Monday, July 27, 2009

Road-trippin'

So here I am, in Moncton, and it is FINALLY vacation. Next week I'll be starting a Family med placement in Cape Breton, but right now I get to "sleep in" and "relax" since it is my my only week of vacation between last and next Christmas (by sleep in and relax, I mean wake up at 8 and sit in a car for 8+ hours, which both sorta count).

It's been a fun vacation so far, starting with Maggie's birthday on Saturday. For some reason, she loves the tiki bar on college. Maybe this is a sign of me no longer being a Toronto girl, but just being in a bar where drinks cost upwards of $8 and the jerk-face male servers with stupid ponytail'd hair are blatantly charging extra on top just pisses me off. Still, with a Maggie birthday occurring, things have a way of being awesome, and good times were had. From trying to walk out with the volcano glass (that I'd put a $20 deposit on) to deciding to go to Sneaky Dee's when everyone else was deciding to go home, I think she had a pretty awesome night. I did too, thanks to being around quite a few of my favourite people, and some old friends that I haven't seen in a while.

John, Ashley and I headed home to Maggie's while she went after greasy late-night Mexican, and made it into bed by 3am. For some reason, I was completely wired and couldn't get my brain to shut off until at least 4-4:30 - not good when I had to be in Whitby by 9 to start the Massive Family Road Trip (henceforth MFRT). I finally covered my face with the blanket in hopes that re-breathing my exhaled carbon dioxide would put my brain into sleep mode (it actually may have worked). After a very brief sleep, I was wide awake again, and it was ten to seven. With the help of a very sleep John, I got all of my bags down to the car and made it to Whitby by 8, and the MFRT began shortly thereafter.

MFRT:

Has actually been pretty awesome! I wasn't sure how well three days with mom, dad and I cooped up in a tiny Toyota Echo would go, but it has been a lot of fun so far. Yesterday we made it to Quebec City, but best of all we honoured the traditional road trip stop at the Big Apple. We made it through Montreal traffic, Montreal Construction, and Montreal tunnels. And then we got to our hotel and headed into Quebec City for drizzly exploration and yummy (but salty! so salty!) dinner. And then crepes for dessert. And I managed to go the whole day with a good mood and only a 20 minute nap.

Today has been just as good. After an awesome, amazing, wonderful, life-restoring 9.5 hour sleep, we got up, went for a dip in the hotel pool/hot-tub (lukewarm-tub) and then discovered that in Quebec (ok, maybe just this hotel), continental breakfast actually means a MAKE-YOUR-OWN-WAFFLE bar. Yum. After waffling it up, we hit the road again, stopping only for coffee, pees, and Grand Falls. We drove through St. Louis de Ha-Ha (HA!). We made in to Moncton in time for mom to watch the Bachelorette (barf - I honestly can believe that millions of people waste hours of their life watching the boring crap) and dad and I to find a wicked pizza shop.

And now I'm typing this out, polishing off the last of the surprisingly yummy 1L depanneur bottle of wine that went with an awesome Moncton pizza. I can't wait for the rest of this vacation!