Thursday, July 27, 2006

Back on The Rock ...

... or on the southwestern tip of it. Greetings from Port-aux-Basques! Kristen and I have been making our way out east in stages since last Sunday, with stops at her parents' cottage outside of Peterborough, Edmundston NB, Fredericton, Cape Breton, and the world's longest covered bridge. Seriously.


I love Canadiana. We also passed the Ivanhoe Cheese Factory in Ivanhoe, Ontario (alas, too early to make a stop), as well as such blandly named towns as Saint-Louis-du-Ha!-Ha! in Quebec. The drive has been mostly painless, with only one long day, from Peterborough to Edmundston (eleven hours, 1050 km).

We caught the ferry this morning for an uneventful seven-hour crossing, which deposited us here in Port-aux-basques just in time for dinner. It was quite foggy for most of the journey across, which made the entire experience a bit bland. We camped out at a table and read and played Scrabble, with only one venture up on deck. Normally I love to be topsides, but with the fog there was nothing to see. Also, it was flat as a mirror the whole way, which to my mind is simply boring. I keep hearing horror stories of ferry rides in tall seas, and have so far been disappointed not to experience that myself. It barely feels like you're on the water when you've got weather like today.

But I digress.

So we're now relaxing in the St. Christopher's Hotel in Port-aux-Basques, having a post-dinner drink. This is of course only my second time in this little town, having passed through last May on my way out. Then, I arrived in the evening just as darkness fell along with fog so thick it made today's look like a mild haze. So all I saw of the town was what I could see for about twenty feet in every direction ... and the bar at the Hotel Port-aux-Basque, where I killed two hours or so with a few crosswords and a few rusty nails.

So today was a bit of a revelation. This is a charming town, and quite picturesque. They've gone out of their way to make it inviting and vibrant, and though here and there it's a little twee, it's quite lovely. Kristen and I walked around before dinner, and it felt rather nice to be back in Newfoundland.

[OK, Blogger's doing that thing to me right now where it stops uploading pictures. I'll log on later and post my pics of P-aux-B and complete the post]

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