thoughts from the igloo

We have booked our Maple Syrup tour with the same Chinese company that took us to Ottawa, so we’re quite skeptical about the day ahead. Not to our surprise we are waiting for the driver in the cold with a bunch of other people  …and the driver is late! When the driver finally arrives  it only takes us a couple of seconds after he opens his mouth  for us to look at each other an smile! “Today we are going to see maple, maple erm the maple, maple, the maple comes out of the erm the trees, the trees’….and he babbles on for the rest of the trip. Thank God its only a 45 minute journey to Mount St. Gregorie.

We arrive and have some free time to walk around the maple forest….we utilised the time as a photo session. Today we are joined by Jade whi is also on secondment from Australia. Then we’re inside the maple house for the maple lunch – basically bread, ham, omelettes and a jar of maple syrup to add on to the food. I loved the maple syrup especially mixed with milk but the most disgusting item was lard…actual “xaham” jaqq!!! I thought they were some form of crisps when I saw them, only to discover they are part of the Canadian traitional food – yes when its freezing outside they used to eat lard to give them energy – I’d much rather have a red bull!!

After lunch we went for a horse ride into the maple forest and then we built a snowman whom we named Twiggy – my fist snowman actually!

A stop at Fort Chambly on our way home and dinner later in the evening, wound up by a drink at Vic’s and Analise’s apartment.

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