Montreal to Iles de la Madeleine, Quebec, Canada

9 -10 May 2006

Lobster galore!

The original plan had been to fly directly to St Johns (Newfoundland), but that would have meant a 6 and a half hour flight. Since we were not too pushed for time, we preferred to cut the journey to avoid arriving tired in St. Johns and having to leave early the next morning for the Atlantic crossing to the Azores. Claude and Guy recommended les Iles de la Madeleine as a convenient and pleasant stopover.
Both Claude and Guy came to St. Hubert to see us off. It was a smooth sunny flight with an unusual 20 knot headwind (IFR 4:00 hrs).
A strong wind was blowing at Iles de la Madeleine and it was decidedly chilly. The islands are quite small but the distances are great enough to need a car. We rented one at the airport and checked in at a hotel. We had planned to do some walking but we’d offloaded all our really warm clothes in Recife.

We braved the winds on a short brisk walk lasting about 15 minutes before heading for La Factrie in Etang du Nord. La Factrie was highly recommended for fresh homard. And we were in luck: the lobster season had only just started. The homard was certainly fresh and they had some very respectable French white wine to accompany it. It was a weird place, though. More like a self-service canteen than a restaurant. But it was full of local people who obviously knew where to find unadulterated fresh lobster.
We learnt that St. Johns had been fogbound the whole day, so we were doubly pleased we’d decided on making the stopover.