On Day 11 of the Summer of Schnyder, we rented bicycles to ride the Island Line Trail that unites the Burlington Bike Path, the Colchester Causeway and the island community on South Hero into a 14-mile trail that travels along and over Lake Champlain. It was the perfect way to get a flavor of Vermont – we saw the lake, the coastline and the Adirondacks in the distance; we stopped at a few beaches and rode through several neighborhoods, including farmland on the island; we also got to eat some local food while having lunch at an apple farm on the island. We made great time – one hour – riding…

Three days isn’t enough time to do everything for first-time visitors in Montreal, especially when you’re staying at a hotel so comfortable you want to spend time there, too. (See my post about the Ritz-Carlton Montreal.) We had two partial days and one full day in Montreal. Since we didn’t have a lot of time, I booked a five-hour bicycle tour called Montreal Highlights. It was a small group and through an outfitter called Fitz & Follwell. We don’t do a lot of group tours but we really enjoyed this one – we covered a lot of area on the bikes and learned a lot from our guides. And as…

I’m able to walk into a Residence Inn by Marriott like I own the place. I hand the front desk attendant our Marriott card, they have our preferences for King bed and quiet room on file, I know about the free breakfast in the morning, let’s get our bottled water in the room’s full-size fridge and the cooler’s ice system in the freezer so it’s ready to use for tomorrow’s portion of the road trip. Driving up to the Ritz-Carlton in Montreal was intimidating. I wondered if my t-shirt and shorts from an afternoon spent at a nature museum would suffice or if we should stop and change before pulling…

  After dropping our friends Charlie & Kim off at the airport to fly home to New York just before lunch, we left Toronto to head toward Montreal. It would have been an easy trip to drive the whole route that afternoon, but we decided to stop along the way at the Thousands Islands (or 1000 Islands) area and spend one night outside of Canada’s two largest cities. We could have explored this area a lot more than we did (observation tower, hiking, etc.) but we were pretty wiped out after a lot of walking and constant activity in Toronto. So we opted for a peaceful boat tour of the…