back on the horse- LOL

so I know it has been quite some time since you have seen a post- I was traveling sans computer and decided it all could wait until I returned home (last evening) and so now I will work on getting you caught up.

here are a few random thoughts about our trip to the Maritime Provinces of Canada...

they are pretty far away from any place of dense population- they are in a whole new time zone (Atlantic) - they have a lot of good lobster and scallops - they have the highest tides in the world - and the people are all really nice...

we headed out on the Friday morning of the start of our trip and found that by the time we got to the airport our flight had been delayed - really? it was coming from South Bend and we had no weather in the area- but hey- it's United... so we begged the help of a really super great Air Canada guy to re route ourselves on one of their flights in order to make our close connection in Montreal (only 2 flights a day to St John NB so it was this or a midnight arrival...)

we found the Montreal airport fairly indecipherable (and not because of language but because the signs were so bad) but made the connection and arrived mostly on time... picked up the rental car and headed into St John (airport out in the middle of nowhere despite the small population density and city size) - We luck out and arrive at the hotel in time to find a cheer leading convention! (not really just a lot of teenage girls for some athletic event... we asked to be away from their rooms and the front desk staff were marvelous and gave us the top floor end room away from the elevators...

we felt like we died and went to heaven in our quiet corner of the hotel - a lovely room with working AC and a king sized bed with good pillows choices--- ahhh the small things in life! Bravo Chateau St John... we are here two nights and then on to our class on Epicurean New Brunswick (beware travel brochure puffing!)

we had dinner at a place "downtown" called Ryan Duffy's where Phil had lobster and I had salmon (overcooked as most of the fish would be for the next two weeks) we had a long travel day so we crashed fairly early after making a plan to visit St Andrew's By the Sea the next morning...

Phil's first night dinner--- one of many lobsters we will consume over the next two weeks!

the view of town from our room - as the sun was setting-

the next day we were up and out in time to get to St Andrews for lunch - which we ate at a clam shack outdoors- we ordered - surprise! - lobster rolls and shared a fried scallop order... if you followed along with the "whole lot of saints" post then some of these next photos will look somewhat familiar- although now in edited form...

it was a picnic table kind of place-

and this was our first encounter with bilingual soda cans... NB (New Brunswick) is constitutionally bilingual

on to St Andrews and here are two maps of interest- first the downtown area- the area of water directly to the left of downtown is the St Croix River- note the location of the "Calais" marking- so you can reference it in map number two-

surprise! it's in Maine! St Andrew's is actually further south than the Maine border- and this will be the first but not the only time on the trip where we will wonder why NB and Maine are in different countries...

but on into town (again a few repeated but now edited photos) - you can see how realistic the mural is on the side of this building (the clouds flow from the sky right into the mural!)

wondering what Dulse is? so were we - and we learned when visiting the Old Market in St John... more later-

St Andrew's is a cute little village where the main business is tourism- so as night follows day - lots of t-shirt shops and some ice cream places as well...LOL

from here we returned to St John and made it to the City Market for a quick trip around and some darn good gelato! But I will post those photos and the ones from our very good dinner in the next post... welcome back- lots in store in the posts for the two weeks we were away so stay tuned (as I always say...)