Saguenay: La Voie Maltee (Chicoutimi, Quebec)

This past weekend, I had a 3 day getaway with my boyfriend.  Although, we didn’t splurge too much on food, we always choose one day to eat out and enjoy ourselves at a restaurant.

After some research, we came to the rather highly praised resto-bar/microbrewery called La Voie Maltee which actually has some award-winning beers to offer.  I’m personally not much of a beer drinker and well, seeing as I’m going gluten-free and going through a 30 day alcohol detox, there was none of that going into my system, but my boyfriend is not either of those things so he can.  Plus, the menu looked really awesome.  Although almost everything was malted in one way or another, which is weird because it doesn’t bother me when anything is malted, we decided to go.

La Voie Maltee has a nice little atmosphere once you enter.  It has some nice decorations and there is even a terasse near the back so that in the nice summer weather, its comfortable to enjoy a few drinks with friends.  For dinner, however, we preferred to be inside.

If you take a look at its menu, you will see some very interesting twists on various meals and its this that attracted us in the first place.

For appetizers:

Lobster Rolls VM

I started with Lobster Rolls VM. They are mini hot dogs with shredded lobster, veggies and fine herbs along with the mayon-Ale “East Coast”.  Ever since last year in Maine, I’ve been a huge fans of lobster rolls.  These were not only cute to look at but they were delicious.  I don’t know what herbs they used but mixed with their mayon-Ale, it was absolutely delicious.

Chili Cheese Sticks

As for my boyfriend, he started with Chili Cheese Sticks. These are spicy cheddar covered with crispy corn served with tzatziki sauce.

We both enjoyed these quite a bit.

Now for the main meal:

Pulled Pork Sandwich

My boyfriend had the pulled pork sandwich. The pulled pork is mixed with “BBQ sauce Libertine” (not that I know what that means). Its served with fries and coleslaw. He really like this a lot. I remember him complimenting it a lot.

Buccaneer Ribs

As expected, I’m a huge ribs lover so I took the Buccaneer Ribs. All these fancy terms that I don’t understand is what I’m thinking as I write this up.  These ribs are served with Stout BBQ sauce, fries and Caesar Salad. I must say that the taste of the ribs tastes some time to adapt to and the meat didn’t fall off the bones like I’m used to.  However, the taste does get increasingly good and the let me say, the fries are done so delicious.  I was absolutely hooked.

I wasn’t particularly fond of the waiter and the service he provided but he seemed to lighten up a little by the end of the meal.

Overall, a great meal in Chicoutimi and I think we made a very good choice in the restaurant.

What do you think of the food? Are you into drinking beer? What restaurant types do you go for when you travel? 

Trip to the Zoo

On the fourth day of my trip, we went to the zoo, Zoo Sauvage de St-Felicien.  It was definitely a big zoo with lots of animals.  The zoo layout was formed based on different regions, there was  Arctic, Mixed Forest, Mountain, Mongolia, Asia, Mini Farm, and Nature Trail Park.

So we can see these animals: (first row) Fox, Wolverine, Przewalski Horse; (second row) Polar Bear, Demoiselle Crane, Bald Eagle, Grizzly Bear (last row) Japanese Macaque (feel bad for the one who lost that camera)

What made this zoo special was its caged train ride which lasted about an hour to drive along paths right next to certain animal habitats and showed us the evolution of civilization in the region and the significance of the Borealis Forest.

On the top you can see what its like to look out from the caged train and after that is one of the settings.  The following are some of the animals on the trail, they were really close so I rarely had to use any zoom.  First row has the baby prairie dogs and the adult prairie dog.  They were all over the plains area.  After that in the second row is the reindeer, musk ox and black bear.

Another highlight was the fact that they had feedings for most of the animals there which allowed everyone to see a lot of the animals come out of hiding so we could understand a bit more about each of them as well.  We didn’t see all the feedings but we did go to a good few animals.

The feedings we caught was for Japanese Macaque, followed by the next one with the Amur Tigers.  These are just the males though, the female is with her newborn cubs and could only be seen on live camera inside their resting area, since the baby tiger cubs were just born in early June.  After in the second row, we can see the Lynx patiently waiting for food, then the cougars and finally, we saw the Polar bear feeding.  The polar bear had just jumped off the boulder into the water to get the fish and shaking himself afterwards.

This zoo was so amazing.  I would definitely consider going again especially since the ticket also included two short movies.  One of them is a documentary and the other was a multisensory movie which was quite fun and entertaining.

Viewpoints of Saguenay Lac Saint Jean

Saguenay Lac Saint Jean is beautiful.  All the highways had various viewpoints to stop and take pictures of the scenery from the water intertwined between all the mountains, etc.   It gives you a chance to stop and admire all the scenery around you, all the beauties Mother Nature has given us, something people like us in the big city miss on a daily basis.

This area is definitely getting very popular as a tourist area for its natural beauties and well some man-made ones as well.  These are a few places that we made stops at: viewpoints, landmarks, beaches……….*daydreams*

One of the first viewpoints we stopped at. It was on the way coming back from L’Anse Saint-Jean to Chicoutimi.  I’m not sure if the town was Roberval.

Across from the museum that we visited (will show in the next blog), we saw this pyramid of yield signs called Pyramide des Ha!Ha!

Its supposed to be an observation site where we can go on the top but it was all fenced, so I just took a picture from the bottom.

We went to visit the landmark (in the picture below) next to this church.  So it was a random picture, but I thought it looked really nice.

This was next to that church and its called the  Petite Maison Blanche (Small White House).  Its known because there was a while when a flash flood (I think) hit the town and there was water rumbling around this house.  Water was flowing through it and it stayed intact for x amount of years.  Right now, the water that flows out of the door, I think is just pumped through. I didn’t have the time to go in to check out the videos or whatnot, but it was quite a sight.  I can imagine how majestic it would be when there was rumbling falls flowing around the house.

That same day we also moved to our next hotel in Alma.  We had some extra time after check-in so we decided to visit another national park, Parc National de la Pointe Taillon.  This place had mostly bike trails instead of hiking ones.  It is very known for the beach along the Lac Saint Jean.

Look at it! Now this is why we went on this trip…Saguenay River was around Chicoutimi and now, Lac Saint-Jean around this area.

The water was chilly but we still had a little walk along the beach

Looking at Lac Saint Jean

Before we knew it, we were already on our way home.  Before we left, we had two more viewpoints.

These are the little snippets along the trip. Not big landmarks, not big goals in our trips but just little things we were able to fit into our schedule. It turned out just as great.  We enjoyed being in the nature a whole lot…filling our lungs with lots of fresh(er) air.

Next post I’ll be taking you all for a trip to the Fjord Museum  😉 Enjoy!