Mini TR - Quebec to Boston
 

Hi, haven't had a minute to do a trip report, but wanted to fill all in on the NB Alma portion of our trip. We had driven from Quebec - Alma with a stop in Grand Falls (stayed at a lovely lakeside lodge). We really liked Alma a lot, it's a very cute town.

We had a magnificent day we were there, clear blue sky, weather in the high 70's, low 80's. We hiked in the Fundy National Park in the AM (brought a picnic lunch), then headed to Hopewell Rocks in the pm as low tide was late that day. We passed the sign for the B&B you're staying in, it's kind of in the middle of nowhere, there weren't a lot of restaurants between Alma/Hopewell Rocks. We liked staying in Alma as it gave us a few choices for dinner that we could walk to. We weren't heading any further North from there though.

Hopewell Rocks was cool, had a fun walk on the "bottom of the ocean" there.

From Alma, we drove to St. George and took the ferry to Deer Isle (sorry it won't be running when you go), it saved us a lot of driving time, then went from Deer Isle - Campobello and saw the Roosevelt home, light house, etc. Couldn't get a room there, so we crossed the bridge into Maine and stayed in Lubec, again a very cute town. Home Port was full, so we stayed at another B&B two blocks away, but had a very nice dinner at the HP and met the owners.

From there, we did head to Boston, but stayed a night in Rockland, Maine as we didn't want to drive 6 hours in one day. It's very doable, but we had the time and choose to "take it slow".

Hope this helps your trip. Let me know if you have any questions.

Did you write this report for one person in particular?

Yes, sorry for mrkindallas who is travelling to these parts in Oct. I should have re-written it before I posted.

Also, for those travelling to Quebec, we stayed in Levis at a Four Points Sheraton (using points & dollars), as all the hotels in Quebec I check out were $200+, in addition, it was nice not having the stress of driving through Quebec with all the narrow streets. It was very easy to drive to the ferry and take it over to Quebec, left you right in the lower city and the ferry runs frequently. Plus, it was a nice ride.

We had a wonderful dinner at Toast, we found the service to be terrific. It's a four course meal, it takes some time, but we always enjoy "dining out" rather then eating out. To spend over $200 for a meal and be in/out in an hour doesn't make sense to me. So, yes, it's a slow meal (2 plus hours), but we found it well paced.

owlwoman, I'm glad you enjoyed your dinner at Toast. As I just wrote in a report, we ate there and were disappointed. I agree that one doesn't want to be rushed but for us it was over three hours and we had only three courses. It doesn't take an hour to eat an appetizer. The couple at the table next to us had the same issues. Perhaps they were short of servers that night. I did point out that the terrace was pretty and our servers were nice.

I thought the service at Initiale was great but the problem with that restaurant was the food was not memorable. (Hmmmm, what did I have there????) I think it was even more expensive than Toast.

You are right about the expensive hotels in Quebec; the Dominion was our most expensive and least favorite of our trip, although it was a nice enough hotel.

Just came across this...Thanks for the report, owlwoman!