The End...or Beginning?

As I sit here in Vanessa's house, almost packed, ready to jump on my bus to Buffalo Airport to take my flight home I realize....I'm not fully ready to go. For more reasons than I will explain here, I am actually sad to leave this Northern Country of LOONIES. Two of my best friends, Helena and Vanessa are here. Spending time after a year apart reminds me of our wonderful year together in England, and makes me not want to leave. All of my family should feel really special right now, because if it weren't for you, I might stay here for a bit longer.

Now Ottawa and Toronto are both great cities with different things to offer. That being said, I liked Ottawa a bit more, if just because everything is relatively close enough to walk, whereas with Toronto you have to take public transit. Toronto had a lot of culture which reminded me of San Francisco, and yet I still wasn't able to get good Mexican food here. That is not to say there isn't good Mexican food here because there probably is If you know me, you know that I could eat Mexican food every day of the week. So, when I get back, I'm just going to inhale some burritos.

I might update this blog with other life happenings, but for now, this is the end of my EPIC journey in Canada. I said The Beginning in the headline too, because of a certain someone with dual British/Canadian citizenship that will be sorely missed, and whom I plan on possibly traveling back to Canada to visit.

I will leave you with a couple of last pictures..some of the Canal, Helena, and my last night in Canada with my great new friends Warren and Kristen watching the Hockey game (there was an uproar when the US beat Canada, thankfully I wasn't in a bar):



It's been REAL, Canada!

The addiction begins...

I didn't think I could be addicted after one day. But once you get a taste, it's like you can't stop. I could potentially hurt myself, but I haven't, so I don't care. It's all I think about, I would like to do it all day if I could, but I am realistic in that I know it is physically impossible to do it all day. I did it the first time at 2am, but the equipment was too big and I couldn't even stand up. BUT NOW...I CAN!!!


We finally found skates that we can borrow for a while! Mine look like Batman's skates, and Helena's look like hiking boots. We went to her Aunt Maddie's house to get them..sweetest little Egyptian woman! She just wanted to feed us and protect us. She kept asking if Helena was feeding me enough, then wanted to drive us everywhere. We went skating, neither of us fell!! That in itself was a feat, but we skated like 2 miles and I honestly wanted to keep going. I want to skate everywhere now. The Canal is so cool, it's ridiculous. I can't imagine NOT going skating in the winter. It snowed last night and this morning so we thought we might not be able to go, but the website said the Canal is open, so we're gonna go skate again today!! Here are some more pictures of the Canal yesterday, Enjoy!

The Capital City

I apologize to all my faithful readers for lacking on my posts, as it has been more than a week since I posted anything. I am in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, and although many people from Toronto told me it's boring and there's nothing to do, I think they're wrong. I've been preoccupied with certain things, but my first day in Ottawa, Helena's boyfriend John aka Peps, took me around to see the main attractions of the city. In the winter, the biggest things in Ottawa are the Rideau Canal and the Winterlude celebration. The canal, which is about 4.5 miles long, is always open and there are hot chocolate and beaver tail stands lining it. People will skate to work and school, or skate to the pub and back. Winterlude is the winter festival where ice sculptures are set up and tons of activities span a couple of weeks. We walked around before it was all set up and looked at the sculptures:


We also went to the Parliament buildings and walked around:


From the Parliament buildings you can look across the river and see Quebec, it's a great view:


This is the library that only Parliament can use:

We walked around downtown and saw this great poster, couldn't pass up a photo:


Well I have to cut this short to go skate on the canal! Hopefully I don't end up with too many bruises! ALSO..HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!! Love you!!

Montréal!!

We arrived in Montréal and the first thing we did was climb Mont Royal..which if you couldn't guess, is where the name Montréal came from. There was an amazing view of the city and snow all around. We also happened upon a sledding hill with dozens of little french kids sledding and tubing down. We wanted to go, but it was a little out of our price range.







This is a panoramic shot from the top of Mont Royal, you can click to enlarge:


The next day I went with my other lovely friend Helena and her boyfriend Peps to the Biodome, which is like a huge forest. There were parrots and monkeys just hanging around, so I guess they're pretty tame because they could just jump on people.



We also walked around Vieux Montréal a little bit and went to the pedestrian square:

This Rue des Artistes street is full of artists displaying their work during the summer:





And the next day I left with Helena and Peps to Ottawa (the Capital City if you weren't aware) to stay there for the next leg of my journey.

Wine and Beer

Okay I mentioned earlier I was NOT a lush…and I know this post will not help my case but I'm gonna write it anyways. On Wednesday we went to some wineries around Niagara-on-the-Lake to taste the fruits or their labors..or alcohol of their labors. And actually the whole time I was trying not to compare, but come on!! When they asked us where we were from I would say an hour north of San Francisco, 20 minutes from Napa…and you can guess the reaction. Most times they would talk about the region and the wine and look at me and say, "well, you wouldn't understand this but.." and look at the other two people I was with who were Canadian. And they would speak in Celsius, and then look at me and say the Fahrenheit conversion..as if I haven't been here long enough (2 wks, which IS long enough) to get the basic gist of degrees in Celsius. Zero degrees Celsius in 32 degrees Fahrenheit…DONE.

The first place we stopped at was the Ice House Winery.


Now, most non-Canadians will not know what Ice Wine is…but it is a Canadian staple that actually originated in Germany, but Europe does not have enough steady cold, and by cold I mean like 10 below freezing, to insure a solid output of Ice Wine. The main difference in Ice Wine is when the grapes are picked. The grapes are picked around November, and it temperature has to be generally -10 Celsius…now for the most part, the temperature only gets that cold late t night or in the early morning, so that is usually when the grapes are picked. Imagine picking grapes..which are already fragile because they're frozen..at like 2am in the morning!! Anyways, the product that comes from this is a dessert wine. BUT, I'd like to classify wine here…I think of dessert wine as like Muscato, which is very sweet. Ice Wine is like really sweet syrup! I don't know how these people can drink it. The Winery had a Late Harvest which wasn't as sweet, but still. I like to DRINK my wine, and that wouldn't happen if I had a bottle of Ice Wine…no disrespect to the people that enjoy it. I was looking to bring back some wine for either my dad or grandma, and was asked if I wanted to get Ice Wine for them. Granted my g-ma likes Franzia, but I'm pretty sure neither of them would like to have a bottle of syrup.

We went to three other wineries in the course of the day, and also walked a bit around the Niagara-on-the-Lake town, which has cute little shops, one being a shop that sells every kind of spread! Like dressing, peanut butter, jelly, dips, sauces, oils…you name it.


We actually went into the shop because I saw…wait for it…..Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Peanut Butter. Kind of epic. But it wasn't as amazing as I thought. The flavor mainly was peanut butter with barely any cookie dough flavor, although I guess you wouldn't want your peanut butter to be really sweet, unless you're a 5 year old when everything should be sweet. Honestly, when I was that age, I could've eaten ice cream everyday of my life. And I actually asked my mom EVERYDAY. She's probably nodding her head right now because she had to compromise and do ice cream on Fridays , otherwise I would've asked forever. Or until I realized I would gain weight.

I digress…so the peanut butter wasn't amazing but the store was. We also went to a winery called 20 Bees, Coyote's Run, and Chateau des Charmes. I have pictures of Chateau..and it looked like a Chateau!




And this house across from the Chateau is the owner's place:


Our guide, Roger, was a cute little man from Ottawa/Montreal and he's actually afraid to go to California because apparently he thinks he will either die in a fire, a mudslide, an earthquake, or a flood. I was impressed he knew about all our natural disasters, but assured him that he was being silly because the odds are with him that he'd survive.

And, to finish out this windy post, we went to the Steamwhistle brewery yesterday in Toronto. My great new friend Warren has a friend that works there, so we got a private tour and 5 free beers….and normally the tours cost $15 and you only get one beer, so Warren here's your shout out, it was awesome!! They deliver kegs with a small cooler and a mini tap so rather than putting the keg in a bucket of ice you just filter the beer through the cooler and it cools the beer. They have an agreement with the bars they supply to keep the bottles and Steamwhistle will pick them back up and recycles them. Oh, and apparently they have a huge flip cup table in the back and they play dodgeball.

And the brewery is right next to the CN Tower, so we got a couple of pics on our way out.

We finished the tour, hopped on the subway and met up with Vanessa's friends to road trip 5 hrs to MONTREAL!!! We arrived here around 1am, thanks to the city and their one way streets and tiny signs….just wait for my next post, Aurevoir!!!

The Falls of Niagara

As you can guess, I visited Niagara this week. Vanessa's cousin Heather, and her boyfriend Caillin picked me up and we drove there, and stayed in a hotel that night right near the Falls. On the way to the Falls we found Captain Sparrow's abandoned ship...there are so many gems in Canada!!

We then saw some ice fishermen across the frozen pond and thought we'd go over and check it out.

We got to the hotel and walked around, saw the Falls, and then went to the Casino Niagara. Caillin and Heather won money, but I didn't, so now I know never to gamble because I'm bad at it. I'm not gonna lie, the Falls were not AS impressive as I thought they'd be, but they were still cool nonetheless.


This is a panoramic shot I took, the left Falls are the "American" ones..notice how puny they are. The middle looks weird because I zoomed up for it, and the right Falls are the real ones: