Here it is at the end of day seven and we are now fully immersed into the providence of Quebec.  It seems that everywhere we went in Ontario there was always an English sign followed by one in French.  Now that we are in Quebec the English signs seemed to have all but disappeared?  When we checked into the hotel for the night close to Montreal we did have English speaking front desk person. That was a relief since we spent almost 4 hours going the 100 or so miles we drove today. Half of that time was trying to find a hotel for the night. 🙂

There are immediately several different things we have come across in the french speaking area. One is that the highway interchanges are much farther apart than we have yet encountered. If you want to get off at a major road you must plan well ahead or end up back tracking as you pass it by without a way to get there.  The other obvious difference is that Google Maps, which I use through my smartphone, is jut not very accurate in this area.  I found a Holiday Inn on the phone at the next interchange. When we got off we followed the directions given on the active map and ended up by a concrete making establishment. No hotel in sight.

When we did finally get to where we are now staying we got off the highway and saw the hotel but couldn’t find a way to get there. Every road we tried ended up going someplace else! After four attempts we finally found the correct path and got checked in.  Now on to the final obvious difference for today. When we got to the room it was fairly well equipped suite with a TV in two rooms. But both of the TVs had the closed captioning buttons diverted to go to the hotel information. The people there seemed oblivious to know what closed captioning was or what it was for.  Since it was supposed to be a day for us to relax today we didn’t feel like doing that battle so I will settle down tonight with cruising the internet, blogging, and reading my Kindle books.  It is probably better that way anyway.

With all the experiences of today we are thinking of just skipping Montreal entirely and heading for the St. Lawrence seaway instead. Needless to say we are not too impressed with the only french speaking area of North America. But maybe that will change. Given it will be Sunday when we go into the city it should be easy enough to get around so we will likely give it a try. I’ll let you know how that turns out tomorrow.

And the journey goes on….