August 16-18, 2013
Posted on August 25, 2013
A couple of years after first learning about the annual balloon festival at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu we finally reserved our tickets for a flight this year. We booked a Saturday evening flight and left Toronto on a Friday afternoon. We left fairly early in the day and had plenty of time to take slower country roads and enjoy the beautiful summer afternoon on the road. Continue reading…
July 12, 2013
Posted on August 11, 2013
Geared up and almost gone
We came out just in time to enjoy Toronto area traffic along the 401 and 404. After getting cut off and enjoying the pleasure of interacting with other drivers, we decided to escape the major freeway and headed for highway 7. We took Woodbine ave to Bloomingfield and then continued to head east towards Ottawa.
There were some great views and a pretty sunset, at which point we realized that we would need to travel at night and did not stop for any picture taking. The bombardment of bugs left a bad smell and hundreds of splattered bodies collapsed into a single dimension on our visors and clothing. Once all dark and with our stomachs grumbling, we stopped at the only place we recognized along the way to have our late dinner. The food at this Pizza Hut was not really worth mentioning but it allowed us to escape from the feeling of hunger and concentrate on the road. Alex’s speedo magnet somehow managed to dislodge itself from the rotor and he no longer could keep track of his speed. We also saw a deer standing on the side of the road, mesmerized by our headlights, it only moved after we honked at it. As we headed to our hotel, we conveniently noticed a Lee Valley store and noticed that our hotel was right beside CTire at which point we agreed to get some epoxy and magnets in the morning to fix the speedo. The hotel staff weren’t really friendly about parking the bikes away from other cars and on the side of the building so we found a nice littler corner and parked there. The room was great, a little cold but that was easy to fix 😉
June 5, 2013
View from the hotel in Bellagio.
The distance between La Spezia and Bellagio is the longest we’ve had to cover when going to the next destination. The shortest path is just under 300km, but a significant chunk of it goes through twisted mountain roads where you cannot go anywhere near the 130km/h that are allowed on the Italian Autostrade. In fact, we were going to omit Autostrade (equivalent to freeways in North America) completely due to smaller roads being more picturesque and us having limited road experience in Italy. With the GPS set to avoid freeways, our route was estimated to take close to 6 hours to complete. Continue reading…
April 5-9, 2012
Posted on April 17, 2012
Easter long weekend. Why not take an extra day off and spend 4 glorious days in New York?
