Thursday Doors – December 20, 2018

Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing it, between Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time), by using the blue link-up button below. 

Year End Recap – A Fond Look Back at What Was a Really Good Year.

There’ll be no Thursday Doors link-up next week on December 27th but before I say goodbye to 2018, I thought it would be nice to take look back at what I posted throughout the year. For this exercise I tried narrowing it down to one favorite door for each month.

In January I met up with one of my long-time Twitter buddies, Edward who was in town from southern California for a few days of r & r. Why anyone would willingly travel here from a warm sunny climate in the middle of winter still has me scratching my head, but hey, we had a fun time driving around and exploring different parts of the city together. That led to this post about the Bonsecour Market in Old Montréal.

January – Marché Bonsecours in Vieux Montréal

In February this beauty made the cut as my favourite from a two post doorscursion on a snowy day closer to home in Vieux Terrebonne.

February – Historic Home in Vieux Terrebonne northeast of Montréal

March 2018 contained five Thursdays making it more difficult to pick a favourite. This shot of the Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes Chapel on Ste-Catherine Street in the Latin Quarter of downtown Montréal gets my nod.

March – The doors are nothing outstanding, but oh that golden statue!

In April we spent the long Easter weekend in Toronto. This short trip led to over a month’s worth of quality door posts. While we were there I finally got to meet up with blog buddy Joanne Sisco – here we are clowning around in front of a mirrored door at Casa Loma.

Goofing around at Casa Loma

But my favourite door pic from April would still be this adorable little green coal chute door found in the Distillery District.

May was another five-Thursday-month. It was a tough call between two posts from east of Québec City: the stunning copper doors of the Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré Basilica and the Root Cellars of Avenue Royale.

In the end I decided I’d seen plenty of impressive churches before, but there was a unique old-world charm to these root cellars that left me captivated.

Hillside root cellar east of Québec City. This is how crops were stored for winter by the area’s first European settlers.

For June this one wins on cuteness factor alone. It was squeezed into another one of my posts about the Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré Basilica.

An art gallery near Québec City.

I also got to hang out with Joanne again and spent part of a day peddling with her while she was in the area for her bicycle trek on the Petit Train du Nord trail.

That day I also learned that I still have a hard head. Even though I knew better, I started out peddling way too strong for my own good. I was great for about the first 10-12 kilometers or so, but then I totally ran out of gas in the heat and over the second half of the 25 kms we covered that day, I had to get off the bike frequently to rest or walk.

Views like this from the trail reminded me that I should have never been in a rush in the first place.

We were away for part of July which meant it was a three Thursday month with fewer doors to choose from. My favourite was this lovely wooden door in my post about the Cathédrale de Saint-Jérôme.

July – Historic home in Saint-Jerome, Quebec

While we were in Nova Scotia in late July and early August we had a chance to meet up and chat with another fellow blogger and frequent #ThursdayDoors contributor Janet Rimmington of Rose Bay Letters. The refreshing iced tea and the few hours of good company spent with Janet and her husband made it worth braving the hills and the stifling heat in downtown Halifax.

Janet, my Mom said to say “Hi” 😀

A week or so later we got to have lunch with blog and instagram buddy Amy Sampson on Cape Breton Island. At her request I’m not posting her pic, but Amy, my Mom also said to say “Hi” – she really enjoyed your suggestion to visit Rita’s Teahouse 😀

My August posts had a distinctly eastern Canadian theme. My winner and sentimental fave was this one from our visit to the Maud Lewis Exhibit at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

Seeing the movie of this artist’s life story only a few weeks earlier made this an extra-special stop.

August – Maudie’s Door

August also saw another visit from Joanne while she continued her Trans Canada Trail adventure in the Montréal area. Hard to believe that after multiple failed attempts to meet over a number of years, we actually got together three times in 2018!

The weather was even hotter than during her previous visit in June so I didn’t want to push my luck out on the trail again. We did get out for a nice half-day paddle on the Rivière des Mille-Iles on her last day in town.

My September posts made use of more Nova Scotian doors. This one from the town of Annapolis Royal won out for sheer simple beauty.

September – A simple boat repair shed in Annapolis Royal

At the end of September the guest hosts who took over for three weeks while while I was away. As they have done previously, Manja, Joey, and Dan were awesome hosts. I thank you all again so much for filling in 🙂

So while I was on that break in late September early October this happened:

Waiting for the train at Capalbio station with two of our hosts. The third host who was working in Rome that day, surprised us by being on the platform when we got off this train in Rome. We were both so touched we were speechless.

If Manja and I both look less than ecstatic in this shot it’s only because this was our final goodbye as we waited for the train to take us to Rome for the last leg of our Italy trip. The four previous days spent with her, Marco, and their furry side-kick Fonsie were more fun than we could have ever hoped.

Thank you again guys. We really do hope we can return your hospitality one day 🙂

Since getting back it has been an almost non-stop barrage of amazing Italian doors. This one from Rome was my favourite for October.

October – this one has it all doesn’t it?

November’s post about our visit to the San Galgano Abbey in Tuscany produced this weather old gem that I still pause to admire wistfully every time I look at it…ahh…sigh.

With only two new posts for the entire month that were just posted in the last two weeks, making a choice for December feels kinda silly so I’m gonna skip it.

Besides, I’m still processing door pics from Italy that should keep me going until spring.

It was a darn good year of door discoveries and an even better year for cementing blogger friendships. I feel truly blessed to have met so many wonderful friends through this blogging experience, and I thank everyone who comes here to share this weird and fun fascination for doors with me each week.

As we get ready to close the door on 2018 I’m already looking forward to seeing what we’ll find and who we’ll meet in 2019.

I wish you all Happy Holidays, much health and happiness, and many fruitful doorscursions for this coming year!

I can’t wait to see everyone else’s year-end recaps too, so hopefully you’ll have accepted my invitation to do the same. Please click on this blue froggie button and add your link to our link-up list. Of course new original posts are always welcome as well 😀

Don’t forget that if you share your blog posts on Twitter and Instagram, use the #ThursdayDoors hashtag to help others find you, and please do take a few minutes to visit some of the Thursday Door posts shared by others.