. Either of those moments could have ended badly for us. This accident made me moderate my behavior going forward.

After making sure everyone was okay, we made our way to our hotel. Here’s what happened next according to my wife:

Due to our side trip to PEI we did not arrive in North Sydney until 9:30 pm which was unfortunate as I would have been tempted to walk away from our booking and ditch the place shortly upon walking through Reception. To give you the background – while we had nailed down the important things such as ferry bookings and the like, we were pressed for time for everything else and did not startbooking accommodations until approximately 4 – 5 weeks prior to leaving for vacation. The guiding principle for us in North Sydney was to find a place that would place us to the ferry and would be fine with us bringing our bicycles into the room. The friendly hard working folks who run the motel ensured the place was clean, offered us breakfast and a good hot shower. That was all the nice things I could say. So I thought if I booked a cheap motel that puts us on the ground floor with an outside parking spot right in front would be convenient. I would be fine with the whole bicycle issue and besides how bad could staying one night at any place be?

Well let me tell you, I found myself walking through a room that can be loosely called “lobby” with plastic tablecloth and handwritten WiFi password stuck on the reception desk. This did not improve once we got our room. What we got was two doctor’s office chairs, a few hodge podge of side tables that were place strategically by the bedside and coffee tables that have seen better days in student dorms. The worst part was the bed. It would creak every time one of us moved and I swear that I could feel the coils of each of the spring. I was serious missing my pillow top bed at home. Right behind the bed was the bathroom where the only room for you to put your make up and toiletries was on top of the toilet. Suffice to say I was missing my bathroom vanity at home. To top it all off, we had to cope with a neon sign that made it so bright that we had difficulty getting to sleep. To make matters worse, there were no blackout curtains to keep the light out. 

Lesson learned here. It’s hard to downgrade from what you are use to at home. There is roughing it but this is not camping and this was a dive or as we have nicknamed it the “Bates” hotel and we were the first to check out in the morning and head to the only Starbucks within 300 km before heading to the ferry to Newfoundland.

I will say this. The WiFi was speedy but insecure. On top of the fact that they had the password hand written on the front desk (which also looked like that it had been there for months if not years), they had three access points to cover the property. Two used the hand written password. The third was wide open for anyone to use and abuse.

#Fail

On top of that, Expedia rated this place 3.6 stars out of 5. Orbitz rated it 3.7 stars out of 5. Clearly they have lower standards than we do.

By the way, my wife isn’t joking about the fact that the Starbucks was the only one within 300 km’s. When we looked at the availability of Starbucks locations from Newfoundland, this is what we saw:

Clearly we’ll have to get our coffee fix when we get back from Newfoundland. As an aside, we’re using our Starbucks Rewards to get coffee and breakfast for free when we come across Starbucks locations during our trip.

Next stop: Newfoundland. Stay tuned for our ride on the ferry and then the drive to Corner Brook Newfoundland.

Upon leaving Quebec city, we set off for Moncton NB. This is a drive that should have taken just over 6 hours. But we came across some trouble in the form a transport truck that went into the ditch:

By the time we arrived at the scene of the accident, we were able to watch it being flipped back onto its wheels and being pulled out of the ditch. Or as my wife put it, it looked like something out of the TV show Heavy Rescue 401.

But fortunately for us, the scenery was great as per these shots from the Nikon COOLPIX W300 camera:

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Since we entered Quebec, we’ve been seeing signs like these:

My wife really wants to see a moose. But I have no interest in that as places like Newfoundland warn motorists to be wary about moose since people tend to get killed in moose car collisions.

When we finally arrived in Moncton, we stayed at Chateau Moncton which was a very nice place according to my wife:

When we arrived at Chateau Moncton the staff greeted us and just pulled up my name and reservation before I even finished digging up my printed hard copy. They were efficient and accommodated any reasonable ask that I had such as having a room with a view:

The hotel backs onto the Petitcodiac River and has direct access to a trail that runs on the riverbank. You can also watch the tide come in from an observation deck as well. The room itself was basic but more than decent. WiFi is free and there was a decent place for us to set up shop:

I’d have no problem recommending this place if you’re staying in Moncton. Bonus points for the fact that its close to downtown Moncton:

You can tell that you’re in the maritimes when you see stuff like this:

Here’s where we had dinner:

I’ll let my wife tell you about Catch 22:

For our dinner I choose Catch 22 lobster bar as shown on You Gotta Eat here. I had ordered their lobster chowder which silky and oh so creamy filled with lots of lobster followed by lobster roll. Hubby had fish n’ chips made with light batter.  

Good choice on her part as the food was great and reasonably priced. The best part was that it was less that 800 meters from our hotel.

After a good nights sleep, we packed up, and had breakfast as described by my wife:

In the morning we were cheered by the lovely breakfast spread laid out and included as part of our hotel booking. We enjoyed our breakfast with a view overlooking the river and the offerings of their breakfast was similar and as good as the hotel where we stayed at last night. I for one am looking forward to coming back here on our return trip.

We then headed to Starbucks for some fuel for our next stop which was North Sydney Nova Scotia. That was an interesting journey as you’ll see from our post which will be online tomorrow.