by Joni Hauck
(NOTE: Clicking on most photos will show larger view.)

Canada

Wednesday September 1st

Cleveland, Ohio to Niagra Falls, Canada

We had given Abbey instructions to wake us up in the morning. A little knock on the door and in she came bounding up on the bed. We played for a little while with the stuffed animals she had given us to sleep with and it was off to the showers. After saying goodbye to Dave and Abbey, who left for preschool, we drove the 5 minutes to Uncle Kenny and Aunt Irene's where we had breakfast. They had saved me a piece of cantelope-it was so good and tasty as compared to the flavorless fruit I've been served in restaurants.

We unloaded a few things out of our van for Mom & Dad to take home and after prolonged hugs, we said our goodbyes. Mom, Dad and Pappy headed toward home and we were off to Canada. Our visit with family here in Cleveland was way too short and will be one of our fondest memories. Hey Dave, remember when you said we were welcome anytime? We will be back. Thanks to all the Frey's for making our stay enjoyable.

On our way to Niagra Falls we decided to drive through downtown Buffalo. Who knows when we will ever get another chance to experience that thrill. Again our instincts were correct. We happened to drive by the nice new minor league ballpark and, as our luck continued, they were playing a very rare midweek day game. It was a very cozy downtown field with a nice view of part of the city. Minor league baseball on a day like toay was a real treat, especially spur of the momnet.

I love waterfalls but was prepared to diss Niagra Falls because of all the natural wonders we had viewed on our trip. After all, how could it compare with Yosemite, I thought. I soon found out that Niagra, due to the magnitude of its size, has its own splendor. The volume of rushing water that flows over the falls is incredible. The closer we got to Horeshoe Falls, the wetter we got. The water flows over the falls with imposing force creating a mist that drenches anyone within 300 years.

Our hotel was within walking distance to the casino, the falls and what we dubbed "Gaudy Town". A collection of attractions, each boasting a colorful and flashy neon, lined the streets. The Criminal Museum, Louis Troussand's Wax Museum and The Reptile House all vied for the attention of the tourist. We felt like we were at a carnival. Surprise, surprise, we opted to visit some local taverns instead.

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Thursday September 2nd

Niagara Falls to Toronto, Canada & Sky Dome

We had a leisurely and inexpensive breakfast (love that exchange rate), and then walked down for one last look and a few pictures of the falls. We figured it would take us two hours to get to Toronto. We were assuming that our game in the Sky Dome was Friday but fortunately we checked our folder because the tickets were for today. (Great organization system, Fred) After a few traffic delays, we arrived at the Casa Loma, our historic hotel. We could not check in until three. Since we had two hours to waste, we walked around town and visited the Shoe Museum. Yes, I said Shoe Museum. We learned all about the history of shoes, the fashion of shoes and the religion of shoes. A special exhibit highlighted the career of Beth and Herbert Levine, shoe designers extraodorinaire.

The owner was not around when we went back to check into our hotel so the french maid gave us the keys to our room. The Casa Loma is a beautiful old Victorian house that had been converted into hotel rooms. Our 2nd floor corner room was striking with three rounded windows framed with wide oak molding and an original oak fireplace mantel.

Since we had done so much walking this morning at Niagara Falls and around our hotel before check-in, we opted to ride. We easily navigated the subway to the Entertainment District of Toronto. This area is accurately named. All the pubs and bars are conveniently located within a ten block area.

As we walked into the Elephant Hotel & Pub, the bartender greeted us with a cheerful and immediate hello. As we sat down at the handsome cherry bar he came over to take our order. Since there were few other patrons at this time of the day, the bartender stood and chatted with us. I complimented him on being such a personable and good bartender. He seemed genuinely surprised to hear some of the stories we told about the way other bartenders act: talking with friends, cleaning glasses, or spacing out instead of waiting on their customers.

Our next stop was the Kit Kat located in a three story brick building crammed into a skinny space between two other restaurants. As we sat down at the dark rough-wood bar our eyes took in a diverse mixture of treasures. A ceramic kitty cat wearing pearls was displayed beside a green marble figurine of a player in his batting stance which was next to a clear glass jar displaying every olive known to exist. The place smelled marvelous as the waiters squeezed through the narrow aisle taking food to the tables. For the second time today, the person behind the bar was amicable prompting me to believe that Toronto took all the good bartender help from Niagara Falls.

We hit the jackpot at our next stop. The bar at the Movenpick was covered with all kinds of free food. Wings sizzled in frying pans over miniature burners. Brochusetti bread covered with lightly seasoned chunks of tomato looked pretty as a picture and tasted scrumptious. Large plates of cheese balls, meat balls and black nacho chips with salsa were there for the taking. The decor in this place was outstanding. The bathrooms were tastefully decorated in purple and green tile and were so striking that Fred even noticed. The walls in the restaurant and bar seemed to reach to the sky. Some were painted a muted orange while the others were a pale yellow. Stenciled suns and moons added artistic interest.

We had time for one more stop and chose the Peel Bar which we had read about. It is located in a large basement with seating for 400 and plenty of big screen TV's and NTN trivia. We did not get a trivia box because we only had a short time, but the guy next to us, screen name Axle, took a break in the middle of the game to go outside, so without moving his box I continued to answer for him. He finished third without even being in the bar.

It was time to go check out our 24th stadium. The Sky Dome is a monster-it took us fifteen minutes to get to the correct gate. We were excited because we thought we had managed to get good seats for this game in the lower level just to the right of home plate. However, when we sat down we discovered that we were in the very last row and the overhang obstructed our skyward view-as in we could see no sky at all even though the roof was open. We lasted in those seats through the third inning and set out in search of a better view. We had trouble navigating our way around the stadium. We wanted to go to the Hard Rock which has views of the field from inside but were told that there is no entrance from the stadium and if we left we could not get back in. After climbing ramp after ramp, we finally found the way to the upper deck where it was wonderful to sit back and gaze at the sky and the imposing CN Tower. The view of the game was not bad either and had we known, we could have saved ourselves $10 per ticket. Upper deck entertainment was provided by two vocal and enthusiastic groups of college students trying to outdo each other in starting the wave.

Toronto beat the Twins so that is two games in a row that the home team has won. Maybe our streak of bad luck for the home team is over. Since it was a beautiful evening we walked the two miles back to our hotel stopping for a little snack at the local Pizza Pizza.

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Friday September 3rd

Toronto, Ontario

We lazed around most of the morning. Fred worked on his web sight and I caught up with the newspapers Mom & Dad had given me from home. It has been interesting to read about the Conference Center being proposed for downtown Lancaster.

We hoofed the two miles from Bloor Street to the waterfront. We passed through colorful Chinatown and watched the shoppers buy interesting, but unidentifiable food items from the sidewalk markets. Our goal was the CN Tower but when we found out how much it cost to go up, we decided to forgo the trip and view the free displays. The interactive kiosks were fascinating and well done. It was interesting to learn the seven Engineering Wonders of the World and see other countries that have towers. Our favorite display, which was quite amusing, showed at the push of a button what other places like the Grand Canyon, Seattle and Las Vegas would look like if the CN Tower had been built there. As we were leaving, we changed our mind and decided that since this was the world's tallest structure that we had to go up. After all, we had already been up in the world's tallest building.

The tower area consists of an indoor and outdoor observation, restaurant and loung. The glass floor was a first-time and unique experience. There is a 30 x 50 foot area in the floor of the indoor observation deck that contains glass panels. Even though your brain logically knows that you will not fall through and plummet to your death, it took a few shaky test steps to trust that. It was such a weird feeling to walk out on the floor with only glass between you and 1,100 feet below. Unfortunately, the line to the Sky Pod which was an observation deck another 300 feet up was long. Fred has this thing about lines so instead we went into the lounge and ate peach pie. Fine by me. I was in heaven as we looked out over the city of Toronto and shared a scrumptious piece of peach pie-tender flaky crust and tasteful perfectly ripe peaches topped off with creamy vanilla ice cream.

We walked the two miles back to the Casa Loma, stopping on the Campus of the University of Toronto for a brief respite on a park bench. It had been an enjoyable day which was topped off with two slices from the neighborhood Pizza Pizza.

We had just settled in our room when the phone rang. Wow-someone is calling us. It was the owner of the Casa Loma asking if I could come down to pay the bill since we were checking out tomorrow.

I was sitting in the office chatting with Monique, who looked very sophisticated dressed in a silk pantsuit and sounded quite refined with her french accent, when all of a sudden a movement in the dark outside the window behind Monique caught my attention. I was in mid sentence when I saw it again. My crazy husband was jumping up and down outside the window! He was pulling a scene from the movie Full Monty when one of the characters was in an interview and his buddies jumped up and down outside and then took a garden elf and paraded him back and forth until the guy cracked up laughing. Needless to say, the guy did not get the job.

As soon as I saw Fred, I burst out laughing. All I could see was his head bobbing up and down. I tried to keep my composure as I gave some type of weak explanation to Monique and bid her a hasty good bye. Once outside, I started laughing and couldn't stop. Fred told me he was glad I finally saw him because his knees were starting to hurt from jumping high enough to get above the window. If any of the neighbors were looking out their windows, they would have thought he was nuts. Thank goodness there were no lawn ornaments available because I would have totally lost it inside that office.

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Saturday September 4th

Toronto to Gananoque, Ontario

We walked around a different section of Toronto this morning which was more French than the other tourist areas we had visited. Toronto is a very diversified city but has the laziest beggars we have ever seen. There are not many people asking for hand-outs but those that do sit on the sidewalk with a ratty soda cup and the blankest expressions on their faces. They don't speak or look at anyone and in fact are rather scary.

Traffic was heavy on the highway due to the Labor Day weekend. We did not have a destination for tonight which was kind of silly since it is a holiday weekend. We drove for about three hours and got off the interstate at a town named Kingston. There were plenty of vacancies on the outskirts of town but we just kept driving. Finally we stopped at a place that had a room for $65.00 Canadian. We him-hawed around (sorry about the PA Dutch but it is the only expression that fit) and finally decided to keep looking. As we continued into the center of town, there were no hotels available. We seem to have a thing about turning around so even though it was only five miles back to the bargain hotel, we kept going.

The next town, Gananoque, was a resort town and the first three hotels were booked. We ended up stopping at 5 different places and for one reason or another (mostly price) none of them suited. We were being major-league indecisive. One place was really cheap so I asked to see the room (there was no way I was getting stuck again with a stinky room like South Bend) . It would have been suitable except there was no telephone and Fred needed to update the web site. By now we had reached the end of this town and were both cranky. We finally decided to go back and take the Days Inn even though it was more than we wanted to spend. Fortunately, the room was still available. All told, we had wasted an hour trying to find a room. We know ourselves and today was a perfect example of why we wisely booked the majority of our hotels before we left home.

We had to get our College Football fix and since ESPN is not available in Canada that ruled out Penn State so we watched the Michigan vs. Notre Dame game. Thanks goodness Michigan pulled out a win.

We walked downtown for dinner. Today must be indecisive day because we could not settle on a place to eat until we had paraded up and down Main Street two times. We stopped in a place called the Stone Street Tavern because it looked really cool on the outside. Inside it felt like a bar in southern Lancaster County complete with two old guys seated at the bar who looked like they could be fixtures. I thought it would be interesting to talk to two Canadians so I sat down beside them. Big mistake. Old Fart #1 immediately began rambling to me. I couldn't understand a word he was saying so I politely nodded my head while Old Fart #2 addressed Fred. "You must be American, eh. No one up here drinks Busch," he said as he stared at Fred's Busch logo t-shirt. Meanwhile Old Fart #1 was still mumbling to me something about all the foreigners invading Toronto. As soon as he took a breath, I turned my back to him and began talking to Fred. Do you think he took the hint? No, he tapped me on the shoulder and continued to talk on. I was too polite to ignore him, so we gluped down our beer and got out of there as soon as possible. It is too bad that these guys were so far out in left field. Two half-way intelligent old guys from Canada would have been fun to talk to, eh.

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Sunday September 5th

Gananoque through Ottawa to St Saviour des mont, Ontario

I spied a Tim Hortons across the street from our hotel so we made a quick stop for breakfast to go. I had read about Tim Hortons which is owned by Wendy's, and had been eager to check it out. I would describe it as a cross between Brueggers Bagels and an upscale Dukin Donuts. Fresh bagels and muffins provided a happy start for today's drive.

We elected to take a detour to visit the capitol of Canada. Ottawa has an impressive collection of government buildings. Massive in height and width, the three old Parliament buildings with their green copper roofs dominate the river side of downtown. The squares around the parliament were alive with families, street side vendors and a three piece jazz band. A member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, splendid in his brilliant red jacket, sat tall on his horse while obliging picture taking tourists.

All the signs in Toronto and most of Ontario had been in English and French but that changed as soon as we crossed over the bridge into Quebec. We felt a little apprehensive at seeing only French and not understanding a word. We quickly remembered that sortie is exit and arret is stop. Fortunately the directional words are similar so it was not hard to discern that Nord was North and Est was East. Our timeshare is in the tiny town of St. Sauveur des Mont which is 40 kilometers north of Montreal.

The town was packed with tourists and our directions said to make a right and then drive for two minutes. Two minutes-what kind of a direction is that. Not surprisingly, we did not find the resort on the first try. At the desk, the girl spoke some English. However another person came out and they began talking in French and I had no idea what they were saying. I could only shrug my shoulders. I hate not being in the know!

The grocery store was another experience. Our directions led us to a shopping center and after wandering around we finally found the Metro (isn't that the subway?). Most packaging was French so we had to guess at what we were getting by looking at the pictures. Interestingly, they do not have food calorie or vitamin content on the packaging.

At the check-out counter, someone came over to help unload groceries. It feels very strange not to be able to talk to people except to say Bonjour. The bag boy started rattling off to Fred in French and Fred trying to be polite and wanting to use French, said "Pardon?" The bag boy repeated his statement, in French! We certainly have some adjusting to do.

We headed back to the safety of our unit and dinner. Our kitchen leaves a lot to be desired, but we managed to prepare a dinner that was quite satisfying. We are glad to be able to eat in all week. In fact, we may never leave the unit.

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Monday September 6th

St. Saviour des Mont, Ontario

It rained. We hung out. The rain stopped. We ran three miles. It rained again. We hung out. After 5 months it felt good to just hang for a day.

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Tuesday September 7th

St. Sauveur des Mont, Quebec

We hung out. It rained. We hung out. Fred put a new page on his web sight. It rained. We went to the driving range. It rained. We hung out. It rained. We did laundry at the Baunchette. It rained. We hung out.

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Wednesday September 8th

Montreal, Ontario, Canada

We left St Sauveur des Mont around noon to stop at a golf course to book a tee time for Thursday. It was drizzling, only 6 people were playing golf that day and they were all in line in front of Fred. Finally, it was his turn, only to be told the reservations are taken out front. That girl did not speak English but Fred gathered from the conversation and the squiggly lines in the book that the course was booked all day. No golf for us.

It rained off and on during our 40 kilometer drive to Montreal. The stadium is located in Olympic Park on the east side of the city which is also where the Biodome De Montreal was built in 1992. The Biodome is an indoor wonderland of four ecosystems. The highlight in the Tropical Forest was seeing two stunning blue parrots which are found only in South America. We also managed to spot the brown and furry sloth who hangs on a tree branch barely moving. We laughed at the antics of the penguins in Polar World and watched fascinated in The Laurentian Forest as a beaver busily worked on a dam. From our viewpoint behind glass, we could see under the water as the beaver maneuvered huge sticks to use in his dam. It was easy to see where the expression "busy as a beaver" came from. That little guy worked hard.

Little did we know that while we were enjoying the antics of the beaver, the Expos and Rockies were already into the second inning and while we watched a movie about the Amazon, the game was in the 5th inning. How does that expression go for people who assume? This is the dumbest thing we have done-without bothering to double check, we assumed the Expos game was at 7:00.

After leaving the Biodome we were heading toward the subway to go downtown. As we walked through the stadium area to the Metro station, we got this weird feeling that we should check our tickets. 13h35 oh no, that means 1:35. We rushed over to an usher who told us we had better hurry because the game was almost over. We got inside and sat down just in time for the first out in the bottom of the ninth. Stade Olympique seemed different than we remembered because the ugly orange roof had been replaced by one of sky blue. The sound of the bat hitting the ball echoes throughout the huge and mostly empty stadium. Attendance for today's game was only 5,548 fans (I wonder if they counted us in that total). Centerfield still looks like backstage at a rock concert. The game had only lasted two hours and sixteen minutes with the Rockies winning 5-1.

As the fans got up to leave, hearing the seats bang, reminded us of the last time we were here. During a rally, everyone got up off their seat and started banging it up and down making the place reverberate with noise. We stood inside after the game not leaving until an usher motioned us out. We could not believe that we had almost missed the game, which was the last game of the Expo's home stand. Even though we had seen an Expos game here years ago, we were still disappointed that we did not see more of today's game. Go figure that this would be the shortest game of any. Oh well, the Expos are probably one of the least exciting teams in baseball and after all, we had been here before, so if we had to be bone heads, this was the place to do it.

We walked several blocks in the neighborhood around the stadium until we found Beer 99, a local bar. We were hesitant to go in but were hungry and thirsty since we had not been able to get anything to eat or drink at the stadium. When you arrive in the 9th inning, all the stands are closed. The barmaid spoke only French but we managed to get two Molson drafts for $3.00 (that's $1.80 U.S.-love this exchange rate). The barmaid and waitress stood by the bar and had an animated conversation going with each other in French. Nosy me could only guess what they were talking about, but it sounded good.

We drove through downtown which was a mistake at 5 pm. Traffic was grid locked so we used our city map to skirt around the main area and finally arrived at Route 15. However, traffic there was bumper to bumper also and it took much longer to get back to the little village of St. Sauveur des Mont then we expected. It was also three hours earlier than we had expected.

We ate in again-didn't feel like dealing with the language.

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Thursday September 9th

Last day in St. Sauveur des Mont, Ontario, Canada

We hung around again most of the day. Normally, we are not the kind of people who just hang out. We seem to always have to be doing something. The rain and the language barrier forced us into a week of relaxation to catch up on reading and computer stuff. Fred was able play Civilization (his favorite computer game of all time) and to get through a few more chapters in his HTML book. For those of you who think we are total slackers, we also spent time working on our financial plan and discussing what we need to do when we get back in October (Boo hoo-work again-the party's over).

Since we can't sit still for long, we also went to the driving range. On the way back, Fred dropped me off at the outlets which are on the outskirts of town. I perused the stores but was not in the mood to shop. It felt very lonely to not be able to speak French. I did not hear one other person speak English. I walked back to our timeshare-it was only a mile but it was hot. Isn't it September? Where is fall?

Later, we went for a run. An extensive linear park designed for cross country skiing provided a great running trail. However, instead of driving to it, we ran from our hotel which involved several large hills. We are in the mountains and after 3-1/2 miles we stopped and walked the rest of the way back.

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