August 2016 – Page 3 – David and Yanmei

August 26, 2016August 26, 2016

Niagara Falls

Well, we've started our long journey back west to California by going east to Niagara Falls. We're planning on heading to the east coast before turning back across the country. It's a pretty easy 3 hour drive to Niagara from Bruce Beach. We stayed on the Canadian side today.

We went on the Hornblower cruise, which is the Canadian version of Maid of the Mist. I'd bought the tickets online the day before, so we skipped the ticket line and just walked on the boat with no waiting at all.

After the boat ride we headed to out hotel to check in. We thought about doing the behind the falls walk, but I think the heat and humidity took a lot out of us, so we just rested in the room for a while.

The town of Niagara Falls is very touristy, at least near the falls. Usually I don't like that stuff, but for some reason I found a lot of it appealing here. I feel like I could spend a few more days here, going through the mirror maze, looking at the wax museum, playing mini golf, etc. They even have one of those vertical wind tunnels where you can do simulated skydiving.

I'm Anyway, for dinner we went to a Greek restaurant named Koutouki, which was highly rated on Yelp.

Yanmei ordered Papoutsakia, which is a grilled eggplant tower with veggies

The meal was excellent. Yanmei had a couple of bites of my lamb and then regretted not ordering it herself. I've notice a pattern emerging at the last few nice places we've dined. She'll order the vegetarian option then after the meal wish she'd ordered a meat dish.

It rained a bit on us in the evening, then started to rain hard just as we got back to the hotel.

Overall a good start to our return journey.

-David

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August 10, 2016August 10, 2016

Montreal

We booked a food tour of Old Montreal, which started at 11am. We took the Metro to get there, but we stopped at Place D'Armes first to look at Montreal's Notre Dame.

After that we headed to the food tour starting point. There were 16 people on the tour. Our guide was pretty good, she had lots of energy and enthusiasm even though it was hot and humid that day. Unfortunately the first thing she said was we weren't going to eat classic Montreal food like poutine or smoked meat, because that is available everywhere. Instead she was going to show us hidden gems that we wouldn't discover ourselves. That's fine, and maybe there are a million places that sell poutine, but how can we find the best one?

Anyway the first place we went was called Brit & Chips and the specialized in fish and chips. Since we were stopping at several places each place had a small portion for us to sample, so we each got one piece of fish and some chips. It was very good. Yanmei devoured it even though she usually doesn't eat fish.

The next stop was called Cantinho de Lisboa and was a Portuguese place, we had a kale and potato soup with chickpea salad. This was Yanmei's favorite stop. Since we got back she's made kale and potato soup twice already.

Then we went to a cafe in the old Royal Bank headquarters building. Royal Bank no longer has offices there, but it is a massive and ornate building with huge vaulted ceilings. The cafe is where the tellers were and they've left the teller stations there so it still looks and feels like a bank. Here we had a BLT, but with prosciutto instead of bacon and shaved celery instead of lettuce.

The next stop was Cookie Stefanie, where we had a piece of gluten free carrot cake. I forgot to take pictures of most of the food, but I got one there. After that we went to Le Petit Dep, which was a fancy convenience store and had a mango-vanilla ice cream cone. Then we stopped at Soeurs Grises, which was a microbrewery pub for beer and cheese tasting, before finally going to Soupe Soup for poudding Chomeur, which is a sweet cake made with maple syrup.

Overall the tour was pretty good, but not great.

We were pretty tired so we drove back to Port Perry that night, and the next day back to Bruce Beach.

-David

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August 4, 2016August 4, 2016

Another trip

We were supposed to be resting at Bruce Beach, but Yanmei has wanted to go to Montreal for a while. I have also never been to Montreal, so we decided to take a few days and do another road trip. And since it is on the way, why not visit Ottawa too? So Tuesday we drove from Bruce Beach to Ottawa and stayed at an Airbnb.

I picked the Airbnb and I thought the location was great, walking distance to parliament hill. We arrived fairly late but went out for a walk around the city and along Rideau canal. Yanmei liked the smaller city atmosphere, not too crowded, fresher air, green parks, etc.

We heard there was a light show at the parliament at 10pm, but after driving all day and walking around a lot we were too tired and went back to our room to sleep.

The next morning we got up early to go to the parliament to get tickets for the free tours. We got there at 8:30am (ticket office opens at 9) and there was already a huge line. I waited in line while Yanmei looked around.

Finally, after nearly 1.5 hours we got tickets to the 10am tour. As we walked over to the tour starting spot, the “changing of the guard” ceremony started.

We didn't get to watch the whole thing because our tour was starting, but we inadvertently got front row position while they marched past.

The tour was pretty good. It was a relatively small group, maybe 15 people. I thought the guide kept to the interesting high lights.

Yanmei outside the House of Commons, where the PM holds press conferences

After we finished our tour we did a bit more walking.

It already felt like a long day, but it was only about 2pm when we left for Montreal. Fortunately, Montreal is only about 2 hours drive from Ottawa. We probably should have planned on another day in Ottawa, because there was lots of stuff we didn't see, but maybe we can come back another time. Also a lot of stuff was under construction/maintenance, I guess so everything with be in top shape for the 150th anniversary next year.

We finally made it to Montreal and charged up at a supercharger.

After a short rest in our Montreal Airbnb, we went out for dinner. Yanmei wanted to try oysters, so she is getting more adventurous (she had one, then let me eat the rest).

Long day!

-David

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