Quebec Trip (17/09/17 - 20/09/17) - Part One
- Kaylin M
- Sep 26, 2017
- 8 min read
Like most millennials, I have the travel itch. We want to explore so much of the world, but have little money to do so. Also aspects of life such as family, relationships, and work usually get in the way. In my 20+ years, I haven't traveled very much. I've been on a road trip to Myrtle Beach, taken a bus to New York City, been to the Dominican Republic once last year and visited Mexico (Cancun) 4 times. That is the gist of my barely stamped passport. Ever since we started dating, Blake and I have wanted to visit Europe. I have a friend that has had 2 or 3 separate amazing trips across Europe and, needless to say, we are utterly jealous. I started saving money for the tentative trip years ago and that fund has since become my savings because ... well we have yet to actually go to Europe. I feel like I'm building this up to end with "We finally went to Europe", but we didn't. What this blog is about is mine and Blake's spontaneous trip to Quebec. Well, now it doesn't seem as exciting with the whole Europe thing, but I'm going to share the adventure anyways.
About 3 weeks ago, we missed out on an amazing opportunity to go to Ireland and Blake was quite disappointed. He finally just said, "Let's just GO somewhere, anywhere". We had always discussed the idea of a road trip. So, I spent my Monday off planning our 4 day adventure to the Eastern Townships of Quebec. A road trip is a great tester for a relationship to see if this person is truly someone you can spend eternity with because that's what a road trip feels like. You're trapped in a metal box for many hours with barely anything to do besides keep each other entertained. To be fair, you could watch movies while the other person drove, but it's considered pretty disrespectful of a passenger to do so.
The Eastern Townships is a tourist region that takes you through the St. Lawrence river area and the Appalachian Mountains. I had planned for our first day (Sunday) to be the day that we drove the longest/farthest. It seemed best to drive right to the end of our planned location and then work our way back slowly over the next few days. It didn't really work out that way, but it was a nice idea. We left at about 10 a.m. on Sunday morning and drove the 6 hours to North Hatley. I offered to drive the Ontario leg of the trip because I didn't feel comfortable driving in Quebec, but Blake insisted on driving the whole way. Of course we made a few coffee stops on the way, but for the most part we managed to drive straight to our destination. The drive was breathtaking. It seemed like the mountains went on forever and the fall leaves coloured the trees across the whole landscape. It was beautiful and the pictures truly don't do it justice but here are a few. (Please ignore the dirty windows, there were more than a few insect casualties during our trip) I would definitely recommend visiting the Eastern Townships of Quebec during this time of year because the fall colours truly added to the beauty of the drive.
We arrived in North Hatley at approximately 5 p.m. that evening and checked into our first Bed & Breakfast for the night. We stayed at Auberge le Coeur D'or which roughly translates to the Heart of Gold Hotel. I had chosen this B&B because people on TripAdvisor had high recommended it for the amazing dinner experience. Unfortunately the dining room was closed on Sundays and Mondays, so we couldn't experience the "amazing dinner", but we sure did get a delicious breakfast the next morning - more on that later. When we got there, we were reserved for two rooms; I guess the site hadn't translated correctly and I had stated that we needed two rooms instead of saying that we were just 2 people staying in the one room. It was quickly resolved and, as we will later discover, we were accidentally upgraded to the more expensive room. We of course did not mind being upgraded, the only downfall was that our room didn't have a shower - although it did have a beautiful claw-foot tub. Unfortunately, with the angle of the room you had to duck out of the tub, but I love taking baths so I didn't mind having a deep tub to do so. We used the tub to take a luxurious and romantic bath after our long trip ... which ended in Blake attempting to lasso the bathroom door closed with a towel and, in the process of doing so, knocking the entire shampoo dispenser off of the wall ... spilling shampoo everywhere. Quite romantic ...
Overall though the room was quite nice and had a balcony (that we didn't get a chance to use) that was attached to another one of their rooms so it would be perfect if two couples were staying there. The balcony even had a view of the mountains in the distances so it was pretty to look out the window and enjoy the view. Plus the weather was beautiful which was a bonus!
Anyways, we were both starving after the trip so we decided to have a late dinner at a restaurant called The Pilsen. The atmosphere of the restaurant was very pub-like, but still classy. We sat on the lakefront patio and enjoyed watching the ducks swimming along the patio. I'm not a big beer or wine drinker, but I knew the area was well known for their cider so I was looking forward to enjoying a taste of the cider. Unfortunately, if you know me and my family, we are cursed and what we always want ... restaurants never have. So they were all out of the cider and my first order of mussels was rejected as they had run out of mussels. Sigh ... typical. So I ended up drinking water and having the Jerk Chicken which was quite dry, but the accompanying vegetables were delicious! I'm not sure how they cooked those vegetables or if they had some secret seasoning on them, but they were absolutely delicious. Blake had the fish and pilaf rice which he quite enjoyed. Afterwards, it was pretty late so he decided to just head back to the room for some much needed sleep.
Here's the view from the restaurant patio: no filter/edit needed.
The next morning we woke up bright and early so that we could get a head start on our day. On day two we had planned to spend the day hiking Mount Pinacle in Coaticook. It's about an hour hike up to the peak that overlooks Lake Lyster, so we knew that he would have to leave early in the morning so that we didn't get to our next B&B too late that afternoon; but first, we had to have breakfast. Breakfast at Auberge le Coeur D'or started with banana bread with assorted fruit and orange juice served in wine flutes. I personally think that orange juice or really all types of juice should be served in wine flutes. It just makes breakfast feel a little fancier. After the fruit, we had an perfectly cooked egg with chives and a veal sausage. I'm not one to eat veal, but if it's cooked and placed in front of me, it feels wrong knowing that if I don't eat it, then it will just get thrown in the garbage and the life will have been wasted ... so I ate it ... and I didn't enjoy it. Neither Blake nor myself liked the sausage, but we did really enjoy the egg. After breakfast, Blake helped me to quickly salon-style wash my hair in the tub and we checked out. We decided to take a quick stroll around North Hatley because we hadn't gotten a chance to really enjoy the views when we first arrived. Then we were off to Mount Pinacle (about a 30 minute drive from North Hatley).
Although the GPS said that the drive would only take 30 minutes (by the way - 100% take a GPS with you if you decided to make this trip) the whole drive to Mount Pinacle took closer to an hour because of all of the construction. Something we noticed about Quebec citizens is that they take very good care of their roads and of their gardens. Many beautiful homes were accompanied by equally beautiful gardens and we ran into many areas with long paths of road construction. Once we got to the base of the Mountain, we parked at the local restaurant and started our hike. A little tip for my female hikers ... wear a sports bra! It was about 30 degrees Celsius and I decided to wear my regular everyday bra which I then began sweating through about 10 minutes into the hike. I ended up having to hike up braless which ended up being surprisingly comfortable, and I was lucky that I wore a black shirt that day so I didn't feel like I was revealing too much. An interesting fact about Mount Pinacle is that they are a nesting location for Peregrine Falcons. We did end up seeing one falcon once we got to the top of the mountain and they are such fascinating creatures. If you do choose to complete this hike I would recommend following the multi-purpose trail versus the hiking trail. The hiking trail was incredibly difficult and rocky...and was the trail we decided to follow hiking up. I was surprisingly able to manage most of the hike with some added assistance from Blake pushing me up the hill. Once we got up to the peak, the view was definitely worth it all the difficulties!
We sat up there for about half an hour cooling off before we began our descend. We were lucky that it was partly cloudy that day or else I think we would have fried on top of those rocks. We stayed up there until the sun came out then scurried back into the darkness of the forest. We took the multi-purpose trail back down and it was a lot easier. The hike down went by a lot quicker, partly because I was very chatty and talked Blake's ears off the whole way down!
We felt very accomplished with our Day 2 and then headed the hour to Magog which is where we spent our second night. The hike didn't take as long as we thought it would so we ended up arriving 2 hours before our check in time. We drove around and found a nice little restaurant to have lunch in. The restaurant was called Caffeccino and there Blake had an espresso (the man loves espresso) and I enjoyed a blue Sangria which was super tasty. Another thing that Blake loves is a well done charcuterie board, so that is what we had for lunch. I think this board was meant for 4 people to share, but we devoured it all on our own. Yummy!
Anyways, that's it for Part One of our trip to Quebec. Next week, in Part Two, I'll discuss our second B&B and the final two days of our trip. You will soon see that our trip started off on a high note and slowly fell to being somewhat disappointing, but you'll have to read about that next Tuesday! Until then, enjoy the gallery images of the first part of our Quebec trip!
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