Canada: New Brunswick

We drove from Lebec to Calais, Maine. People in Maine say “Cal-las” instead of the better French “Calais.”  We passed through Canadian Customs (again using our Canadian passports.) The female border guard there wasn’t the brightest. She tried to make me uncomfortable and asked me many dumb questions, but I didn’t fall for it (she wasn’t intimidating at all.) When she asked me if I planned on leaving anything in Canada I said “I hope not.”  I know what she meant, but wanted to play with here a little. I like how some Immigration officers try to act tough (I have dealt with countless all over the world and this Canadian one was nothing compared to the Russian or American ones.)

After we crossed the border (again we lost an hour) I had to use my GPS to tell me my speed in kilometers (or kilometres in Canada.) It’s pretty useless to use them. We drove around an hour and a half to our hotel near Fredericton (capital of New Brunswick.) There were no gas stations or restaurants for most of the trip. When I did find a gas station it was annoying to not have “pay-at-the-pump” which I only saw once in Canada and how they price their gas besides the fact that it is in litres (again, that’s liters to us.) They say “123 cents” instead of “$1.23”) which just looks weird. We stayed at the Riverside Resort and Conference Centre (that’s Center to us Americans.) I wouldn’t call it a resort. While the building looked nice it had no amenities other than tennis and an indoor pool. Also, it wasn’t barrier-free as it claimed and the main doors weren’t automatic – I saw many people had trouble with them. We had dinner at the restaurant there (as there was nothing else around.) The food was good, but there wasn’t much variety. Our waitress was nice, but pretty dumb and it was fun to mess with her – again with “soda” and “restrooms” (Canadians say washrooms), etc. The had a wedding outside while we were eating on the patio so we could hear the music which was good.

The next day we drove to a McDonald’s in Fredericton for breakfast. There was one register open and a long line. The girl working it wasn’t the brightest and messed up mine and many other people’s orders. She should have been cleaning the restrooms or in the back not dealing with people. After we ate we went around the city (which was basically shut down as it was a Sunday – talk about bad Blue Laws) until we found a place that had tape so I could fix my watch band which had broken

We then drove to King’s Landing Historical Settlement nearby. It is a replica of a Canadian town in the 1840s (pre-Canadian Confederation which was in 1867.) It is a pretty big place, but luckily they had a wagon you could take to cut-down on walking. We had lunch there and had the worst waitress. It took her 15 minutes just to take our drink order (nowhere in Canada did we find anyone with unsweetened ice tea and very few with Diet Coke.) We only had sandwiches, but even that took forever. As I was waiting to pay by credit card we saw the wagon drive by (and that meant it would be a long time before the next one.) I wasn’t happy and made sure the waitress knew it (I gave her a 1 cent tip and wrote why she was getting a bad tip on the receipt.) I firmly believe that people should only get a good tip if they do good to great service otherwise they get a penny. We left and started walking towards the entrance. Another wagon came by and was going the opposite direction so we got on and waited for it to make the loop. There was a group of kids from some Canadian military school who were also on the wagon and were a little too excited playing with some old toy that one of them had bought. The majority of them weren’t respectful as they almost knocked us down when we were getting off. There was one girl who waited and then held the door for us. I felt bad because when I first saw her (she was overweight) I didn’t think anything good and here she was the only nice and helpful one. I guess you can’t always judge a book by its cover.

After King’s Landing we headed to Bouctouche, NB – 2  ½ hours away. I had only picked this town because I found a website to a buffalo safari and that seemed like fun. Right before the trip I re-checked the site and saw they had closed down. We already had our hotel reservations and needed to stay someplace so we went there. Bouctouche – which is fun to say – is an Arcadian town and everything is in French. We stayed at the Bouctouche Inn which was nice, but the town has nothing in it. There was one restaurant (I would call it a diner) in town that was packed. We had to stand and wait for a table. The waitress kept running around speaking French to English speakers and English to French speakers. The menu was funny because they had hamburg (ie hamburgers) as a dinner or a side. Luckily our stay was quick and the next day we left for Prince Edward Island. If I went back to New Brunswick I would skip Bouctouche and not stay at Riverside.