The day we left Montreal for Toronto (4 september 06) began with a series of errors. First, we went shopping in Montreal’s incredible underground mall, which we had discovered on the Sunday, just as all the shops were closing. So we tacked on a morning’s shopping to our planned day’s driving, only to discover that it was Labor Day and everything was even more closed than on Sunday. Interesting that everyone we saw working that day was black.

Second, we tried to vary our plan still further. Should we take the extra 80 miles’ detour to check out Gatineau near Ottawa, and maybe see some hot air balloons en route? As it was, we hadn’t made the decision by the time we reached the critical junction and found ourselves on highway 17 to Ottawa. When we reached Ottawa we had no idea what junction we needed, and it wasn’t until we had run up an additional 30 mile penalty to go and see Ottawa that we worked out where we were.

So we abandoned that town (it had greeted us contemptuously anyway, with dismal rain and pylons) and headed down route 416 to the Thousand Islands. On reflection the direct route would have bought us an extra hour driving down the water’s edge into the golden evening sun. But we enjoyed the time we did get doing just that, and arrived at the outskirts of Gananoque (gan-an-AW-kway) around teatime.

We had landed at what seemed to be another stripmall with a Pizza Hut, Canadian Tire, Dollar World (or something) and Holiday Inn Express all lined up alongside the road. We had a room booked at this last, and went to check in.

The girl at the desk offered us a cheap upgrade: CAN$30 extra got us a CAN$399 per night suite, with jacuzzi, widescreen TV and wet bar. How could we refuse!

The room even had a double-door from the bedroom to the lounge, lit from directly above, especially for making spectacular negligee entrances, I reckon.

After getting 2.5 loads of laundry done while watching Fame on the widescreen telly, we went in search of food, and of some wine to have in the jacuzzi. Being labor day, we had no joy on the alcohol front, so went for the next best thing: root beer.