A Day in Hanna's World

We are back... finally. :)
We had a great time in Montreal. The way back was an adventure though (read on if you want to know more ...)

FRIDAY: We drove along route 7 and had a beautiful day. The scenery was great. We stopped in a small town in Vermont and did some shopping. Maple candy, some gifts and scented candles.
Arrived in Montreal around 4:30, checked in at the hotel and had a yummy dinner at a French restaurant in Old Town Montreal.

SATURDAY: We did a lot of sightseeing, walked around Old Town Montreal, climbed Mount Royal (my legs are finally recovering *g*). It was worth it though, the view was very nice from up there.
Went to Saint Joseph's Oratory. Really nice but lots of steps. :)
Watched the Montreal Expos vs. NY Mets game in the evening and the Mets even won. Had a late dinner at a French-Italian restaurant after that.

SUNDAY: Walked around Montreal some more and explored all the local shopping malls. Montreal has tons of shopping and all the malls are very pretty with lots of windows, fountains and so on.

Well the way home was less fun.
The "check battery" light came on in the car as we left Montreal around 5 o'clock on Sunday night. We didn't really think too much about it, hoping that it was a fluke. Well, after we drove for a while all the electricity started to go in the car .. so we knew there was really something wrong. First the radio and the A/C, then a bit later all the instruments (speedometer, fuel gage, ...) stopped working and all went to zero, power steering too, .... We were hoping that we could get back into the US at least ...

And we almost made it .. we were getting in line for the US border when we had to slow down because there were cars stopped in front of us .. and the car stalled cause the automatic transmission was gone too ....

So we were stuck in the middle lane on the highway .. with no emergency lights or nothing ...
Mike called 911 and he got a Canadian operator and they tried to connect him to the police but he got disconnected .. He called back and they weren't very helpful .. the lady kept insisting that she needed to know an exact location/town we were in ... But we had an exact location .. we were near a sign that said 500 meters to the US border ..
Anyway Mike called again and this time the cell phone picked up a US signal since we were so close to the border and he got the US 911 ... The guy was very friendly and said he would call the Quebec Provincial Police ...

In the meantime a trucker stopped and helped push our car to the side of the road ... And then a tow truck showed up ... The tow truck brought us to the border hotel .. and then took the car to the next close by town, Lacolle Quebec.

Well the hotel was very weird.. it was all truckers .. and we could literally see the US border and still they all spoke very broken English. The girl was totally confused when we said we needed a room for the whole night .. I guess they usually just get truckers taking showers there ... So we stayed there .. ate dinner at the hotel restaurant .. it was a dinky little rat motel really ... with all French truckers .. The room was tiny with just a bed and a super old TV (it boasted that it was color TV) that didn't work ...
In the morning we had breakfast there too .. then tried to find out if there was anything to do, get a snack or a magazine while we waited for the garage to fix the car .. but the hotel people didn't speak enough English to understand so they got a trucker .. And he was nice enough to give us a ride to Lacolle where the car and garage was ...

It was a farm town and we walked around a bit, mostly closed shops and EVERYthing in French ... Thank god the car was fixed around 11:30 a.m. on Monday ... they replaced the alternator and charged the battery ... so we were finally on our way back to the US ... and believe me I have never felt so at home in the US as I felt on Monday when we crossed that border...

Anyway ... I don't wanna make the trip sound all bad .. We had a wonderful time otherwise :) And I am sure we will go back to Montreal some time soon. I will make a page with pictures soon.

I had the day off from work today. Was lazy, surfing the internet, cuddling with my cat Ollie and drinking tea. :)

My friend Sharon picked me up around 4:30 and we went to see Uptown Girls. Definitely a sweet movie. Britanny Murphy was cute.

After the movies we went to eat at Bertucci's. So good.

Well tomorrow it's back to work. Friday and Saturday .. and then I get Sunday off.