We've Arrived in Canada!

How do you know you are in Canada? When the man in an RV behind you introduces himself as "Pierre" and another man greets you by kissing your hand and saying "Enchantee"! Hummm......can he give Barry and Jim lessons?

Being in Canada is delightful. Crossing the border from the US into Canada............not so delightful! It took us about an hour and a half.................just sitting in the customs office while armed, uniformed officials inspected our entire RV. We had to open up all four slides and unlock everything so that they could inspect every nook and cranny. What were we doing while all of this was going on? Just sitting inside the office, trying to figure out why they were doing this. We felt like criminals with imaginary numbers on our chests! After over an hour of searching, they came inside to give us our passports back and said that we would owe them $60 for the one bottle of Southern Comfort we had purchased in the duty free shop for $19. The $60 was a customs tax because our total alcohol onboard was over their limit. They were counting the wine and few bottles we had onboard the RV. We were not thrilled about hte $60 charge..........so I carried the lone bottle back across the border and returned it to the duty free shop and then had to walk back across the border.........showing my passport each time.........and give the return slip to the guards in Canada. Was this a random search or was it because we were pulling a large RV? We are not sure but are now staying away from Duty Free shops altogether! Lesson learned.

Now it is off to explore the town of St. John. We have heard that their City Market is the oldest market in North America, established in the 1800's so we will put that on our list. We will also visit Kings Landing Historical Settlement, which is situated on the banks of the magnificent St. John River. This settlement recreates rural life in 19th century New Brunswick. After this some shopping time along the waterfront is certainly calling.