Vacation 2017 Day 1: Montreal to Saint John, New Brunswick

Wednesday marked the start of our vacation! After postponing the Eastern Canada trip for almost six years (if not more), we finally managed to get a part of it fitted into this upcoming trip. As usual, I will be showing it day by day over the next two weeks. With events coming up, I have to keep it released a little tighter than usual. However, we actually spent most of our time driving than spending a lot of time sightseeing. Hopefully you will still enjoy it as we still had a lot of time. With our job schedules, we don’t usually spend a lot of time together so its nice to take a vacation where we can spend 24/7 together.

The first day was all about heading to our first hotel in Saint John. Going to New Brunswick takes a good few hours from Montreal. Our first day mapped out to be 9.5 hours without any stops. Suffice to say, we wouldn’t make a drive that had no stops. The good part however is that New Brunswick can be traveled in scenic routes and our first leg was all about the River Valley Scenic Route.

Let’s go on Day 1!

On the way over, we passed a county called Saint-Louis-du-Ha!Ha!. Suffice to say that it was pretty fun to say the name and entertained us for a little while.

First Stop: Grand Falls – Grand Sault, New Brunswick

Ron Turcotte Statue

We know nothing about horse racing but Ron Turcotte is a horse racing legend. Another tourist there from Alberta told us that he had met Ron Turcotte and that he was a stellar man, also that he is one of the best before he had to retire.

Grand Falls Gorge

Grand Falls Gorge was our main goal of this stop. The gorge is really beautiful. There are a few walking trails around however, the day was all about the thunderstorm chasing us down so we walked down one path a little while out before we say the storm getting incredibly close so we decided to just get back on the road and stay safe in the car and maybe beat the rain again as we headed to our next stop.

Second stop: World’s Longest Covered Bridge – Hartland, New Brunswick

World’s Largest Covered Bridge

I’ve never actually really seen a whole lot of covered bridges and this one is the world’s largest covered bridge and so incredibly cool to drive through. It was a game of taking turns with the other people on the other side. A little dangerous but everything worked out.

Third Stop: World’s Largest Axe, Nackawic, New Brunswick

World’s Largest Axe

We are on fire on checking off our non-existent bucket list of visiting the world’s largest stuff in Canada. My darling co-host Elwood Jones actually shared a list of the world’s largest objects when we shared the image on our Game Warp Instagram feed and my personal Facebook feed and I’ve actually went to a few of them across Canada. This was way more awesome than we had anticipated. Other than the thunderstorm threatening us to leave, we had a lot of fun there. Plus, there was some nice scenery by the river.

Saint John’s  & Dinner

Here’s a shot before getting into Saint John, New Brunswick where we had our first hotel stay at Delta. While the amenities were pretty cool, my main thing about this hotel is that unless you pay extra for valet parking which is like $5 more or something than normal parking next door, the parking lot next door is actually pretty inconvenient because you need to walk from one end of the mall to the next to get into the hotels and have access to the rooms. However, the room is pretty neat and it was spacious and very clean.

We went to the restaurant located in the mall called Mix Resto-Bar.

My husband took the Fish & Chips. And I took the Maple glazed Salmon with Basmati rice and vegetables.

Mix Resto-Bar was okay. The food tasted good. We both enjoyed our meals quite a bit. However, the service is not too good. Our waitress was friendly however, while she suggested a drink to me, she never brought it to me. The good thing is it wasn’t even charged but then she also forgot to charge my husband’s drink and I had to remind her to add it back on. It was late at night and I guess everyone makes mistakes and forgets stuff. I wasn’t really desperate for a drink either so it didn’t matter too much. We had decent food and that is what really counted at that moment.

That’s the end of Day 1! A long drive but a few interesting stops!
Day 2 will be on Thursday!
Have you been to New Brunswick before?