New Brunswick

I asked a colleague from New Brunswick for some advice on places to visit while in the province.  Her husband (from another province) said, "Nova Scotia" (which is a neighbouring province).  It's not true!  There are some cool things to see in New Brunswick.  Here are a few of them from our trip this past August and a previous trip from 2010.

For starters, after our visit to Quebec City (read my first post about our trip here), we continued on to a mid-way point between Ottawa and PEI, Grand Falls.  I could only vaguely recall visiting the fall on our first trip.  

It is probably because this is what they looked like at the time:

They were more memorable this time (and have added cables for zip lining) :

In 2010, we spent time in southern New Brunswick, camping at Fundy National Park.  The park has some great programming, including local musicians who come down and play in their amphitheatre at night.  There are also a lot of artisans in the area, making it a nice place to explore by day.

This area is known for having some of the highest tides in the world.  Here are some pictures of low tide.

One of the biggest tourist attractions in the province is Hopewell Rocks.  At low tide, you can walk along some really cool shaped rocks that have been eroded by the water.  But, you have to be very careful about going at low tide and giving yourself enough time to get out of there before the tide comes in.

 

This trip, we decided to visit Kings Landing Historical Settlement, which recreates life in New Brunswick in the 1800s.  I love going to these kind of villages and interacting with the actors who teach you about the era.  

I thought the actors did a really good job of staying in character and living life as they would have in the 1800s.  Many of them were working making good the way it would have been made in the 1800 (e.g., carpenter, wood worker, spinning wool, blacksmith, etc.).  One guy was making a wooden butter bowl by hand that would take him about 6 weeks to make.  

Aside from a fair bit of highway time, that's most of what we saw in New Brunswick, which is by no means a good representation of the province since we spent fairly little time in the cities (e.g., Fredricton, Moncton, St. John, etc.) and other areas of interest (St. Andrews by the Sea, Acadian Coast, etc.).

Montreal & Quebec City

About 5 years ago, we took a road trip to the Maritimes and I never blogged about it.  I love reading my old travel posts just to reminisce.  So, the fact that I hadn't blogged about the Maritimes has been bugging me for years now.

I have a renewed motivation to cross this off my mental list since we just recently came back from a second road trip to the Maritimes.  So, what you'll see in these travel posts is a combination of our trip pre-kids to Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and PEI and a trip with an 10 month old and a 3 year old to Quebec, New Brunswick and PEI.  

This trip, our ultimate destination was a cottage in PEI.  But, I wanted this trip to be about the journey as much as the destination.  So, we weren't in a rush to get to PEI.  Our general plan was to stop mid-day on each travel day to let everyone get out of the car, eat and burn some energy so that (hopefully) a good length nap would follow.

We decided to spend our first night in Montreal in a Airbnb apartment to take the kids to the Biodome.  It is near several other tourist attractions in Montreal that we've previously visited.  But, having never gone to the Biodome, we wanted to check it out and thought the kids would enjoy it too.  

Overall, I'd say the Biodome was pretty good.  You go through four ecosystems and see plants and wildlife that would be native to those habitats.  We got through it pretty quickly and found it to be smaller than we expected.  

Here are a few pictures from Olympic Stadium and the Botanical Gardens, from a previous trip to Montreal.

Football game at the McGill stadium (Stade Memorial Percival-Molson) 

Since I'm showing previous trips, I might as well throw in some pictures from another trip where we went to the Just For Laughs festival (digging these ones out was a trip down "pre-kids" memory lane).

Schwartz's Deli -- A Montreal (smoked meat) institution:

Marina

Back to this year's trip...

The next day, we continued east, with a stopover in Quebec City.  The old town in a fair ways off the Transcanada Highway, so the visit  got us into our next stop (Grand Falls) later than planned.  But, we enjoyed walking around the cobble stone streets.  It was a very busy day with lots of tourists.  I preferred past visits that avoided peek season.

Unfortunately, even after going through my three external hard drives, I couldn't find any of my old pictures from Quebec City.  So, I'm thinking my previous trips pre-date owning a digital camera.  

Chicago

About 7 months ago, R found out that he had credits with Porter Airline that were going to expire that evening.  We had to either book a trip or let them go.  Not ones to make quick decisions, we were both caught off guard with having to decide if and where to travel.  

We took a look at Porter's flight locations and narrowed the list down to Boston, Burlington (Vermont), Myrtle Beach or Chicago.  We decided to go with Chicago because we had both been to Boston (albeit not recently for me and only for work for R), Myrtle Beach was further and far more expensive than our credit and Burlington seems like a place we could drive to from Ottawa with stops in various small towns along the way.

So, Chicago it was!  We picked spring hoping that we'd have nice weather and in consideration of other summer plan.  Turns out, April is a bit hit and miss for nice weather.  But, it was an enjoyable trip none-the-less.

We got a good rate through Hotwire for the Kinzie Hotel.  We were both quite pleased with the place -- they have a large continental breakfast set up on each floor and evening happy hour, with a small but fresh buffet of appetizers.  

On the first day, we went for deep dish pizza at Lou Malnati's and walked down the Magnificent Mile. E was quite happy to play in the Disney Store and Lego Store.  

Don't be fooled by this innocent expression.  This is the face of someone who is about to start throwing overpriced little pieces of lego all over the place.

The next day, we got out early to walk to the Navy Pier.  

The pier itself is under construction, so it wasn't much of a draw at that time.  But, our main reason for visiting was to go to the Children' Museum.

The busload of school kids arriving around the same time was a bit scary.  The museum was definitely packed.  But, it is probably the nicest children's museum I have seen.  They have several distinct theme areas that are really nicely developed.  E's favourite was the bubble area.  It reminded me of something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

After grabbing bubbles for a long time, E had tonnes of fun "painting" a mirror with soapy water.  This would be an easy craft to replicate at home.

After the museum and a nap, we spent some time walking around downtown and visiting the famous Cloud Gate.

The next day was a Saturday and we were warned that the lineups for Willis Tower might be long, so we got there early.  

Even still there was an hour long line up.  But, it was much shorter than the line up when we left.

The place was packed.  But it was a nice clear day with good views. 

E perfectly timed her nap and passed out from the time we walked out of Willis Tower, through our walk around downtown and train ride to Wrigley Field.

It was colder than we expected (note to self: get seats in the sun early on in the season).  R was thrilled to be able to include a ball game in our itinerary.

On our last full day in Chicago, we had great weather.  So, we decided to walk along the waterfront to the aquarium.  When we got there, the line deterred us, so we opted for the Field Museum instead.

The building itself is very impressive.  The quality of the exhibits varies, in my opinion.

After a full morning of walking, I was ready to be transported back to the hotel for a break.
Of course, E had other plans in mind about how quickly we should get back to the hotel.  Ever try to walk what is normally a 45 minute walk with a toddler?  Here she is below pointing out what direction she thought we should go in (i.e., the direction we had just come from).

Overall, a great trip!  If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't change much.  Maybe just move the date of our trip back by a month (we went early April) to catch warmer weather.  

San Diego & Palm Springs

Is this winter over yet?  A couple of days ago, I almost took a picture of the dirty, yellow grass I saw poking out from under a tree (where the snow must have not piled too high over the winter).  Just to celebrate a grass sighting.  Of course, that was before the additional 10cm we got the following day.

My new approach seems to be, if I buy enough stuff for warmer weather, it will warm up.  So far, I've purchased a rain suit and a water table for E.  But then R bought some mittens, so maybe that will set us back a week.

Thankfully, we did have some respite from the winter.  We spent time in San Diego and Palm Springs. Here are some of my favourite pictures from the trip.

Walking down Pacific Beach:

E watching the ducks in Seaport Village.  Throwing sand on the beach -- she would pick up a handful and yell "more!"

 Tall ship and kiss statue

USS Midway -- we did a tour

 Sunset at Pacific Beach

San Diego zoo (had to go back now that E is old enough to notice the animals)

Drawing at the New Children's Museum

Feeding the giraffes at The Living Desert

Butterfly area in the Living Desert (only saw this butterfly)

A palm tree oasis at the start of Murray Canyon

Sitting on a motorcycle at the Palm Springs Children's Museum.  Tree climbing at a nearby park in Palm Springs.