Well it’* finally done. Jen and I were married on August 13th. We had our wedding and reception at Inn on the Lake. The weather wasn’t the best, kinda misty, but it didn’t rain so we had the ceremony outside down on the gazebo by the lake. Andrew Smith, and Shawn Hines stood up for me, Andrew being the best man. Jen had Miranda Newhook (Andrew’* girlfriend) and Felecia Outhouse. Jen’* maid of honor was not present, that was Megan Bell, she’* currently out in Regina about to graduate from the RCMP depot.

The ceremony went off with out any problems, and the reception was great. We didn’t have a dance or a sit down dinner, just finger food and a lot of mingling. It was a smaller wedding with a total of 60 people. I got to meet Aubrey and Pauline (from my mothers side) which I had never met. Lots of Jen’* family attended which was really nice. Sadly none of my relatives from NFLD were able to attend. But we took lots of photos and even had a DVD made, so we’ll be sending that over to the rock shortly.

After the wedding, Jen and I left for Moncton in a 2006 Dodge Charger that we rented for the honeymoon. Nice car, but it only had the 3.5L V6... it really needed the Hemi. RWD is nice though.

We stayed our first night in the Honeymoon Suite in Crystal Palace… very nice. Has a heart shaped hot tub which was perfect for two people. The room also included free breakfast the next day at the restaurant McGuiness (I think it’* called) which was really good.

From there it was a long drive to Quebec City, but the time passed quickly. Most of the highway has been twined now, so driving was fairly easy. Once we crossed into Quebec the speed really increased. They like to drive 140kph (min) and stay 6 inches off your bumper. If you allow anything thing more then 3ft in between cars, they’ll try to zip up on the inside and cut in front of you. Crazy Quebecers. To break up the trip we stopped at Rivière-du-Loup, took on some fuel and ate at McDonalds. Hardly anyone speaks English, and for most service jobs, the person only knows enough “key phrases” and “responses” to do their job.

We arrived in Quebec City around 4-5pm (depending on which time zone you are going by). We didn’t have too much problem finding the hotel…. once Jen learned to read the map correctly. I say hotel…. but really it was a Chateau. It was truly awesome, I’m not sure where to start.

The grounds were beautiful, there were fitness rooms and 10 person hot tubs all over the grounds. We didn’t have a bath tub or hot tub in our room, but we did have a shower with 21 different nozzles/jets and a seat in it…. extremely cool…. I want one now.

I don’t think I’ve ever spent so much time in hot tubs my entire life. Besides the 10 people hot tubs, which had 8 unique seats in them, there was also a larger hot tub which you could swim in, down by the pool. The pool was outdoors and was very nice. Infact all the hot tubs were outside, but the weather while we were there was perfect. We stayed outside soaking in the hot tub almost every night for hours.

We took the time to walk Old Quebec City and Place Royal on our first full day in Quebec City. What an amazing place, the city is so much older then Halifax, and so many of the buildings are so well maintained. We ended up taking a trolley tour another day we were there and it ended up taking us back to many of the spots we had already been, but this time we learned a bit more, which was really nice.

We also did some shopping. In Ste Foy (where the Chateau was) there are 3 malls very close together. You do have to go outside and cross a street to get from mall to mall, but if you combine all 3 you have the 2nd largest mall in Canada (next to the West Edmonton Mall). We also noticed that all the malls and stores up there close at 5pm. They have Sunday shopping so I guess that’* their way of keeping the work hours per week the same. Kinda sucks if you get off work and wanted to go shopping.

We did take the Chateau’* shuttle down to the old city one day and decided to cab it back. Big mistake. The cab driver didn’t speak a lick of English and we ended up having to write down the address of the Chateau, no big problem. Except this cabbie wasn’t the brightest. It kinda worried me when he had 2 hearing aids and coke bottle glasses. He’d fly down the streets at 85kph (in a 50 zone) only about 6 inches off the bumper of the car in front of him. Which made for a lot of hard abrupt stops. Then for some odd reason he decided to jump on the highway for a second (to avoid a part of town I assume), the highway was empty except for us and a Toyota Echo, well the cabbie wasn’t paying attention and nearly ran us into the Echo when he tried to take our exit. Needless to say it was kinda scary and we ended up missing our exit… we got “locked out” by the only car on the highway. When he dropped us off he did deduct some money from the fare, but I’ll never cab it again.

It was bad enough trying to drive in Quebec City. Unlike Montreal, you are allowed to turn right on a red light, unless there is a sign saying you aren’t allowed. But one thing I noticed is that you can’t anticipate the lights like you can here. Here when you see the traffic light perpendicular to you go yellow, you can assume that you’ll get a green shortly. In Quebec City, at a four way intersection, you could have 6 different light changes (that’* 6 different directions) before you get to go. They only let one direction go at a time, and sometimes that direction gets to go twice as often as you. Also for pedestrians they make all lights red, and give the people 20 seconds to cross in all directions. So people can’t cross at all if there is a green light anywhere. Odd eh?

Coming back to Moncton we stopped in Edmunston in New Brunswick. It’* so far north and so close to Quebec that most retail signs are still in French. But at least the staff seemed to be bilingual. For all our time in Quebec, we never had any real problem with the language barrier. Jen was more afraid to speak French then I was, even though her French is probably much better then mine. I think she was afraid of butchering the language, my thought was, you can’t learn if you don’t try.

In Moncton we stayed in the “Rock n Roll” Suite at Crystal Palace. Not nearly as nice as the Honeymoon Suite. I won’t stay in the Rock n Roll suite again. The room was kinda cool, had a Cadillac for a bed, and a real working jukebox in the room, but over all was kinda cheaply done. It did have a hot tub, but it wasn’t as nice as the one in the Honeymoon suite.

We made it back to Halifax at around 3pm on Friday. We stayed until about 6-7pm and then left for Bridgewater for the ¼ Mile races….. but that’* another story.

Congratulations!

Congratz from the whole BC family....

me=picture *****
you=text *****

sounds like a good time, congrats!... i was looking for the "details"

3.5 charger?? whats the point...hello intrepid

i love hot tubs, and regularly swim in even the smallest of ones...

when i was 13-14 i could only dream about sitting in the corner of a hot tub with a beautiful girl....thank god time is moving

Congrats! Sounds like you got a thing against Quebec though

No I loved Quebec...... but french drivers are crazy!!

Ahh, when I visited France they were more crazy of drivers then the Germans, it was unreal. Maybe its only destiny.....(they are part French, right?)

Congrats. I am glad you and your wife had a good time.

Now about those french comments............. .............

congrats

we need pics

Congrats Merlin. The best to you and the new Missus!!!!!