Canada - Trois Riviéres and Baseball

We left Malbaie and spent most of the day driving to Trois Riviéres which is located between Montreal and Quebec. It wasn't the most scenic of drives - Matt did half of it and I the other half.  

We stopped at a Tim Horton's for lunch - mainly because none of us had been to one before and wanted to know what all the fuss was about.  The lunches we got were pretty average, however, we got ourselves a box of Tim Bits which are mini donuts with lots of different fillings which were pretty good and very cheap!  Little bit naughty though!

It was a hot hot hot day, we arrived at our hotel in Trois Rivierés around 3pm, checked in, had a bit of down time before deciding to do some exploring.  Our hotel is out in the suburbs, so we had to get back in the car. First stop was Parc Laviolette from which we could see the rather nice Pont Laviolette stretch across the river.  There were loads of people in the park with bbqs having rather nice meals - we were a little bit jealous, but also it was hot, hot, hot too hot to man a bbq!

We carried on into down town - guess what 'Rue Barrée' so we went around in circles for a bit until we found ourselves a car park - which turned out to be right in the middle of downtown so it worked out!  We went for a walk down to the river, then into old town.  Did I mention it was hot, hot, hot?  We began wilting, but I spotted a bar in the old town with a rather lovely outside area, so we headed in.  It was called 'The Buck' and it was proper posh - we had our own waiter who went through the menu with us - I only wanted a alcohol free beer (I was on driving duty) and Matt wanted an IPA, but our waiter took it very seriously and explained each one in depth and came back to us again and again to fill up our water and check we were ok.

We looked at the menu - it was posh - steak was the second cheapest thing on it!!!!  We looked around, we were the only tourists around (Matt was in his elephant shirt, Tom in his pink Rajasthan Royals cricket shirt), all other clientele were looking chic, with designer clothes and dripping in jewellery.  We were bringing the place down, however, it gave us a much needed rest and shade from the sun).

We then had a stroll around down town, until we started to get hungry.  We had noticed a restaurant that served sausages - we have seen Toulouse sausages in all the supermarkets we have been in, but hadn't found them being served anywhere until now, so we headed back.  Tom got a Toulouse sausage pizza (and chips) and Matt got 3 sausages with chips and hot sour kraut.  I got chicken and vegetables (and chips - of course - you can't have anything without chips!)  We were all quite hungry by the time it came, so we gobbled it up, had another look at the river before heading back to the hotel.  Matt had been drinking, so it was up to me to get us home, and I managed it even with a dodgy junction with no signals - very proud of myself!

Sunday, I had found that Trois Riviéres has a lower league baseball team and they were playing during the day today.

Tickets were cheap, so we thought we would go.  We tried to book online, but it seemed really complicated so hoped there would be tickets on the gate - we needn't have worried, there were plenty of seats free.  It was hot, hot, hot, again, but we had plenty of cold drinks and we spread ourselves out, hoping no-one else would come near to us (we were lucky, they didn't!)

This player was 6ft 8inches tall!

The Trois Riviéres team is called Les Aigles and have a great eagle as their logo and mascot.  Tom got himself a shirt, Matt got himself a shirt.  We met the mascot who came for hugs.  It was a good atmosphere.  Shame they didn't put on a good show for us!  They had won easily on Saturday but today was not their day.  The other team (Tri City Valley Cats from New York) out classed them, in all areas, and ended up beating them 11-2.  Oh hum, it was a good experience, I enjoyed it and don't really know baseball that well.

Just as the game finished a thunder storm arrived.  Rain was pelting down on the way home, the main road came to a halt, so we weaved our way back to the hotel.  The swimming pool which had been full to bursting with kids since we arrived was empty, so we donned our togs and went for a dunk - it wasn't really a swimming pool - really just a curly whirly slide, which was quite vicious, good fun though and it was nice to have a dunk after being so hot all day.