No room at the inn

What a loooooong day. We got lost forever in Montreal trying to meet my friend Susan, met her briefly for lunch (she got the bill - thanks Susan!), then got lost on the way out of town. We zipped through the rest of Quebec and decided to push through all the way to Moncton. It didn't work, and we ended up in the dark in New Brunswick with a hysterical child and no room at the inn. This is a mostly rural area. Why is it so popular?

We're at the Best Western in Woodstock paying $120 for a $180 room, and the night manager had us sneak in the dogs ($25/dog otherwise, and they aren't even supposed to be on this floor). What happened to camping? I don't know. It was really fun watching Scott flirt with the manager from my vantage point outside in the van. If I didn't know him, I'd think he was a woman. He kept kicking up his leg like a girl getting kissed for the first time and making sweeping arm movements. It was cute. But we got the cheapest rate we could get, so I guess it all worked!

Laval loves its strippers

Tourism Laval has it's own TV station where they promote local attractions, restaurants, etc. Including two or three strip joints.

Bonjour

I couldn't have picked a better doggie daycare at random from the phone book. It was actually just a pet supply store and groomer, and the owner took in doggie daycare dogs. Romeo and Izzy were his only daycare clients that day. We were worried, because Romeo can be an absolute jerk to other dogs. However, he's breedist - the only dogs he's accepted right away without incident have been cocker spaniels. His favorite are blondes. The owner, a pleasant Russian man and former veterinarian, breeds cocker spaniels and had his nice blonde male in today along with his assistant's (wife's?) two cockers, a blonde and a red. The kids seem to have had a great four hours there and were fed good organic food and Russian sausage all day.

We, on the other hand, got lost in downtown Ottawa and ended up going 7 storeys down in a parking garage with no elevator. The attendent made us pay anyway when we left. We finally found parking right across the street from where we were going, Scott's Museum of Civilization. It was nice, but not as cool as he remembered. A good half of it was dedicated to Aboriginal culture and artifacts, with a huge collections of West Coast native stuff, like totems. We were like... been there, done that. UBC's Museum of Anthropology and Victoria's Royal BC Museum cover it extensively, and we also couldn't help but think it was just stolen culture. We did see the ancient canoe that was recently discovered in the rafters of some Scottish museum and returned to Canada for restoration. Mary liked the Children's Museum (I'm sure she'll remember it for the rest of her life). Otherwise we were glad tickets were only $10 each.

After we collected the dogs we headed east to Quebec. We stopped at the tourist bureau just across the border and a very helpful woman named Andreanne helped us book the cheapest hotel we could find that took dogs without charging a huge dog fee. We're in the Best Western in Laval. After we took our stuff in, we ventured into downtown Montreal to find a restaurant. Instead we got lost and frustrated and came back to the hotel after an hour and a half. I discovered my purse was missing and Scott went to search for it (I found it under the bed, grr!) and came back with Subway. So we're in one of the most beautiful cities in the world that's reputed for its excellent restaurants, and we're eating Subway subs for dinner.

Part of what got us lost is Scott forgetting the French directional words. "I don't know what Quest is." "It's not Quest, it's Ouest! West! Go West!"