Back in the USA
True to our word, we hot-footed it out of Montreal straight away this morning.
OK, we did hang around long enough to have breakfast in Croissanterie. And then we missed a turnoff on the freeway, and had to adjust our route, only to find that the junction for the revised route was closed for roadworks. Eventually we were bowling towards the border. Once we got there, we joined a long, slow queue for the border control.
We sat in the queue for a while, listening to Vermont's Star Radio, and its 80s weekend. Towards the end of the queue, we pulled into the Canadian duty free shop, where we were able to claim back the tax on much of our Canadian spending. This includes the Gamecube: hooray! All this was hassle: I had to go back to the car to fetch some of the goods as evidence. The girl who served us was nice but dim. First she claimed that North Bay was in the USA (despite the big "Ontario" written on the receipt), then she asked what state our car was from: "Washington", "no, what state?", "Washington State", "Oh.... is that W.A.?".
The actual border crossing was no hassle whatsoever, and we'd been fretting over it. Well, I had.
We spent a very short time in New York State; it looked very nice. We didn't see any yellow cabs though. Before long we were crossing a cool bridge onto the Lake Champlain islands in Vermont.
They pretty islands, and the road had frequent views of the water on either side. The islands are linked by bridges, including one drawbridge, which we had to queue to get over.
We arrived in Burlington and checked into a motel. Back in the USA, we can't afford the opulence we've got used to in Canada. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon doing our laundry. This time I helped! While the clothes were washing, we browed in Barnes & Noble, a chain bookshop, where I bought Choke by Chuck Palahniuk, and Islam: a Short History -- educational! Between Barnes & Noble and the laundrette, I spotted a sign that said "try our BBQ taster". I made a note of this, and asked Debbie if she fancied going to the barbeque restaurant for dinner. She thought it was a great idea.
When we returned to the same spot later in the evening, it was shut. It wasn't a restaurant at all. It was a butcher's shop. We cruised into downtown Burlington to see what we could find, and what we found was great difficulty parking and a lot of bustling pedestrians. We eventually parked in a multi-storey car park, and cruised some more on foot. Burlington turns out to be a very pleasant place: a chunk of downtown was pedestrianised, and lots of shops were open well into the evening. Our only problem was that we were starving and all the restaurants looked lovely but had people conspicuously waiting outside for a table to free itself.
Eventually we asked at a nice looking restaurant, and were told it would be half and hour. We agreed to wait, and I was given a little vibrating pager. We could wander around browsing until our table was ready. We killed the time in a little second-hand bookshop -- open at 9:30PM -- and came away with some more books. The pager buzzed just as I was paying.
The restaurant turned out to be attached to NECI, the New England Culinary Institute, so this was great food and great service, at a bargain price. We're talking class. We're talking Balsamic Vinegar class! Lordy!
In all seriousness, it was lovely. Back in the motel room, I have Islam to learn about.