WALK ACROSS THAT?

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As I write this, a month later, everyone has seen the TV footage of the latest Wallenda wacko walking a tightrope across Niagara Falls;  actually, he walked across Horseshoe Falls, which are the rear ones in this picture, connecting the U.S. and Canada.  After having seen this in person beforehand, I was pretty amped to see him try it.  That was substantially diminished when they showed that he was locked to the cable by a safety harness, thus reducing the danger almost completely.  That doesn’t diminish, however, the physical feat – the stamina, training, and concentration that the stunt required.  There was quite a bit of swirling wind and a lot of spray when he did it.  But, working with a “net,” the drama was mostly hype.

Neither Mom nor I had ever seen Niagara Falls.  Loni has been here twice before with her family.  Photo op!

We lucked out and got an absolutely perfect day, including the rainbow.  Too bad all the casinos and hotels on the Canadian side mar the picture.

You can’t visit Niagara without taking a ride on the Maid of the Mist.  I had envisioned it motoring right into the maelstrom about where the rainbow dips in.  Nah.  It’s pretty tame.  We spotted our boat (there are several) heading in.

You start, naturally, at the top of the falls, at the Observation Platform, and take huge elevators down to the level of the river, where a long switchback path leads you to the dock.

Along the way, you are handed flimsy (but effective) rain ponchos to protect against the blowing spray.  Mom looks like a blue Jabba buried under all that stuff.  The original Maids were made of wood, but had a nasty tendency to burn.  These modern ones are all steel.

We were loaded along with several busfulls of students on their graduation trips, and, curiously, a passel of Pakistanis who seemed to be having a great time.  It was, however, a real tussle to get a railing spot for taking photos.  I managed to do so initially, but kept getting squeezed out by (ahem) much heavier female voyagers whose manners were in inverse proportion to their avoirdupois.  Once we were overloaded, we were off.

 

Frankly, I was having fun, but not terribly impressed.  We didn’t really get all that close to the base of the falls, just enough so that the blowing wind kept us nice and wet and made for lousy camera shots.  I was keeping busy trying to wipe off the lens and take what pics I could get.  You can see in the upper right photo a nice blob of water or two.  I didn’t think the falls from below looked nearly as neat as they did from above. 

I think the falls we went by (and under) at Milford Sound in New Zealand were more exciting.  Much more up close and personal.  But, as a gotta-do-it-once experience, I was glad we went.  We were all suitably drenched afterwards.  Nice comment, Mom.

Mom was really happy to have finally seen the Falls at age 89, and we were really happy to have been able to enjoy them with her.  Happy belated birthday, Mom!

Niagara was the end of our trip, save for the bus slog back home to Indy.  I have to admit that I wasn’t too thrilled by the prospect of a geriatric “if this is Tuesday, it must be . . .” bus tour.  But, once again, the natural cynic in me was proven wrong (or maybe we’re just getting old.  We had a lot of fun seeing places and doing things we might not ever have gotten to ourselves.  Sunrise Tours did a fine job from beginning to end.  Au revoir and so long, Caaaannnada!

MONTREAL. Myeh!

Maybe it was our blitzkrieg bus tour.  On off.  On off.  Endless driving around neighborhoods and downtown buildings.  I kept looking for the Montreal of my imaginings.  This is as close as I got:

Yeah, it’s blurry.  The bus was moving.  This was the only French-feeling sight in the whole city, and this was imported from the real deal.  I thought Montreal was supposed to be this charming place of endless boutique businesses and French atmosphere.  Well, not from what we saw.  We could have been in any major city in the U.S. and it would have looked and felt the same, except for the signage.  Big disappointment.  I liked all the other cities on the tour better than Montreal, even Toronto!

Our guide for this city tour was one Robert, passionate about Montreal, but a bit of a cypher.  Not a native.  Born in Algeria to an Italian father and ? mother; moved to Provence in France as a child, then emigrated to Montreal, where he’s been for forty years.  You could cut his accent with a cleaver.  Surely there’s English language programming in this place?  Hasn’t he ever been to Ontario?

After cruising around the downtown high-rises, we stopped at Montreal’s Notre Dame basilica.  It sits on a large square.  The original wooden chapel dated from 1657, shortly after the founding of the city in 1642.  It was replaced by a stone church built between 1672 and 1683.  This lasted until the early 1800’s, when the faithful began overflowing to the point where many had to listen to mass from outside.  This basilica was built between 1823 and 1829.  It was designed by James O’Donnell, an Irish protestant from New York, who converted to Catholicism during the construction and died promptly after the completion.  Called to his reward?  The towers, however, were built later, in 1843.  The one on the left is named Perseverance and houses the great bell;  the right one is Temperance, and houses the carillon.  The center roof is Sidney.  I wonder if any other churches name their towers? 

On the other side of the square is some municipal building, with a statue of Paul de Chomedey, sieur (lord) de Maisonneuve, the founder of Montreal, looking triumphant in the center.  Robert checked out the inside of the church, and hailed us in.

The interior is, well, different.  A little too baroque for my taste, but very colorful, if blue hues are your thing.  It allegedly is inspired by the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (the link goes to my blog entry on St.-C), and I suppose it does echo the blue stained glass found there.  It was designed by Victor Bourgeau, the diocese’s architect, and not completed until around 1880.

The altarpiece was designed by a Frenchman, Henri Bourgeau, who imagined a centerpiece illustrating the Eucharist.

Behind this altar is a separate Chapel of Notre-Dame du Sacre-Coeur, originally built between 1888 and 1891, but almost totally destroyed by fire in 1978.  It was rebuilt and dedicated in 1982.  There’s a massive bronze panel sculpture at the front which symbolizes the march of humankind towards the Holy Trinity (only a portion is visible in the left picture below).  The balance of the chapel is almost all carved wood, with beautiful spiral staircases.

After the church, we got back on the bus and cruised the old Olympic Games area, featuring the stadium with the retractable-roof-that-never-worked (and nearly bankrupted the city) and the old Olympic Village, housing for the athletes that was converted to condominiums. 

The stadium was designed by French architect Roger Taillibert.  The roof was to be opened and closed by a huge 574 ft tower – the tallest inclined structure in the world.  Problems plagued the stadium from the time it opened for the 1976 Olympic Games, when it was only half built due to problems with the unusual design and strikes by construction workers. During the Games and for several years afterward, the stadium did not have a tower or roof. Both the tower and the roof, made of over 59,000 sq ft of Kevlar, stood unfinished until 1987.  Even then, the proved difficult to retract, and could not be used at all in winds greater than 25 mph. During baseball season, whenever rain was accompanied by high winds, this resulted in the unusual phenomenon of a rain delay in a would-be covered stadium.  It was also torn during particularly windy conditions.

The Expos played baseball here until 2004, and since then it is only occasionally used for one-time events.  The original construction cost estimate was C$134 million;  when it opened for the games, unfinished, it had cost 264 million.  They’ve been paying it off for over three decades.  In mid-November 2006 the stadium's costs were finally paid in full, and totaled (including repairs, renovations, construction, interest, and inflation C$1.61 billion, making it the second most expensive stadium ever built (after Wembley).  The most charitable characterization by the locals is to call it a white elephant, but The Big Owe, Uh-O or The Big Mistake.

The thing has been a continuing danger in addition to the cost.  In the 80’s, a large fire set the tower ablaze, causing damage and forcing an Expos home game to be postponed. In 1986, a large chunk of the tower fell onto the playing field during another Expos game.  Shortly after the Kevlar roof was installed in 1987, it ripped on several occasions due to a design flaw. In the months that followed, it was plagued by further rips and leaks during rain storms, bringing water down into the stadium.

In 1991, support beams snapped and caused a 56-ton concrete slab to fall on to an exterior walkway. No one was injured, but the Expos had to move their final 13 home games of that season to the opponents' cities.  In 1999, a nearly 4,000 sq. ft. portion of the roof collapsed, dumping ice and snow on workers.

The city fire department warned in August 2009 that without corrective measures, including a new roof, it might order the stadium closed. A contract for a new permanent steel roof was awarded in 2004, with an estimated $300 million price tag.

A slab of concrete measuring approximately 8 by 12 metres fell from the roof of the stadium's underground parking facility on March 4, 2012. There were no injuries.

White elephant?  It’s the black hole of Canada!

After viewing this debacle, we took the high road up to the hill that overlooks the city for a nice panoramic view, with the elephant raising its useless snout.

Back down in the city, Robert waxed endlessly about the “unique” architectural quirk of Montreal housing --- external stairways.  Huh?  I think he just wanted to show off the neighborhood he lived in.  The stairs are a bit challenging in the winter when they are covered with ice.

Before going back to the hotel, we stopped off at the Restaurant du Vieux Port, a place in the older historical district (which, nonetheless, wasn’t particularly photogenic).  I think we all had the steak tonight.  Whatever, it looks like Mom licked her plate clean.

We finally got to go to the hotel to check in.  This Fairmont was not a classic old building, but rather a mid-century bland structure.  But our room was huge.  It was very long.  I’m taking this shot from a small side room that housed a desk and chair;  to the immediate right is an anteroom that holds the closet.  Back by Loni is the entrance to the bathroom, which was very large.  Behind her is a seating area with a couple of easy chairs.  This shot doesn’t do justice to the length of the thing.

One day and night was enough for Montreal.  I’m sure there were some neat areas hidden somewhere, but that’s the point.  The overwhelming majority of the city is just urban blah.  The next morning we took off for the states, via a New York entry on the way to Niagara Falls.  Despite the fact that traffic was very light, they made us sit on the bus for nearly half an hour before processing us in a totally perfunctory fashion.   Welcome to the U.S.  “Stop” was indeed the operative word.

RAIN ON MY PARADE

Wednesday dawned drippy and dreary as we boarded the bus for our excursion to the Basilica of Saint-Anne-de-Beaupre, about 20 miles east of QC along the St. Lawrence.  This was one attraction that I could have skipped.  The basilica is suitably massive from the outside, but not particularly graceful from the side.  The front was better.

What I didn’t care for was the gloomy interior, probably not helped by the pluie outside.  It was just too dark.  Instead of an uplifting feeling, I felt enveloped in the shadows of the main sanctuary, below left.  The brightest spot was in the basement, where there is the smaller Immaculate Conception Chapel, complete with its own organ, that is colorful and bright (below, upper right).  Topside, there is this bizarre statue that is the foundation of the church.  To me, it looked surreal, with its flanking pair of “Close Encounters” spaceship chandeliers and sunburst rays.

This is Sainte Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary (who knew?), and the original chapel, started in 1658, was built to house the statue.  During its construction, a bricklayer named Louis Guimont claimed he was cured of his rheumatism after setting only three stones. The flood was on.  Since then, all sorts of miracles of healing are attributed to her, and thus this church became a mecca for pilgrims seeking cures.  It gets about 500,000 hopefuls each year.  No track record is posted.  St. Anne also is the patron saint of Quebec.  Behind the statue is a small chapel.  A bone relic of Saint Anne is displayed here; it was given to the shrine by Pope John XXIII.  DNA testing, anyone? 

The first church on this site fell by the wayside long ago, and was replaced by a basilica in 1876, alas built of wood.  It burned down in 1922 (so much for miracles), and the current basilica was opened in 1926.  There are some neat things inside, like these beautiful carved doors and the mosaics.  There were about a dozen of the craft mosaics, each one depicting a trade that was common in the area at the time they were made;  the other series depicts the various sins.  So, the top one represents the shipping industry, and the bottom one depicts the vice of vanity (note the mirror and the adornments spilling out of the chest).  These really were quite nice, and I was surprised that you could walk all over them.

Full of fervor, but still hauling our uncured aches and pains around, we got on the coach for our lunch destination, the Parc de la Chute-Montmorency.  What’s a chute?  Why, a waterfall, of course, and this one reached by a gondola ride.  Check out that bridge across the top of the falls.  We crept across it after lunch.

We boarded our cabine on the telepheerique.  Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

 

They really packed us in, on step platforms for easier viewing.  I was doing mental weight calculations.

Mom and Loni contemplated their fate, but we made it OK.  See the bridge in the background?  That’s the one we took over to the island on the far side where we had the maple dinner.  

Once up, we hustled straight into the Manoir Montmorency, a nifty looking place that housed a top restaurant.

The food lived up to the billing.  We both had the duck confit, and the desserts weren’t too shabby.

The lunch really was excellent.  Afterwards, we set out through the mist and drizzle on the path to the bridge over the falls.  Mom, ever the trouper, chugged right along.

At the bridge, the wind and the rain kicked up, adding to the, uh, experience.

The falls first flow smoothly over a sort of dam structure, then plunge freely straight down the rock face some 83 meters (about 272 feet, higher than Niagara!).

We didn’t take the telepheerique down, as the bus took the long way around and came up to get us.  Back to QC, where we had the afternoon free to wander about the old city in the rain.  Even in the wet it was beautiful.

Dinner tonight was to be on our own, so as we walked around we scouted menus posted outside the restaurants.  Some were eye-popping in their prices, but we found this place that looked good just a block and a half from our hotel.  The Café de la Paix (café of the peace).

Now, eventually, we got a pretty nice meal here, but yee gods did it take forever.  We ate downstairs, which was elegant and cozy.  What we didn’t know was that there were two big parties upstairs that had been seated just before us, and another large group down on our level.  We got water and menus.  And for over half an hour, that was it.  The waiters just kept avoiding eye contact and never came back.  I finally hailed the maitre d’ and asked why we were being ignored.  He took offense, and said we were not being ignored, but that he had three large parties to deal with all at once.  This was all in French, but we got the gist.  A couple behind us, who had gotten as far as salad but no further, called it quits and loudly demanded the bill . . . several times.  The Md’ was exasperated, but they paid for what they had, and left.  I guess he figured this might start a trend, because we began getting our courses, albeit with long pauses in between.  Fortunately, the food was very good, especially my vegetable pasta, which had wonderful herbs and rich flavor.  Loni loved her primavera.  Actually worth the wait.

Quebec City was great.  It had the feel of French country towns, and a lot of good food.  Maybe someday we’ll go back.  Au revoir!

MAPLE MADNESS

Quebec, of course, is home to a large maple syrup industry.  Oh, how I bemoan all those decades when I thought Log Cabin was maple syrup.  What a revelation when I finally got hold of the real stuff.  My thanks to Costco and Trader Joe’s for making it relatively affordable.  Once you go 100% pure, you never go back.  The boyos, of course, have never known (at least at home) other than the real thing.  Michael even took his own bottle off to college and zealously hoarded it against his dorm mates when pancakes or waffles were on tap for breakfast.  I like it also over vanilla or coffee ice cream, and I put it in a variety of cooked things, like some pies.  After my cancer treatments, when all other sweet things had no taste at all for a long time, the syrup still came through.  But, I never have had an entire meal based on maple syrup.  Until now.

Our dinner destination the next night was the Erabliere le chemin du Roy, known locally simply as the “Sugar Shack,” a working maple syrup family farm that supplements their income by serving syrup-themed dinners.  We first got an explanation of tapping the tree, which they do by both the traditional spout-and-bucket method and by the more modern (and efficient) tube extraction.  In general, a tubing system consists of a storage tanks with a mainline feeding sap into it. The sap runs from the tree through a spile, and into the dropline, from there it goes into the lateral through a mainline connector, through the mainline and into the storage tank.  Gravity feed does the trick, but vacuum assists are also used.  At this farm, the collection season was over, so the tubing had been put away.

After the collection process, the sap is brought inside the boil house and placed in the first (farthest) bin and heated up; the juice flows from a tube near the top of that bin over to the next, where the process is repeated down the line, until only the pure syrup finally rises and flows out the top of the last and into the kegs.

Dinner was served in a large hall, and our group was the only one present throughout the meal, although another bus group arrived as we were finishing outside.  Now, you’ll notice the guy shoveling something in his mouth, seated across from Loni.  Caution:  in a “family-style” restaurant where common platters are passed around at each table, you do NOT want to be seated with this guy.  He’s a not-yet-retired cop from some burg on the outskirts of St. Louis.  He is totally immune from both embarrassment and table manners.  We had nine people at this table.  Woe betide the poor souls who were seated “downstream” from him in the passing-the-platter queue.  He took enough of everything to feed an army.  Remember the container of syrup in the picture above?  That was for the table to pour over our dessert pancakes.  The first three folks put about three tablespoons each on theirs;  the Mouth dumped somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the entire pitcher on his, and then passed the dregs on to the next person without so much as a howdy-do.  His plate was awash in syrup, right up to the rim.  I’m surprised he didn’t ask for a straw.   The eagle-eyed waitress promptly brought us some more.  No other table needed a second pitcher.

Anyway, the meal was nothing fancy, just farmhouse-hearty fare that was quite good.  It wasn’t particularly photogenic, but here’s the menu:

French Canadian maple-pea soup :: Country bread and maple butter
Maple smoked ham :: Maple Meat Balls* :: Traditional "Québécois" maple meat pie
Potatoes  :: Baked beans  (both with maple flavoring)
Home-made pickles :: Coleslaw  (OK, neither of these had maple) 
Pancakes with maple syrup

All were tasty, and none were actually sweet, they just had various degrees of maple flavor.  But the most bizarre, and most surprising, was this:

Now, I love beers, but not sweet, malty types.  I prefer hoppy brews, like Dogfish Head, IPA’s, and that memorable Imperial rye-based beauty I had up in Washington.  So this I tried simply to say I had done it.  But, it was great!  Just a hint of maple flavor backed by a well-balanced hops-malt structure.  Very nice.

Dinner was accompanied by entertainment by one of the family, who played a nice fiddle, some wooden spoons (“clackers”), and a totally weird Pinocchio puppet which “danced” on the end of a wooden spatula.  He sort of sat on the spatula between his legs, “sproinging” the thing with one hand to make it vibrate while holding the puppet and it’s bouncing feet with the other.  Ohhkay.  We are in the back woods.  He was having a good time.

After dinner we went outside for another treat:  instant maple taffy.  While they were heating up the syrup and preparing the ice tray, we first loaded on this old wagon pulled by a Clydesdale and a Percheron for a ride through the maple forest.

A nice, slow pace to let dinner settle.  By the time we got back, they were preparing the maple taffy.  Pure syrup is heated on the stove, then it is poured in strips over a bed of ice.  You promptly put a wooden stick in one end of a strip, and roll the strip up onto the end of the stick.  Go for it, Mom!

Insert in mouth, and suck bliss.

The next group was just coming in, so it was time to get back on the bus and head back to the hotel.  By the time we got back, it was dark, but the temperature was quite mild so I took a stroll around a few blocks.  This café with outside tables was just across the square from the hotel.  On my way back, I heard a lot of singing and whistles and came across yet another student demonstration against the increases in college tuition and fees.  All very orderly.  I think they were having more fun than doing a serious protest.  There were virtually no onlookers except for a few of us tourists.

Back to the hotel and dreams of all things maple.  Mmmmmmm.

FAITH AND FOOD: ON THE ROAD TO Q.C.

Bidding a reluctant farewell to Ottawa, we got onboard for the trek to Quebec City, the jewel of old French Canada.  Again, not much in the way of scenery on the way up.  Spring is still around the corner in these parts, so the trees are still leafless and drab for the most part.  Our first stop was our religious fix of the day, the Sanctuaire Notre-Dame-Du-Cap in Trois Rivieres.  For being in the middle of nowhere, this was a pretty impressive place.  That’s not it in the pic above.  That’s just a teaser.

The first Jesuit missionaries arrived in this region in 1634, and the first chapel (wood) on this site was begun in 1659.  It no longer exists, but was replaced by the first stone parish church in the region, which was inaugurated in 1714.  Now called the Old Shrine, it is one of the oldest churches in Canada.  We were given a tour by the kindly old gent below, who had everyone straining to hear him with his soft voice.  A sacristy was added in 1879.  That unembellished stone exterior hides a beautifully light, domed interior featuring the statue of Our Lady of the Cape, set above the alter, which was donated by a parishioner in 1854.  In 1888, at the dedication of an annex for additional pews, a Franciscan friar and two witnesses claim to have seen the statue open its eyes.  Mother Church, ever eager to seize on the miraculous (or incredulous), sent Pope Pius X’s delegate in 1904 to crown the statue, and the same service was performed in 1954 by Pope Pius XII’s delegate, after the statue had made a viewing trip throughout Canada.

The present basilica, which is absolutely huge, was built over the course of nine years and completed in 1954.  In can seat over 1600, and the dome rises 125 high.  Remember, this church is out in the sticks.  Where do the faithful come from? 

Anyway, there are no interior columns in the thing.  Unlike classical cathedrals, it is entirely a dome supported by the exterior walls structure.  I was quite impressed.

If Spring had sprung, the grounds would have been quite lovely, as there are lots of paths, pools, statuary, etc.  They even had a (free!) RV park.  Donations accepted, of course, but for a site right on the river, it couldn’t be beat.

From here we went on to Quebec City proper, entering the old walled city (Vieux Quebec)through this original gate, the Porte Saint-Louis. 

Running through it is the main drag into the old town, the Rue Saint-Louis.  It leads straight to our hotel just down around the far corner.

The hotel is the edifice on the hill in the first photo in this post, called the Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac.

It claims to be the most photographed hotel in the world.  I’m not surprised.  Photogenic is not sufficient praise.  It sits high on the bluff overlooking the St. Lawrence, and is spectacular from every angle.

 

We spent only an hour checking in and getting our bags to the room before it was time to board the bus for our trip to dinner at the Restaurant les Ancetres, which lies on the Ile d’Orleans in the middle of the Saint Lawrence River --- the Fleuve Saint-Laurent to you francophiles.  The Ile lies northeast of the City, and is accessible only by boat or the one long bridge that we crossed.  The Restaurant was adapted from an old farmhouse, and sits on the crest of the hills forming the island.

The views are pretty nice looking down the mountain across to the northern bank of the St. Lawrence, and of the bridge we took to get here.  The old barn is one of the outbuildings.

The interior was a bit of a mashup, with original walls, windows, and beams from the farmhouse, coupled to a newer addition to expand the dining space and create the porch (above left).  Nothing mashuppy about the food, which was very good.  Mom’s having a good time, despite not being able to follow the conversation in a crowded room.  If you’re wondering, we are eating a lot of salmon, but that’s because we usually opt for the fish option when offered.  There was plenty of meat as well.

Next morning, we were hard at it again, breakfasting at a local diner which I’m sure was much less expensive than the Frontenac’s dining room.  Adequate, not great.  I hate ordering breakfast from three fixed choices.

Today was our day to have a guide for our on-off bus tour of the city.  Unfortunately, she was one of those “in period” types that dresses out of the past and torments you by staying “in character.”  I’ve said it before, I loathe this kind of stuff, and nice as she was, she was no exception.  I tried to wander off to take pictures as much as I could.  Our first stop was the Quebec Parliament building located on the Place de l’Assemblee Nationale.  It has a number of statues set in alcoves all over the front of the building.  The one noted is of Marie de l'Incarnation /Marie Guyart /Guyard (1599-1672), a nun who was pretty amazing, for her time or any other.  She emigrated from Tours, France, leaving behind her 11 year-old-son (from a pre-nunnery marriage), founded a girl’s school that still exists today, wrote umpteen thousand letters home that today form the best accounting of daily life in that era, and wrote three dictionaries of the languages of local Indian tribes, including the Algonquins and the Hurons.  The hand points to her statue on the building. 

One stop was a favorite of Loni and Mom.  Fortunately, they were just looking.  We stopped at another market, which was pretty small and not worth the effort.  Gas, I noted, was more expensive than in the states.  That’s the price per liter on the sign, so roughly multiply that times 4 to get the /gal. amount.  U.S. prices don’t look so bad after all.

Our last stop of the day was at the old city below the walls (and below the hotel).  QC was founded in 1608 by good old Samuel de Champlain, and was the center of New France in the 17th & 18th centuries.  In 1620, he built Fort Saint-Louis on top of Cape Diamond near the present site of the Hotel Frontenac.  Down below, over the centuries, the part of the old city below the walls near the river took shape.

including the oldest pedestrian shopping street in the Americas, started in 1689:

We traipsed over the cobblestones to other areas, including this collection of four buildings that represented the four “permissible” colors of classic roofs of the old city.  Ideally, the city would like all roofs to be one of these, but we saw a lot that had other hues.  These colors were supposed to represent traditional roofing materials: wood dyed with oxblood, slate shingles, tin/zinc, and thatch.

The end of the building to the extreme left of the picture bore a huge mural that was pretty neat, populated with historic and modern figures.

Looking back towards the square which holds the four roof buildings, we can see the little church that faces the square.

This completed the tour, so we looked for a place to eat that wouldn’t break the bank.  We found a sandwich shop that advertised a “croque monsieur,” which in France is a sort of flattened panini-type sandwich of ham and cheese, sometimes dusted with powdered sugar and served with some fruit preserves.  Really good.  Well, I had to rate this as the worst meal we had in all of Canada.  What I got was an open-faced glop of a paper-thin slice of ham and a mass of rubbery cheese, drenched in tomato sauce!  Sacre bleu!  It was awful, and bore no resemblance whatsoever to a c-m.

Heading back, we passed what I thought was the prettiest restaurant front I’d ever seen, and one of the grossest shop names (reminiscent of one we saw in Buenos Aires).

 

Mom didn’t feel like tackling all the stairs up the “cape” to the hotel, so we hopped on the handy (and steep) funicular.

Once up top there was a great view across the river to the other side, including a look-down on some Canadian Coast Guard ships.

Woof.  A long day of walking.  It wasn’t only Mom that was fagged out.