The IT Nerd

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!

Our adventures continues in Gros Morne National Park. But before we got to that, my wife needed to do some laundry as she was running out of clothes. So a quick search of Apple Maps lead us to this place that was 11 minutes away from our hotel:

Here we got a full dose of Newfoundland hospitality. An older gentleman (Matthew I presume) helped us to start a load of laundry and even supplied us with liquid detergent. He then offered to keep an eye on our clothing while we looked around. Alternately, we could use his WiFi. We chose to do the former. Here’s some of the scenery taken with the Nikon COOLPIX W300 camera:

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Here’s a travel tip from my wife:

If you are up for a walk down a very steep road called Farnells Lane you can check out the Historic Train Site and Museum while you wait for your laundry to finish:

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By the time we returned to the laundry, my wife’s clothes were done. Now if I were thinking, I would have done some clothes as well. But I wasn’t thinking. Thus I would have to do some laundry a couple of days later. In any case, after a quick pit stop here for coffee (which by the way has some great coffee and tea):

We returned to hotel to drop off the clothes and then headed out to the park for some more hiking. After a one hour drive inside the park, we got to the Tablelands which is an area of the park where you can see what the Earth’s mantle looks like. So, we got a guided tour from a Parks Canada guide of the first few kilometers of the trail:

Then she turned us loose to see these sorts of sights:

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It’s a pretty barren place where not a whole lot grows. But it is very cool and you can hike up to the top of the Tablelands if you want. But there are no marked trails to get there. Thus consider it to be at your own risk.

By the way, this is the amount of ground that we covered today:

Our next stop from there was dinner at a place called The Black Spruce which is inside Neddies Harbour Inn:

Now my wife was insistent on going to this place despite the fact that it was a long way inside the park in the middle of nowhere. And I had problems understanding what the big deal was about this place. Not to mention why we needed reservations seeing as this place was in the middle of nowhere. Well, since my wife is the foodie around here, I’ll let you hear it from her:

One of the highlights for me was our reservation at the award wining restaurant called The Black Spruce which offers fine dining that prides itself on its impeccable service. Everything here is made from scratch using local produce and comes out of the kitchen of Chef Jason Lynch and co-chef Joy Newman. My darling husband and IT Nerd that he is could not understand why one needs a reservation when we are driving to a restaurant that is literally located in the middle of nowhere. Well, he was truly befuddled when we arrived and saw all the cars in the full parking lot. The reason one makes this trek to this “middle of nowhere” restaurant situated in one of the most beautiful places on earth is the food. I noticed the herb garden on the side of the restaurant and noticed the pots of basil growing inside the restaurant. The restaurant is filled with stunning artwork and one enjoys faces the mountainview on one side of the restaurant and the charming town on the other side. I am just sorry that lobster season is over for Newfoundland. However hubby and I made do with their housemade pasta with brown butter sauce and roasted cherry tomato and I had seafood crepe served with asparagus and roasted cherry tomatoes. For dessert hubby ordered their steamed chocolate pudding for hubby and panna cotta served with blueberry compote and the Bakeapple dessert wine from a local winery called Auk Island Winery in Twillingate, NL.

After dinner, I managed to get these pictures of Neddies Harbour:

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From there it was a long and dark drive back to Corner Brook. One thing that I should mention is that the roads in the park are twisty at times as well as narrow. You have to be on your toes at all times as a moment of inattention can result in a crash. That goes double for when it is dark.

Top Tip: Make sure that whenever you see a gas station, you fill up if you are below half a tank. The reason being is that gas stations are few and far between both inside the park and outside it as well, plus cellular coverage is sketchy at best. Thus you don’t want to run out fuel and be stuck someplace where help isn’t readily available.

Tomorrow is our second and last bike ride in the park. This one will be in the northern half of the park and won’t be as hilly as our first ride in the park. Stay tuned!

Today’s plan was to go up to Gros Morne National Park and hike up to the top of Gros Morne Mountain which round trip should have covered 16 km and take six to eight hours to complete. Great plan, but we didn’t exactly do our homework beforehand as you will see.

The first 4 km is uphill which means that you need to be in shape to do it. But it is worth it as you get to see this sort of scenery as evidenced by these pictures taken with the Nikon COOLPIX W300 camera:

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Eventually, you’ll clear the trees and see the mountain where you will get to see some stunning views:

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But you also get to see this (click to enlarge): 

And if you don’t the hint that this isn’t a place for the ill prepared, there’s this (click to enlarge):

In our case, we brought everything that we needed to do this. Except ample supplies of water. We had each brought a 500 ml bottle of water and drank through about 75% of it just getting to this point. Thus if we come back, we’ll make sure to pack enough water to do the 16 KM trail. As it was, we managed to get this close to the mountain before turning back (click to enlarge):

You can see the people who continued on and what they have to deal with to complete the 16 KM trail. In our case, we managed to do 6 KM before turning back. I recored the entire hike using Runtastic Pro on my Series 2 Apple Watch. Here’s a look at what was captured (click to enlarge):

For the record, 380 meters is 1247 feet. That’s a lot of climbing.

We then decided to do some less strenuous activities for the rest of the day. Starting with a self guided tour of the lighthouse at Lobster Cove Head:

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We then went to see the remains of the S.S. Ethie which ran aground in 1911.

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It was time for some food for my wife, so on our way back to Corner Brook, we stopped in a town that was inside the park called Sally’s Cove where there was a place called the Snack Shack. Here’s what my wife had to say about that place:

I snacked at Snak Shack at the Gros Morne park where I had the cod cake with onion rings but made a note to try the local Moosemeat gravy the next time I pass by it.

The next time we would pass by it would be in a couple of days as that was going to be the starting point of our second bike ride in the park. We then headed back into Corner Brook to our hotel. After a quick shower we had dinner at the Crown & Moose which is inside the hotel. I took the opportunity to sample a local beer called Black Horse:

I will let my wife describe the taste:

Hubby tried the local Black Horse Ale that is only available in Newfoundland. For all you beer folks it is light in color and tastes like Samuel Adams.

I’d have it again is it wasn’t bad.

Tomorrow is another day of hiking and more. Stay tuned for that!

Now that we’re in Corner Brook NL, we decided to start with a bike ride through the southern part of Gros Morne National Park along The Viking Trail. Gros Morne is a 1.5 hour drive from Corner Brook and is a must see place if you come to Newfoundland as it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and offers a variety of things to do and see. One thing to note is that the park has very sketchy cell coverage. That limited the usefulness of Apple Maps as it needs an Internet connection to come up with a route to get you from point “A” to “B”. However, once it has a route, turn-by-turn navigation will still work if you lose Internet access. But it may not look pretty doing so because it has no way to download the maps to display on the screen.

Now the original plan was to do this route which I plotted out on Strava and downloaded to the Garmin Edge 520 cycling computers on our respective bikes. This route would have covered 50 km in an out and back fashion:

As you can see, there is a lot of uphill and downhill. All told, it would have been 2700 feet of elevation gain in 50 km which is a lot. But we were thwarted by the fact that there was a lot of road construction on a lot of the roads that were going to ride. Thus we had to cut it short to this:

This route covered 28 km and had 1165 feet of climbing which is still a lot. It took us about an hour and a half to compete. It may have been short, but my wife and I can say that it was far from easy.

Fortunately, the scenery inside the park more than makes up for the fact that we didn’t cycle as far as we wanted to. Here’s a few shots that I took with the Nikon COOLPIX W300 camera:

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After our ride, we drove back our hotel in Corner Brook, showered and then went out to Jungle Jim’s for dinner. I had fish n’ chips while my wife had pan fried cod with steamed vegetables and Cesar salad. It was all good.

We’ll be back on Saturday to do another route in the northern half of The Viking Trail as we discovered those roads have less construction. But in the meantime, we have two days of hiking ahead. Starting with an attempt to climb Gros Morne mountain tomorrow. Tune in tomorrow to see how that goes.

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.

My wife and I decided to take a road trip across Canada to go to the Province of Newfoundland as a vacation. Specifically, we decided to stay in Corner Brook Newfoundland and spend time in Gros Morne National Park hiking and cycling. One of the reasons why we decided to do this has to do with the fact that this is Canada’s 150th birthday. Which makes it an ideal time to travel across the country. Plus with the Canadian dollar at 80 cents relative to the US dollar, and the politics in the US that makes traveling there potentially difficult, it made staying in Canada to travel a no brainer. So that you can see what we see during the 13 days that we’ll be on the road, Nikon kindly supplied the COOLPIX W300 camera which we’ll be using to snap all the photos for this travelogue. I’ll also be posting a review of it when we get back. Another thing that will be different for those who are used to following my travelogues is that my wife will be helping me to document what we see. That should give you a very different perspective of this road trip.

Now since we were taking our bikes with us, we had to make one addition to our Hyundai Tucson that we bought a couple of years ago. We needed to add a roof rack:

Let’s take a closer look at this rack:

This is the Yakima Forklift rack mounted to the car via four Ridgline mounts that mount to the Tucson’s built in roof rails and a pair of Roundbar crossbars. As you can see, you take the front wheels off the bikes and drop them into the mounts and then secure the mounts. Then you strap down the rear wheel tightly. They’re then locked into place via some locks in the fork mounts that require a key. We went this route because my wife and I both have high end carbon fiber road bikes (in my case, I’ve documented what makes my bike high end here) and this rack system is designed for carbon fiber bikes. Plus a roof rack frees up space for all this stuff:

Besides a suitcase each for my wife and I, we have two bags of cycling gear, spare wheels, a bag for our electrolyte replacement drinks (for use while cycling). Plus there’s this;

Our snacks and drinks as well as our laptop bags plus hiking boots and the like fit into the back seats. Needless to say, we don’t pack light.

Now, the first leg of our trip to Newfoundland is Toronto to Quebec City. It should have taken us just over 8 hours to get there. It took us 10 because of traffic. We also did stop a couple of times for bio breaks and once for gas once we crossed the Ontario/Quebec border. While filling up, we noticed this:

This gas station, not to mention other gas stations in the province had an electric vehicle charging station. This one was priced at $1 an hour which is more than reasonable. I applaud Quebec for really leading the way in term of building an infrastructure for electric vehicles.

Speaking of gas stops, to keep some costs down my wife and I have been utilizing the discount plans offered by Esso and Petro Canada to save on the price of gas. In the case of Esso, we have a discount card that gives you 2.5 cents a liter on gas if you complete some tasks like buying a certain amount of fuel over a month for example. In the case of Petro Canada, we have a 5 cent and 10 cent discount cards that we can refill using the Petro Points that we earn by buying fuel at that gas station. Considering that gas in Newfoundland is often 20 cents a liter more than it is in Toronto, those savings can come in handy.

Back to the traffic. A lot of the traffic we encountered was just outside Toronto. But we encountered more than our fair share of traffic in Montreal:

We knew that the traffic was coming because of Apple Maps which is part of Apple CarPlay visually warning us ahead of time of the traffic that we would encounter and adjusting our arrival times accordingly.

Top Tip: One thing that we did is we entered appointments into the calendar apps of our iPhones and included the addresses in the appointments. That way we could easily have those pop up as destinations in Apple CarPlay easily. Plus we would get alerts for when it was time to leave so that we could arrive at or around the check in time at our next hotel stop.

After a long drive we finally arrived in Quebec City. We stayed at the Hotel Chateau Laurier overnight based on the reputation:

For us, it was a bit of a mixed bag. First of all, the underground parking was insanely tight. Our Hyundai Tucson barely fit around the corners that take you deeper and deeper into the parking lot. But I did notice this in the parking lot:

Every level of the parking lot (there were five levels) had a charging station. As you can see, someone was charing their Tesla (a P90D in case you were wondering) at a rate of a $1 an hour. Again, kudos to the Province of Quebec for having these charging stations.

On my way back up to the room, I noticed this:

There was a charging station for your mobile device. Very handy. Now once I got to the room, I wasn’t impressed with the room. But I am the cynical type. I’ll let my wife tell you what she thought about the room:

I chose to splash out a bit as I have always wanted to have an excuse to book a night there as I have stayed at other Fairmount. The service was friendly enough, the guest parking super tight as seen by all the scratch marks on the parking lot walls. In fact you may want to splurge a bit and have their valet park it for you. The décor room was nice but not lavish and not spacious. The tub is to die for as I took advantage of the massage settings on the jet settings.

There were a few other things that stood out to me about this hotel:

They had a pair of USB ports to charge your devices. Plus for the first time ever, I will not criticize a hotel for having a clock radio with a 30-pin connector for Apple devices. Here’s why:

This is a clock radio with Bluetooth. That means any device with Bluetooth will work with it. Bonus points to the hotel for providing this. Plus it has one other trick:

It has a USB port for charging. Excellent. Other hotels need to take note of this. The WiFi was free, but it was on a device basis. Thus if you had a computer, tablet, and a smartphone, you needed to get three codes from the front desk when you check in.

In terms of getting some food once we arrived, I’ll let my wife take over to describe the dinner experience:

For our dinner on the first night of our vacation we walked over to a restaurant / lounge called Savini. This is a sexy place that makes a statement from the moment you walk in. My husband and I actually bumped our heads upon walking in and seeing a woman hanging upside down on a hoop apparatus above the bar. The DJ had some cool tunes pumping through the place. Plus you can get a glimpse of their cool wine cellar as it’s made of glass and can be seen from a couple of angles from the restaurant. It’s accessed by the staff via a contactless access card and a side wall shows their single malt selections. Suffice to say their wine list is extensive with some beautiful Bordeaux coming in a $10K a bottle. But they do have some nice offerings that are sold by the glass. 

We both had pasta dishes and they were great. The total bill was under $70 tip included. The next day we had breakfast downstairs in the hotel in a St. Hubert that was serving up a breakfast buffet. My wife’s comments on that go something like this:

The buffet in the hotel comprised of a cheese selection, fresh fruit, waffles, cereal, mini assorted pastries, sausages/bacon and eggs. My favorite Quebecois breakfast items included baked beans. They were delicious. Where it fell a bit flat for me was the oatmeal. They provided instant oatmeal. For a bit more effort they could have whipped up a fresh batch of oatmeal served with brown sugar and I would have been a happy person.

We then went across the street to grab a pair of Starbucks coffees and loaded up to head to our next stop which was Moncton NB. Look for that update tomorrow.