Arrivée au Québec! Or, the post in which I butcher Canada's national anthem. In French.

For those of you who don't know: Bryce and I went on a one-week roadtrip to Canada, focusing on Montréal and Québec City, in the southern half of the province of Québec. I tried to start the posts for each day on that day or the following, but the publishing of each post is being delayed by about five days because the crummy wi-fi connection at our Montréal hotel wasn't letting me upload videos. No problem here at our swanky Québec City hotel, though! The events related here took place on Friday, June 5th, and I began the post the next day, but as I publish this, it's Wednesday, June 10th. So just FYI, the dates attached to each post are fairly accurate, even though though the publishing of each post will be delayed by about five days.

I have been pushing for a Québec Province roadtrip for a few years now, because colleagues and friends out here have had great things to say about these two cities, and also because I thought it would be a great opportunity to practice my French. But when I found out about a year ago that I have Canadian Citizenship, I became insistent. Bryce might go so far as to use the word "whiny." Fair enough. My citizenship card isn't expected to arrive until February at the earliest, so it didn't get to flash it at the border, but maybe next time...

[To my M...han family cousins: contact me if this whole Canadian citizenship thing is a huge revelation for you, and you want to learn more about it!]

Québec isn't precisely the fatherland, since my dad is from Ontario Province, but it's easy to get to these two cities from Philly, and again, there's that whole French aspect. And let's face it... Toronto and Ottowa don't rank as high on the tourism to-do list as Montréal and Québec City! Maybe we'll visit them some other time, although as far as Canadian destinations go, I'd rather go to British Columbia next.

So, I invite you to journey with us virtually to Montréal and Québec City, through the wonders of the interwebs!

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It was a long drive up to Montréal, about nine hours including the stops for fuel, food, and toilets. Bryce heroically drove the entire way, never asking me to take a turn. Sometimes it was very boring, so to entertain us, I did things such as this:



Fortunately, I have a couple of audiobooks on my itunes. Because that got boring after about two minutes. Unfortunately, I hadn't packed my finger puppets. But, note to self...

I was so giddy that I didn't sleep at all during the drive up, despite having only been able to sleep for three hours the night before because we were up so late tying off loose ends that needed to be dealt with before we could disappear for a week. At least the drive was pretty, though. Much of the time, especially when we were going through the Adirondack Mountains, it looked like this:


As we were nearing the Canadian border, we started to see signs with French translations attached.


Yippee! And soon, we were nearing the border...


Getting closer...


Almost there (a boring, minute-long video in which I manage to sound very "duh")...



"Uhh... I don't know, I don't, I don't know...uh-uh-uh. No, 'cause that's like, exports is like, if you're selling stuff from the United States. We're just regular." Does anyone detect a Beavis and Butt-Head accent here? Please tell me this is not how I usually sound.

And very shortly thereafter, we had entered Canada.

Look Mom, a gas station with your name on it!


Well past the border, having successfully tricked the pretty border guard into thinking that it was safe to let us into her country, it was time for the moment I had prepared for, err, I mean, looked forward to, all day. It was time to celebrate our entry into the country and my recent citizenship revelation by singing (if it deserves to be called "singing") the Canadian National Anthem while the sun set over this fine land. Et en français, pourquoi pas?

Since I still hadn't gotten the hang of the tune, the karaoke version I had downloaded was no help, and I had to go with orchestral accompaniment instead. What you are about to hear may be damaging to your ears. You have been warned. Proceed at your own risk.

In case you'd like to sing along (it helps to drown out my voice), here's the lyrics screenshot I had displayed on my iphone at the time:


And to all Canadians out there: I apologize in advance. I tried, really, I did.



About an hour later, we were crossing Pont Champlain (the Champlain Bridge), and entering the city of Montréal. Did you know that Montréal is an island located in the middle of the St. Lawrence river?


We finally checked into our hotel around 9 pm. It was a bit of a dump, which is pretty much what we expected. The price was right, and the location was awesome, in a nice neighborhood within walking distance of many of the niftiest parts of the city. Some guys on the 6th floor were throwing beer cans out their window as we pulled up to check in, which somehow reminded minded me of a certain Defcon 2007 incident, and so oddly, we felt right at home.

Around 10:30 pm, we finally headed out to find dinner and refreshing beverages, ending up at this brewbub (Mr. and Mrs. N. at a brewpub? Suprise, surprise...).


Our pretty bartender took a picture of us, and omigosh, IT DOESNT SUCK! Wow, a picture of us in which we appear to be neither severely stoned, nor mentally challenged! So here you go, proof that we were in Montréal:


And so I have set a goal for myself: one non-awful photograph of BOTH of us for every day of our roadtrip. Can it be done? Stay tuned to find out...

Oceanaire/Anniversary recap

It was a memorable evening. Our anniversary-celebration dinner at the Oceanaire featured the most excellent service we have ever experienced. We're pretty sure we had the best server on the staff that night. Drew, you da man! But I would have seemed even more like a fish out of water if I had stated it in those exact words that evening.

The building in which the Oceanaire is housed is quite nifty. It was a bank from its opening in 1897 until 1932, and it may have been used for other purposes through the middle of the 20th century (a quick Google search is inconclusive), but it was boarded-up and in a state of severe decay for much of the last few decades. When it was re-designed, a lot of the original architecture was left intact, and so instead of ripping it out, they carefully built façades over features such as the grand arches, as well as over the catwalks from which police officers would survey the inside of the bank. This was all relayed to us by Drew, and he even brought over an album of "before" photographs for us to see. The transformation seems quite remarkable.

One of the bank's original grand arches is beneath that beam façade you see toward the rear.

Here you can see some of the covered catwalks, flanking the façade over the arch in the previous photo.

It's supposed to remind you of the inside of a 1930s cruise ship, which I certainly bought. I kept feeling like Frank Sinatra or Al Capone was about to be seated at an adjacent table. I bet my Grandpa W. would love this place. Everything in it seems like his style, not least of all the huge marlins on the wall.


Our pretty sashimi apptizer:


The culinary highlight of the evening was Bryce's main course, bronzino baked in a salt dome. Drew was very accommodating about my obsessive photo-documentation.






If you know my personal rule regarding desserts in restaurants, then you would not be surprised that I insisted we order the creme brulée.


All the photographs we took of ourselves are unfortunately quite unflattering, but just so there's proof that we were there, here is Bryce with the bronzino and me with the creme brulée.



You can hardly see it here, but I'm wearing a dress I made out of the shirt that Bryce wore on our first date. It's a bit too small for him now, but I protested when he said he was getting rid of it, because I'm a sentimental sucker. So as far as he knew, I had put it in storage so that he can wear it as his paint shirt when we get to paint our own home some day. He was pleasantly surprised - I would go so far as to say touched - when I stepped out of the bathroom in it and did a little hands-on hips pose and said I was ready to go. Maybe I'm not the only sentimental sucker in this household.