The Big Apple - 19 September

View over Central Park from Michelle's rooftop. 

Spending the last few days of our extended break in New York staying with Liz's sister Michelle.

The weather has been just beautiful. We walked the length of Central Park this morning for some exercise. Caught a bus up to 110th Street and walked back to  56th through the park. Then went downtown by subway to check out some cycling shops. Now sitting in the Australian Bar on 38th Street waiting to watch the last race of the Americas Cup. We hope this will be the last race.

Off to a musical tonight- Avenue Q, and went to the Apollo theatre last night with Michelle and a friend.

Portland, Maine

Did what people on holiday are supposed to do and spent the morning in bed watching a movie! Beats riding a bicycle! Then off to town - but it poured with rain all afternoon. So we wiled away the hours in the Museum of Art. Good collection of Impressionists including the obligatory Renoir, Monet etc. Also a great collection of Winslow Homers war art.

Tomorrow we head to Boston.

Update from Portland, Maine, USA. 12th September

Since our last post we have travelled across a lot of Canadian highway! 
We drove from Quebec City to Fredericton on 7th September, following the route John cycled. There we stayed for two nights with Angela, one of John's new cycling friends. We had a lovely time with Angela. Went out for dinner with a couple of her friends, and on the Sunday we went to the local art gallery. It did rain on the Sunday morning for a while.  
On Monday 9th we drove to Halifax in Nova Scotia. It was a long day of driving on 4 lane highway. In Halifax we stayed with Karen, a friend from our previous cycling trips. On 10th we drove into the centre of Halifax, and spent a few hours walking around the Citadel. This was built as a fortress mid 1700s to protect Halifax. Fortunately Halifax has never been attacked! 
Yesterday (11th) we drove to Saint John in New Brunswick.  It was very misty much of the way, so we did not get to see the beautiful coastline around the Bay of Fundy. 
Today we drove to Portland in Maine, USA. It was 475 kilometres. The day started out fine, but ended with driving (Liz) through a thunderstorm in heavy rain for the last 200 ks. We were on the main highway, which had woods along both sides of the highway. 
Our trip was through the towns and cities of St Stephens, St Andrews, St George and St David. 
No sooner had we arrived at our hotel there was another almighty thunder and lightening episode, with extremely heavy rain. 
We are staying here for two nights, then travelling to Boston. Tomorrow we will visit the Art Gallery and other attractions here. 

John and friends in Saint John

Montreal to Quebec. Thursday 5th September.

Today we left Montreal and drove to Quebec City where we are staying 2 nights in a hotel in the old part of the city. We drove most of the way on the eastern shore of the St Lawrence seaway on route 132 which is alongside the seaway. This is not the main highway but a secondary road. The speed limit was about 90kph so the 400 km took us till about 3.30pm to cover.

The road travels through many villages, some quite pretty. It's a tourist route called the Route of the Navigators - a reference to the early seafarers along the St Lawrence.

We stopped for lunch at a bakery in one of the villages.

The hotel we are in is the Champlain and has no view but is quite central to the old city.

Montreal, 3rd September

Liz and I are now on our friends' farm about 50km outside Montreal in Quebec. We met Murray and Marilyn on our cycling trip in Europe in 2008 and have been here before in the winter a couple of years ago. Their house is beside a river and is surrounded by trees. All very quiet and a great place to relax. They have friends coming over for dinner this evening; we met them on New Year's Eve 2009.

The previous two nights were spent on Gull Lake near Minden about 150km north east of Toronto. We were staying with Barbara Reid who is mayor of the local shire and was celebrating her birthday with her 7 brothers and sisters and spouses......yes a very social couple of days. She has a dock beside her cottage and a power boat with a 90 horse motor. So we spent a great deal of time swimming and sampling wine! John even tried water skiing.

I was presented with a Canadian cap, flag and tee shirt to congratulate me for cycling across Canada, and was bestowed with the title Captain Canada.

Tomorrow we will go to into Montreal.