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More Quebec City and Montreal

If you’re a fan of lovely old stone buildings and mansard roofs and want to stick close-ish to home — assuming you’re in the northeast — Quebec City can’t be beat. We stayed in the old city and thoroughly enjoyed wandering around the EXTREMELY hilly, winding streets, seeing the sights, and taking loads of pictures.

One of my regular destinations for the few days we were in town was this boardwalk next to the Frontenac Hotel. The open space and benches overlooking the river afforded me the opportunity to bask in the warm weather with just my thoughts for company or to take in more of the surroundings and people-watch.

Flame-juggling street performers on stilts attracted a nice crowd, as they are wont to do.

More pictures after the jump…

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Travels

Instagram

Still working on a post from our recent travels to Quebec City and Montreal, but for now, here are a few Instagram images just to prove I haven’t disappeared.

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Hey, all. I owe you a big wrap-up of our last week or so, but my mind is elsewhere today. Ru was attacked by a neighbor’s dog yesterday on his afternoon stroll with the dog walker and is at the animal hospital awaiting surgery this morning. Gil’s out of town until tomorrow, so I’m just waiting by the phone and cleaning the house from top to bottom to keep busy.

The situation is especially infuriating because this same dog (a husky) broke through his electric fence and attacked another dog just two weeks ago and it seems the owners didn’t do enough to make sure it couldn’t happen again. So our boy has a big chunk of his haunch missing and needs one surgery today to install a rubber drain and another in a month or so to remove the drain and close the wound. (Ru’s vet took plenty of pictures of the wounds and his office notified the police department, so thank goodness that was taken care of before I even got there.)

So I rushed home from work and got to the animal hospital in time to see him before they closed for the evening.

Home, with jetlag

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Hello, everyone — it’s good to be back home! Milan was wonderful and it really whetted my appetite to experience other parts of Italy, but it’s so nice to sleep in my own bed again instead of on the cinder block that passed for a bed in our hotel.

I’m still trying to digest our experiences and clear my head from the jetlag, but I have managed to get around to posting pictures on flickr. Gil did, too, and we should have our captioning done soon, so check ‘em out! I’ll post more about our trip in the days to come, but need a little time to order my thoughts before I do.

We developed a liking for rugby, of all things, while we were there, so we just watched France kick New Zealand’s butt all over the field. I was rooting for the All Blacks, but hey — France won fair and square, as far as I can tell. (The game still doesn’t make a LOT of sense to me.) Now it’s time to scrounge up something for dinner before the LSU – Florida game and start thinking about what […]

Milan, day 3

Gelato IS as good as everyone says.

Horny teenagers are the same the world over.

Milan through day 2

It was a gray and drizzly Sunday in Milan, but we didn’t let that stop us! After napping for five hours when we got in yesterday (no sleep on the plane, unfortunately), and sleeping for ELEVEN hours last night (yay, Nyquil!), we set off to explore more of the city today. Milan isn’t really what I always imagined when I thought of “Italy” — quaint villages, winding roads (ok, they do wind a bit here, but not uphill or unpaved), open-air food markets, or areas that don’t resemble Paterson, NJ — but it IS a big, bustling city and enough like NY that we feel perfectly comfortable here. The architecture really is truly hideous in many cases, just like we were warned. The people are effortlessly stylish, which confounds us both, but Gil more so — I think he’s used to being one of the more attractive men on the mean streets of Ringwood. Me? I don’t worry about it so much, but I don’t think the women here like me. I’ve gotten some awfully judgmental stares.

Nothing much to say about the food yet. We got some crappy pizza at a tourist trap near the Duomo yesterday (You don’t […]

My Labour Day vacation

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Gil and I spent most of the past four days just wandering around downtown Toronto, taking pictures (his are here, mine are here), and generally being goofy. I’m so glad I married someone who enjoys vacationing without a plan and taking the days as they come. We also got to hang out with friends and family (most of whom I was meeting for the first time), so it was an action-packed four days.

In that time, we had one exceptional meal, one darned good one, and several others that didn’t suck at all. Our exceptional dining experience took place at Rain, one of Toronto’s best-known fine dining establishments. Gil had gone there for a business dinner on a previous trip and, based on his rave reviews, we basically scheduled this vacation around dining there again. Brothers Guy and Michael Rubino — chef and co-owner/host, respectively — have a passion for Asian cuisine and host Food Network Canada’s popular television show Made to Order. I wish we could get that program here, because I’d love to know how they created […]

Oh, Canadia

Gil and I decided to spend our long holiday weekend in Toronto because evidently there aren’t enough great restaurants or tall buildings in New York for our taste. Also, the exchange rate is basically 1:1, there’s no language barrier, and I’ve never been north of the border, so why not visit friends and family and experience a little fine dining in the process?

We only wandered around a little bit (darn these flats!) this afternoon, but that turned out to be plenty of time to experience a national treasure:

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