Day 11: Niagara Falls to Montreal

The cool thing about being famous is traveling. I have always wanted to travel across seas, like to Canada and stuff.

Britney Spears

 672 km (420 miles)
Nous arrivons à Montréal

Drove across a good chunk of Canada today.  Nice country -- clean and pretty.  M: "This country is real purdy."  We arrived in Montreal this afternoon (after some harrowing driving into the city through construction that reminded one of traveling the luge).  This is a beautiful city.  We're staying on the edge of Vieux Montreal (Old Montreal) -- very European with beautiful architecture and cobbled streets.  Walked around in the old town and along the waterfront.  Nice shops, lots of restaurants with street seating, ...

Montreal at Dusk from our hotel room.

Another foreign language encounter:  Smiley lady to me at a fountain: "Blah blah blah" (something unintelligible -- I assumed it was in French).  Me to Smiley lady: "Pardon?" (en francais).  Smiley lady, loudly and slowly (in her native English): "It ... is ... pretty?  It ... is ... good?"  Me to Smiley lady: "Oui".
Today we head back to the US of A.  We're heading to Solon, Maine (My grandmother's birthplace), and we'll play it by ear from there (unfortunately, on the first day of forecasted rain and thunderstorms, we're supposed to camp!).  We may be "off the grid" for a couple of days, so don't worry if you don't hear.  We'll get caught up when we return to civilization.
p.s. 12 days in, we're still having a great time, and we're still speaking (and laughing a lot-- even when M. accidentally turned on the radio at 2:30 this morning and couldn't turn it off).  We haven't yet had to take Holly's advice to Mimi: "When Nan stops laughing at your jokes, you need to shut up!"