O Canada! (I return!)

Bonjour! Ca va? Je ne parlez pas francais!

Hello! What's up? I don't speak any French! (I don't even know if I spelled any of that right)

Oh, we had such a wonderful time. So relaxing, so fun. I think we're already planning for next year. You'll all be pleased to know that Penny also had a wonderful time--I don't think she's run around so much in her young life. Right now she's sacked out on the bathroom floor, recovering.

We were in Tadoussac, Quebec, about two or three hours northeast of Quebec City. Here's a map. Tadoussac is right after the break in the river that crosses the map, on the right-hand side:

To give you sort of a reference, here's a map of the province of Quebec. If you can see where it says either Chicoutimi or where it points to the St. Lawrence (in blue), that's more or less where Tadoussac is. Thank goodness for audio books: It took us thirteen hours to get there!

T's mom C. and stepdad A. have a house there; A. has been coming to Tadoussac his entire life. It's a community of "Anglophones" and French Canadians, so I could speak to about half the people. Basically, it's a small area with lots of little boutiques, a small grocery store, a few good restaurants and cafes, and lots of places around to hike, kayak, and whale watch. It's a tourist destination for quite a few people, and the Hotel Tadoussac was where they filmed the movie The Hotel New Hampshire, also a wonderful book by my favorite author, John Irving.

Basically we spent our days reading, playing games, eating marvelous meals that C. and A. cooked for us (A. loves to cook and boy, can he), taking little day hikes, swimming every night after dinner in one of several surrounding lakes, going to different beaches, and wandering the area. Just very relaxing and good to spend time with T's family, especially his brother and sister, whom we rarely get to see. I'll put up a few of the better pictures here:

View from the porch

C and me, before going whale watching

C, T, and R (C and R are twins)

Those lumps are actually beluga whales--we saw a pod of five but weren't allowed to get too close

Our first hike--walked the rocks and saw a few Minke whales

Penny got so exhausted after one hike that T had to carry her

View of Tadoussac from one of the many outcroppings; the big red roofed building is the Hotel Tadoussac

I just loved the low-lying clouds. The ferry to get to Tad is in the foreground

There's a ton of sea glass to be found!

Sibling love between C and R

I was messing with the "illustration" setting on the camera

View of the town from the top of la coupe, one of the "hills" (somewhere to the right is the roof of A and C's house)

Our little family

P.S. I still haven't seen The Black Knight; we're saving it for Sunday. :-)