O' Canada!

Usually when we go on vacation 

we try to take someone with us.

My parents,

Lincoln's mom,

Our kids,

my sister's family. . . .  

This time we went on vacation by ourselves.

It felt weird.

But it was nice.

A second honeymoon,

time to ourselves without considering others.

It was oh, so nice.

Lincoln usually likes to schedule things out,

get up early,

push to see, see, see.

This time we stayed up late,

slept as late as we could.

We still DID try to see, see, see though.

There wasn't even one day of down-time.

Canada hasn't really been on our list of places to go,

but through blogging and other resources,

we decided that we would like to go there.

We went to Quebec City.

French speaking.

Less than 2 percent of the population are native 

English speakers.

It is a law to be bilingual however.

So it was nice to be understood.

And to understand.

The traffic signs and other signs are strictly French though.

After a week of being there we could read quite a few words.

We couldn't say them though.

By the time we got a "bon jour" out of our mouths,

the french speaker automatically started speaking English.

We couldn't even pronounce that phrase correctly!

We were afraid (because we had heard) that

French speaking Canada was very rude.

We did not experience this.

Everyone was so kind, so friendly, so wonderful.

It was a little slice of Europe.

Very nice!  I'm glad we decided to take this trip.

We saw this sign just before going over the bridge into Canada.

Island State Park. 

I'd never heard of it.

Lincoln had.

1,000  Island Stake Park.

I wish we could have spent some time here!

The bridge into Canada,

through 1,000 Island State Park.

I googled this next picture. 

It is the same bridge in the above picture.

It shows a few of the Thousand Islands

in the State Park.

Once we were over the bridge,

the signs changed.

Notice the crown?

We saw our first Moose sign as well!

We didn't ever see a Moose though.

Kilometers instead of miles . . . . . . and some French!

On our way to Quebec City we went through Montreal.

Montreal's freeway literally looked like it was falling apart.

I was almost afraid to drive under the overpasses.

It looked like the cement was just falling in slices 

away from the structures. 

There wasn't any cement on the roads though.

It just looked scary.

Quebec!

This was our condo's living room.

It was so cute!

It looked brand spanking new.

It was fun to stay there.

We stayed 30 kilometers east of Quebec City.

Right below a ski resort. 

To the East and to the West of the resort were

a couple of waterfalls.

We went and hiked both waterfalls.

"chutes" in French.

That will be my next post.

On the way to the waterfall,

we stopped and took this picture of Lincoln.

and myself.

I can't remember if these carvings were wood,

or if they were cement made to look like carvings of wood.

I think it was the latter, but I can't remember.

The were cool, nonetheless.

More to come!