Part the Second

The motel we stayed in in Vaudreuil was spartanly functional. It did, however, have free breakfast which you prepared yourself in a little kitchenette off the main lobby: orange juice, coffee, toast and jam. We met a young man, an ITS guy who works for some large Montreal company whose name and business totally escape my memory now, who regularly makes the drive from near Toronto to Quebec. He was very nice, not the kind of thing you expect from a traveler in a cheap motor lodge early in the morning when you can barely unglue your eyelids. I didn't realize it until now that his pleasantness actually put us all in a good mood for the rest of the day.

The rest of the day consisted of the drive to Ann Arb0r, all 11 hours of it in fact. I did four hours of it, the middle third, which meant navigating my way through Toronto traffic with hands clenched so tightly on the steering wheel that I developed a cramp. Hubby took a nap on the back seat (he had driven the first leg of the trip and ended up doing the last) and Buddy Boy kept me company in the front. I keep wishing my kids would learn how to drive already so they could share the load when we take these long trips.

The weather was fine, we met with a minimum of construction slowdowns, and the crossing to Detroit was routine and uneventful, a bored border guard asking the requisite questions which my husband dutifully answered, except that he forgot to declare the wedding gift we were bringing for friends. We arrived in Ann Arb0r at around 7 p.m., checked into our hotel, a H0Iiday Inn, and drove downtown to find supper.

We ended up at The Zanzibar, a restaurant on State Street that I don't remember from the days we lived there, but which was excellent. The hostess seated us outside, so we got to enjoy the mating dances of the fireflies who started displaying for us as it got dark. Our waiter was a gem, a beautiful young man who at first seemed very tired and lethargic, but we worked our magic on him and pretty soon had him chatting and laughing.

After supper we walked towards the concert halls, and in the area between them many people were congregating, young and old, enjoying an annual phenomenon called "Top of the Park". We caught the last song from a blues band performing on the steps of Rackham Audit0rium before they packed up for the night and we headed back to the hotel and a much needed sleep.

I took Little Princess and her BF to see the second Pirates movie last night, enjoying it mightily but coming out of the cinema with a killer headache. Today I take Buddy Boy to the bus station from whence he makes his way to being a WW I soldier. It would be a lie to say that I'm not a little worried for him, but I'm more worried for zitagsd whose son is in the Israeli navy.