Ah, the French language! You put sounds where there are none, add letters that are ignored, and are vowel prolific! I have had to text Erica a couple of times asking for pronunciation. Today we visited the recreation of a French fort and settlement. It was an hour drive on a bus that had broken air conditioning and questionable transmission. Once we arrived, a guide met us at the bus - a self-described Acadian - and his French accent was fun to listen to. When he welcomed us, he pronounced the name of the place as ‘Looey-boor’. This was a very well-done re-creation of a settlement that was on this very spot in the 1700s. There were employees in period costumes that spoke with guests about life at the time as well as including the visitors in reenactments such as prisoner shaming, circle dances, etc. The tour lasted about an hour, but Steve and I peeled off when we discovered the local ‘tavern’ was a working one! It wasn’t long before several others in the group joined us!
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| 17th century French couture |
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| He had the nerve to wear a mustache in public! |
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| Chatting up the bar keep |
We stayed at the fort for about three hours. When it was time to get back on the bus, there was a new one! Yay! The driver had driven back, gotten a better one, then returned. Whew! It was nice to have AC on this muggy day. Our driver then drove us to a restaurant in a hotel in downtown Sydney. It looked very nice on the website, but of course since we were a large group, we were seated in a large room with no windows… in the basement. The fun didn’t stop there, though. Salads came out quickly and were good, so we had high hopes - which were dashed when entrees came out very sporadically. My mushroom risotto came out first, and after 15 minutes of waiting, the rest of the table told me to just start eating. I did, but not for long. It was terrible. Finally, Steve and our other tablemates’ dinners arrived and were equally disappointing. The server who was taking drink orders never came to our table. We had now been there an hour. Steve and I decided not to wait for dessert, and instead went upstairs to the lovely restaurant and sat in the bar with a glass of wine. Our friends finally came up and said they had run out of dessert so not everyone got one. They said we made the right choice to leave. Anyway, we all got back on the bus for the 30 minute ride back to the campground. The campground was hosting a kitchen party, but we were pooped after a long day and just went to bed. I think everyone else did the same!
We leave this area in the morning, and Steve and I are going to take a short side trip to an old cemetery in Antigonish. More on that tomorrow night!