travelling! and getting lost!

i did get a response from that waitress, so i'll be contacting her as soon as i get back to montreal ;)

woke up yesterday at 7.30am, to begin transporting things and people between houses in preparation for the journey. we said our goodbyes, left montreal in my aunt's rav4, and drove to ottawa.

stopping, of course, at some truck stops along the way. traditional, with tim horton's coffee and wendy's (not bad at all, and i normally *hate* fast food).

we walked around the parliament buildings in ottawa, went past a very fancy book store / starbucks (they sell "african red bush tea", i was horrified), and then visited the national gallery.

absolutely brilliant exhibitions. before going in all i could think of was finding a bed and napping a few hours, but we kinda got stuck there for a while.

we then drove to the outskirts of the city, took a room in a movie-style motel, and drove around a bit more (because we hadn't done enough of that, yet). we got munchies and antihistamines at the drug store, and then had REAL pizza for supper, before returning to the motel.

i watched an episode of stargate sg1 on the space channel, then passed out watching an episode of star trek.

we started off the day with coffee and doughnuts... i made the mistake of reading the paper, so i know about the soldier-child who was kidnapped. bummer.

we left the motel, and made our way to the science museum. very, very nice. we had fun for a couple of hours - although the simulation "mission to mars" was notably uninspiring.

we then left for toronto. we stopped off in a small town for lunch (at subway), then coffee (at tim horton's; how surprising!), and then accidentally got onto the wrong highway. we figured it wouldn't be a problem. a couple of hours later we realized that we'd been driving in the direction of vancouver, and were closer to the north pole than we'd anticipated :P

we filled up with petrol before beginning our travels through the smalltowns and hickvilles, getting ripped off at a self-service for about $100. that kinda sucked, and has taught us not to use self-service in the future. and we'd been all proud of ourselves for managing :(

smalltowns and hickvilles were amusing. we eventually entered toronto around 7.30pm, and met my cousin at his office. we followed him home, went out to get beers, had a fantastic meal, and have just finished a long chat session, so we're all off to bed.