Holiday in Quebec, July 2011

July 25, and we're back home after spending a fantastic two week holiday in Quebec and the USA.

We started out in Montreal, where Geert attended a course. Noor and I accompanied him, expecting long summer evenings together, but even though the organizers stimulated participants to bring family, we didn't see much of him. He started out at 7 AM every day, would be with us from 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM and then disappear again for the evening program. It was inspiring though, and he's had a tremendous time, meeting other fellows in pharmacology and spending days on end with very high profile professors in his field of knowledge.

Noor and I didn't have a hard time finding stuff to do, although we missed dad quite a bit. We stayed in a hotel in the most estranging place ever; CiteDix30, a shopping area in the middle of nowhere, a little bit like Vaughan, but more isolated and bigger. Well dressed ladies and gentleman, but also a lot of teenage girls in fashionable outfits, would walk around in Dix30, visit shops, restaurants, and then hop in their car to drive home again. I think it's mostly weird to us and not so much to many North American people, who already got used to big parking lots in front of Kmarts, Wallmarts, and Zellers'. In the Netherlands, only Ikea does it that way, and maybe some Canadian Tire-like store. The rest is happening close to home; shopping streets are never more than a 15 minute walk or bikeride away from home. And there's sidewalks and bicycle paths everywhere. In Dix30, it was advertised like a crazy special feature that you could cross from one shopping area to another by using the sidewalk. There were actual traffic lights for pedestrians, which indeed is quite special here, I guess.
Anyways, from Dix30, where Noor could not run around free (and shopping isn't really her thing yet), it was only a 20 minute drive to downtown Montreal. We spend most of our days in the parks and playgrounds out there. We hang out at Plage Jean Drapeau one day, visited the Musee des Beaux Arts another, went to the Mont Royale, and, last but not least, visited Vieux Montreal, where we had lots and lots of icecream to keep Noor going.

Noor loved the Jean Paul Gaultier show in the museum; she couldn't get enough of the beautiful dresses and silly hairstyles she saw. Another high was learning to swim all by herself in her life jacket. She got pretty good at it, too. Noor used her first week with me to become very, very chatty. She just wouldn't stop talking. Mostly in English, but after hearing French for a few days, she gave it a try and threw sentences in that no human being could ever understand. Still, it did sound a lot like French. Every day, we'd drive home around 3 PM, and she would fall asleep within seconds after I'd put her in her car seat. Adorable.

On Friday, we freed Geert from his chains and took him for a holiday. After one last skype date with some family members, we drove to the middle of nowhere, and lived for a week without internet and mobile phone.
Moreover, we camped. We brought a tent, air floating mattresses, sleeping bags and little comfortable chairs. That is, for the first ten minutes you'd sit on them. Guy and Diane showed us a spot on their very quiet campsite, where there was shadow and grass and trees. It was on a hillside, and you could only hear the sound of birds, flies and mosquitoes. We loved it, although we hated the latter after two days of being eaten alive. No deed spray will ever do, I guess, when there's so many of them. The flies were most fond of Geert. It took them three days to except him as a new member of the family, buzzing around his head and then, all of a sudden, they left him alone. It was a marvelous moment, although not very complimenting, 'cause it was probably his bad smell that saved him.

We had a huge picnic table at the campsite, and also a fireplace, and we enjoyed a bonfire and marshmallows almost every day. We'd spent long days driving around the area, looking for wonderful spots to hang out. We visited beautiful lavender fields, enjoyed racing the small (stony but not paved) roads, drove trough woods and villages and grasslands, hiked short distances every now and then, and went for a swim in every lake we could find.

Noor loved to hang around on the campsite too, playing soccer with Papa, or feeding grass to the lama and goats downhill. She made friends too; the couple that owns the camping, Guy and Diane, loved to hang out with her. Guy spoke English and practiced it a lot, telling Geert the story of their lives. Diane only spoke French. I tried small talk, it worked out quite well, but Noor did better; she would just take Dianes hand and bring her wherever she'd want to go. After feeding the goats one day, Diane and I talked while Noor explored the vegetable garden. When we hadn't seen her for a while, we looked her up and found her on a bench between the flowers, looking sad. 'Mummy, I miss my friends!' she said. 'I want my daycare and my home and my Lexie and my Zee....' Happily, some big hugs from us helped her cope again. I could eat her!

One day, we got lost in a border village, and ended up passing the Canadian border, approaching the border of the USA. We parked in the border zone on a huge parking lot to look up our documents, because we realized we would need them, whether we'd go back or not. Immediately, some American officer came to us, thinking we were preparing a terrorist attack on him. It took us quite some time to get it all straightened out.... After driving around in Vermont for a few hours, we decided to go home trough the USA to see a little bit more of this beautiful area (we visited the area in 2007 as well and it brought back sweet memories). Farmers disappeared long ago in this region, so the northern part of Vermont, NH and NY is mostly covered in woods now. Driving back home trough Quebec, we would see farmland again everywhere, and we'd already seen that for a week.

So we left after a week of camping and took Noor on a trip to the USA. We drove to Hannover and Ithaca, both university towns, and had a lovely time there. The first two days, we drove on small roads, and enjoyed the area a lot. The third day, we drove to Buffalo and did some shopping there. It was wonderful to get our first supply of newborn-diapers extra cheap! After a few hours in this car-filled city, we took the QEW home. Noor was thrilled to see her house, toys and bedroom again. She did ask for Lexie too during the holiday, and Zee, Dan and Laura's dog, but right now just being home brought her a lot of happiness.

Last weekend has been all about unpacking and getting our stuff clean. The washing machine has been working all day long yesterday. Today, my little darling went of to daycare again. She couldn't wait to see her friends. Geert went to work - he started yesterday already, in fact, locked up in the bedroom, doing his mail and some programming stuff for Erasmus.

Back to normal! So today, I intend to write this blog, then finish a report for a friend in the Netherlands, and after that I can start working on my baby 'Moses' basket. It's going to be a sewing project, and I'm looking forward to the result - the fabric and ribbons look gorgeous so it's probably going to work out fine (I finished my sewing course, so I should be able to make basic patterns myself).

MONTREAL

Our hotelroom for a week, 6th floor (Noor loves to push the button in the elevator)

Montreal, Courthouse. Coloured windows!

Look Mum, I'm pink now!

Can I please go on the stairs?

Visit to Vieux Montreal

Noor made this picture!

Chocolate Icecream

Visit to park and splash pool near the Mont Royale

CAMPING!

We had to climb up to get to our site...

And here it was; silence, grass, trees, birds and us

It took some time to get used to sleeping in a tent... we ended up going to bed together, around 9 PM every day

Walk around the campsite

Entrance of camping 'Domaine d'aigle'

Toilet, store, kitchen and animals to feed

Daytrip around the area; a scenic route through 'Canton de l'Est'

And then, all of a sudden, we'd passed the border with the US

Back in Quebec; we've seen a LOT of this: roads and beautiful hills and farmland

Trip to a mountaintop that we wanted to hike - but my belly couldn't handle it so we ended up driving there (10 K). Happily, this guy owned the mountain once and when he turned a 100 years old, he got himself a road to the top, so he could still enjoy the view. Up till that moment, he climbed....