Breaking out the art supplies

This is a test of the watercolor pencil crayons that I brought. Guess which ones are mine, and which is Tobin's.
I've also posted the original photos that I was drawing from.

Hypnotism, Bike ride, Science center, arcade

So we did end up going to the hypnotism show, and it was pretty cool. The magician guy asked the people who were hypnotized to do stuff like when he asked them their name, to remember their first and middle names, but to completely forget their last names, so that even if they read it somewhere or someone else told them, they still wouldn't remember it. And they did all of the things that he asked them to. The one that I thought was best was when he told two of them to pretend they were holding the leash of a giant dog that pulled them back on stage whenever he said video, and two of them to stand up, put their hand on their heart and yell God bless America! Whenever he said microphone. He then proceeded to release them from their trance, and send them back to their seats. But every time he said video or microphone, they did the stuff that he had asked them to do, even though they were seemingly awake. There wasn't a whole lot of people at the show though, because it was so cold that day that it was snowing sometimes. Once we went indoors to warm up, and my fingers were so cold that when I washed my hands, the cold water felt hot. I was impressed that people still wanted to go on the rides that were set up on a different street.
We did nothing the next day, but the day after that Andy (one of our hosts) brought us all on an interesting bike ride through the woods with borrowed bikes. Tobin, Julias and Lise turned back about halfway through, but me, Andy and Jeff kept going. The trail went in a circle around the peninsula that our house swap was on. It took us on beaches, through trees, past houses that were about 30 feet from the shore of the lake, and at the end, a road. It was very fun, and it was good biking without Tobin because then you don't have to stop every few minutes.
Then just yesterday we went to a science center called Echo, and they had a really cool exhibit about frogs, where there were also live frogs in aquariums, so I took a picture of each one. The big red one is a tomato frog, the one with spiky eyebrows looks cool and the little yellow and black one is a poison dart frog, but in this case it's not actually poisonous because in captivity they don't eat toxic food.
After the science center (where we also saw fish and turtles), we ate dinner at the Skinny Pancake, where basically the only thing they sell is crêpes, and they're very tasty.
Then we went to Pizza Put, a play zone, arcade, bumper cars, mini golf, laser tag, and pizza place. You could spend your whole day there, but we only spent 3 hours (still a lot). The way it works there is you get a rechargeable card with a certain number of credits, which you can turn into tokens for certain games. Armed with this card you play a lot of games, get tickets, then trade them in for toys and candy. We played on the play structure (including me because there were no age limits and that part was free), then paid 20 dollars and got 105 credits. After some air hockey, bumper cars and games, we traded in our tickets to receive..... Three tiny candies. You have to have at least 100 tickets to get anything worth more than 50 cents. We thought about doing laser tag, but the UV lights give you a headache, plus when you actually play there's also strobe lights and fog. So no laser tag.
Next back to Montreal for the night, then a train to New York.
That was a long post.

Magic and Ice cream

Today, the first thing we did was drive to Ben and Jerry's Ice cream factory, where we took a factory tour, and ate Ice cream. Their factory uses fair trade ingredients, and is super environmentally friendly. On the way there, we stopped at a place where you can climb really huge rocks on a cliff and explore caves, and its just off the side of the highway. All of the rocks there had huge quartz deposits, and they were all shiny and sparkly. Then we had dinner at Chow Bella, and watched a magic show which was amazing! Tobin was blown away by every trick, and then at the end, they interviewed him for local television, so maybe we'll get to see that. The same guy is going to do a hypnotism show tomorrow at Maple Fest, and we are going to watch that hopefully too!

Arriving at Vermont house

The people who are hosting us in St. Albans are really nice. They live right by the lake and it's really pretty and quiet and they have a huge yard. One of Heidi's (the wife) grown-up sons is in the army, and his room had a bunch of huge bullets and canisters of CO2 and a gas mask, so Julias and Tobin were very excited. Down the road a bit, there's this place that used to be a summer camp but now it's just a park. In it, there's a beach with lots of sedimentary rock in layers, with makes for a rock beach comprised of perfect skipping stones. Even Tobin got at least four skips there. I didn't bring my iPod though, so I don't have any pictures of that.

Breakfast buffet

Here are some pictures of the breakfast buffet yesterday, and some of the peacock feathers and chandelier in the lobby. They had everything at the buffet; eggs benny, danishes, apple croissants, ham and cheese croissants, bacon, omelets cooked to your specification, eggs, make your own fruit salad, oatmeal, cereal, etc.

Another hotel

Hotel number 4. And, we ordered room service! It was really expensive but it was like eating in a restaurant, except you're sitting on beds around a fold up table in a hotel room. The food was amazing: four and a half stars, just like this fancy hotel with pool, water slide, buffet breakfast, restaurant and plastic nicknacks made in china from the front desk. Plus an elevator that makes you feel like you're flying when it stops because it's so fast.

Driving day

We are leaving the hotel now, and I'm looking forward to a long long day of being in a car. My brothers and I played a game of pool next to the pool on the pool table. The set was missing the 8 ball, had two sevens and two thirteens, and we made one of the sevens be the 8 ball. The rules were thrown out the window for this game, although the pictures make it look like a super professional game.

The lighthouse point trail, and a giant fiddle

Went for a walk on lighthouse point trail, and it was really pretty. The lighthouse on the point was the first to be built in Canada, and has been there since 1734. It looked very old.
For part of that walk, there was really strong, really flexible grass growing along the sides of the path, so while we were walking I made a braided rope with it. It was about a foot and a half long when I was done, and I tried pulling it to see how strong it was and I couldn't break it. Then I tied it to a walking stick that we took, and returned the walking stick and left it on there.
Then we went to see the worlds largest violin in downtown Sydney, but there were signs saying " no access" stopping us from getting close to it so we jumped the signs and quickly took lots of pictures. That violin and the giant hockey stick in Duncan makes Canada the number one country for worlds largest sculptures, at least in my eyes.

On the road again

We have left Halifax and are on the road again driving to someplace called Sydney for the night, then going and staying somewhere else until we get to the Cabot trail on Cape Breton Island. The only info we have about it is that everyone says we should do it.
Then I think we are driving to Vermont and staying there for awhile with some people who instead of house swapping wanted to host us, then driving back to Montreal, return the van, take a train to New York City and get on a boat.

Lunenburg

We drove from Halifax yesterday and went visit small tiny fishing town of Lunenburg. It was very foggy out, and no one was around. They were building an old fashioned boat by the name of "Bluenose ii" fashioned after "Bluenose" that came before it. We wanted to go and see it, but the visitors office had just closed when we got there, so we didn't get to.

Breakfast at Smittys

Lotta hash browns!

Long drive to Halifax

We have rented a car in Montreal- not just any car, a fancy shiny new minivan with a GPS that tells you where to go out loud, except for when you go off the route that it planned for you, it starts saying "make a U turn if possible" and getting really mad at you. This van also has an iPod music USB connecter and three DVD screens; one for the front row of seats, one for the middle row and one for me (in the back). Unfortunately, it doesn't play movies from iPods, only from discs, and we didn't bring any discs of movies on our trip. But using the screens, I can see the digital clock display the time on three different screens at once.
Anyways, we're on our way to Halifax, and we all ordered at a french McDonalds, which Jeff found challenging and the people working there found hilarious (they were impressed by the french that Tobin knew, though). Then we didn't brush our teeth and slept in the car while Lise and Jeff switched off driving through the night. I can't say I got a good nights sleep, because I fell asleep at midnight and woke up at five thirty and woke up in the night every time Lise and Jeff stopped to switch. So now we are still in the car and on our way (2 hours left) to Halifax.
Oh yeah, and we also have I think five little train kits now (plastic bags with an activity book, crayons, and a cardboard model train in them that people working on the train or in the station give to kids) because everyone thought that Tobin was cute, and so he got a lot of them.

Montreal, car rental, Halifax

On the last (finally) train, one hour in Montreal then rent a car and drive to Halifax. I'm very glad that this is the last train, because I was starting to think that this whole trip would be trains.