Tourist Sites

• Well, since i slacked off and it's been quite a while since we went to P.E.I., i'm just going to put a few pictures up our one-day trip here. Of course, we visited the Anne of Green Gables house, then went to P.E.I. provincial park and actually checked out the nightlife in the small town....of Charlottetown. Great, quiet place to be, we would love to come back here to check out the golf courses!
  

Onto Cape Breton and specifically Baddeck, the normal start/finish point of the Cabot Trail.

• Stayed at our first B&B here, The Water's Edge Inn, located just off the main street of Baddeck. Great location, right by the harbour, and less than 30 seconds from the main drag. Room was immaculately clean and comfortable. It wasn't a traditional B&B however, but a cross between one and an inn. We had breakfast there on the second morning (homemade cranberry almond scones, waffles with Acadian mape syrup, this was probably the best 'hotel' breakfast i've ever had!!)

• The first night we just hung out around town, walked up and down the main street, had dinner at Bell Buoy (not bad) and realized that after 9-10pm, the town is dead! Apart from being in one of the 3-4 restaurants in town, there is pretty much nothing to do except hang out by the convenience store. Needless to say, that was an 'early' night.

• In the morning, we decided to try kayaking for the first time, and based on TA recommendations, we booked a half day kayak tour (3 hrs) along Bras D'Or lake with North River Kayak tours. Took about 30 mins to get there but the drive was well worth it. Our guides were excellent/fun and we did a tandem kayak and my wife enjoyed every minute of it. We even saw a few bald eagles along the way! Perfect weather, a bit hot but nothing a few splashes of the paddle could handle! Tons of jellyfish though which was weird but apparently not too poisonous since one of our guides picked one up with his hand. Sick.

• After kayaking we decide to continue along the rest of the Cabot Trail. Took us 6 hrs to go all around it while stopping at more than half of the 25 driving scenic lookut points. I admit it was very scenic driving along the eastern coast line but it reminded me of the Road To Hana drive we did in Hawaii. So even though the views were amazing, it was kind of like 'seen that' so not as exciting.

• Stopped at Highland Links golf course, within Cape Breton Provincial Park, #4 course in Canada or something like that..very very nice links course and we will go back to play that one day. For now, i just bought a golf shirt to pretend like i played there.

• Saw a moose along the trail!!

• Next time we will go whale-watching for sure, probably along Cheticamp or Pleasant Bay
  

Took our first trip out to the east coast of Canada and decided to fly into Halifax and spend 1 night here.

• Stayed at the Residence Inn Mariott and it's located in a good location, right by Argyle street which had a bunch of cool patios/bars along the street. Great place to sit and have a drink while people-watching.

• While we were there, they had their Halifax Busker Festival going on and we watched a few performances, nothing special, a contortionist, someone that juggled on a bmx bike while on a 10+-foot pole..

• Had dinner at the Five Fisherman restaurant, located in a historic building, still supplied by all local fisherman. Reviews were good on TA but honestly, i think this place was a bit over-rated and over-priced ($49 for 1.5lb. lobster!). They had all-you-can-eat mussel bar but they were dry in my opinion..

• Took a Harbour Hopper tour around the city, 30 mins on land, 30 mins in the harbour..good enough for me.

• Next morning we headed to Peggy's Cove, a historic quaint fishing town with it's lighthouse as the main draw. This area was pretty cool because when you think about fishing towns and the simplicity of it and how the whole village was built upon fishing, this was it. Also bought a print from a local artist..looks great on our wall!

• After this we headed towards Baddeck, Cape Breton...and boy, this was a long 4-5 hour drive.
  

This weekend i went to Montreal to visit my wife, currently working in Boucherville, QC. Definitely had a few memorable moments and as usual, might as well list 'em down before i forget..

• I arrived on Friday around 21:30 and what was supposed to take us a 30 minute ride back to her place, turned into a 2-hr discovery trail in and around Quebec! Let me just say, i never though i'd use the GPS on my new phone, but without it that night, we may still be looking for her place...

• Saturday we went to Sainte-Catherine (home of Supersexe!) to wander about their main thoroughfare and we ended up checking out the Montreal Fashion and Design Festival. They had 2 big catwalks setup just off a side street and luckily for them, the weather held up on overcase clouds all day/night and they were able to run 6-7 hrs of continuous catwalking/DJ-ing that day. The music and models were jammin' and it was the first 'fashion show' i've ever seen...pretty cool, but i got tired of it after a while.

• Heading back to the car at the end of the day, i caught a glimpse of another venue setup on the opposite of the street, about a block away. Curiously we checked it out and it was a lounge area, complete with a DJ spinning house grooves all day/night! Sick! Ended up having a drink there, while lounging on the white leather sofas and got to meet jojoflores while he was spinning his 3 hr-set (albeit to pretty much 5 peopls, but who cares, the music was wicked!). He invited us to a little restolounge that night where he was spinning and with tunes like that, we definiitely were going to check it out.

• Saw the Notre Dame cathedral - where Celine Dion got married. yay.

• At night, we went to Garcon (Sherbrooke and Peel) to check out jojoflores' night. When we got there, people were still eating but the house tunes were playing throughout the place and so we had a couple drinks by one of the tables by the empty dance floor. About an hour or so later, i guess when everyone was done eating and the drinks started flowing, we partied it up and the mixes were sick, the crowd was cool (older and fashionable) and the $10 glasses of wine were the only bump in the night. I've listened to jojo before but never knew what he looked like, and when he introduced himself to me, i was like 'wtf?' just like that..cool guy, will def check him out again.

• Sunday we went to go see Cirque De Soleil's production of OVO down by Old Montreal. Old Montreal itself is very beautiful and is a way better Distillery District (prob b/c it has real history) and definitely a must-see. The actual production however, was ok. But i guess this is coming from someone who's seen 3 previous Cirque shows (Varekai, O, Zumanity) and although the performances were spectacular, they were more spectacular the first time around. I think if you've seen one Cirque ,you've seen 70% of the rest of the shows. Funny thing was, it was a show about insects but i still can't figure out exactly what the story was..

As a mini-break during the holidays, we jumped at a lastminute.com offer and went to Lisbon, Portugal for a few days. This was one of the first trips we took where we had no guidebook (actually we had one I bought at Heathrow and accidentally left in Heathrow...) and no real sense of what to expect..

• Stayed at the Lisboa Plaza, part of Heritage Hotels Lisbon, right off the Champs-Elysee-looking strip called the Avenue de Liberdade. Very nice, quaint hotel, easy to get to and free wifi throughout!

• The first day we got there was on a Sunday, and Lisboa seemed to shut down this day as it was very quiet on the streets. We ended up doing one line of the hop-on-hop-off bus tour and managed to see some important monuments/sites...but i dont remember their names lol.

• Found this really popular pastel (egg-tart) place in Belem and decided to join the queue and see what the fuss was about. Had a couple of pastels and coffee and soon realized these were probably the best egg tarts we've ever had and even better when sprinkled with a bit of icing sugar and cinnamon...mmmmm. We did try them again throughout the weekend at other places but not as good as the first place..

• Next day we completed the second half of the bus tour and this time it was windy and rainy..but it was 13 degrees Celsius! At one of the stops, we noticed this new mall, Vasco de Gama, and it being Boxing Week we went to check it out. I was only looking for a belt but i ended up getting a belt, shirt and sweater...in a matter of 10 minutes lol! Afterwards, we had no idea where to catch the bus again so we had some churassco chicken at the bus station and it was way better than Nando's..way better.

• At night we went for more Churassco chicken, this time at a Churassco restaurant we passed by earlier. Luckily, there were no line-ups and we managed to get in right away. This time, a bottle of white was 9 euro which was ok but the chicken was soooooo good. There was also this spicy olive oil on the table that was there to spice up the chicken even more. There were these 2 old Portugese men beside us so naturally, i kept my eye on them to see what they were getting, and they got this cherry liquer called Ginja...so i HAD to get one too lol! Sweet and smooth, i ended up buying a bottle at duty-free on the way home haha!

• We found a Christ the King-copy on the other side of the river, called Christo Rei. Apparently, the previous Lisbon bishop visited Brazil,saw the real one there in Sao Paolo and liked it so much he had one built just like it in Lisbon! We tried to go there on the last day but because of lunch difficulties and the transportation to get there, we only made it to the train station before turning back..

• All in all, Lisboa definitely exceeded any presumptions we had before arriving and it's a great place to go that's not so overrun by tourists..yet. The food here was amazing, the people were great, the weather was amazing (16 C on the last day!) and the location by the sea was beautiful! Come here if you can!