It’s finally time. Later today we’ll begin the long, long journey to Australia.
We’re ready. We are so ready. Our plans are made. Our bags are packed. We have outfitted ourselves for 15 hours on a plane as best one can without a fifth of whisky. Work is sorted. The cats will be well looked-after. Our papers are in order. We’re ready.
And as if we needed an extra nudge out the door, this morning in Toronto it’s grey, windy and a chilly 8 degrees.
Here we go.
Since last year’s camping excursion went so well we decided to take another crack at it this year. So, last weekend Nellie and I booked a campsite way in advance for the relatively bug-free end-of-August.
There was, however, a bit of a snafu with the rental car reservation. And by “snafu” I mean that I completely bollocksed it up and reserved it for the wrong weekend. Trying to book a rental car 12 hours before you need leads to some predictably ridiculous prices, so once again it was Autoshare to the rescue. We knew we’d have a bit of a mileage penalty, but there was a car nearby and available, so we jumped on it. Crisis: narrowly avoided. Hooray for choice!
The drive to the park was much, much shorter than our drive to Algonquin last year. Presqu’ile is only about two hours away, and since we left Saturday (and came back Monday) we were more or less problem-free on the roads. Our campsite was fantastic too…lots of room, good privacy (relatively speaking…it was a very busy campground) and literally steps to the shore of Lake Ontario. Nellie’s early planning had paid off in a great site. We even had a second picnic table where we could do all our storage and prep!
Because we were so close to the lake, we decided to cool down from all the setup by jumping in the lake. You can’t quite tell from that picture, but trust me…the lake was right there. By the time we got back in, dried off and changed it was time to make dinner. The first night’s meal was pulled pork (from Cumbrae’s) on hot dog buns, along with corn on the cob. It was amazing.
We tried to pair it with a Fielding Riesling, which didn’t really work at all, but whatever — we had beer. We stuffed ourselves silly, drank our wine by the fire and enjoyed the warm evening. The clouds blocked out any view of the stars, but we couldn’t really complain. We crashed hard that night and slept like the dead.
We slept in the next morning, rousing ourselves mainly at the knowledge of what was for breakfast: bacon, eggs, fresh blueberries…and leftover pulled pork. That gave us the energy for one of the short walks in the park — walk, not hike. A little boring, I guess, but that’s the tradeoff for the proximity to Toronto. And our little walk was fairly rewarding in terms of flora and especially fauna — butterflies, snakes, frogs and plenty of birds.
We got back to our campsite just in time to cool down with another dip in the lake before the first rain shower of the day began. We hid in the tent until it passed, came out and had lunch. Shortly after we finished cleaning up the real rain started. It was hard for us to know how hard the rain was since we were under tree canopy and strong fly, and we certainly didn’t know that the storm had spawned tornadoes elsewhere in Ontario. To us it actually sounded kind of nice…Nellie fell asleep in the tent while I read, and a couple of hours later it was all over. Our site was pretty wet, but the view from our tent of the sky over the lake was incredible.
We sat on the beach and had a beer, marveling at how calm the lake had become and at the clear skies we could see emerging on the horizon. We relaxed a while longer, then got to work cooking dinner. Evening #2 was centered around plowman’s lunch and a Southbrook Syrah. We ate, cleaning up and spent the evening sitting by the fire, drinking wine and whisky and staring at stars.
When we went to sleep the lake was as calm as a plane of glass, but around 4:30 something — the wind, I suppose — whipped it into a crazy froth; the crashing waves woke us, and kept us awake for hours. We managed to get back to sleep, but were still pretty groggy when the sun came up. We decided not to stick around much longer, instead having some oatmeal and breaking down the site (even with much of our equipment still wet) and jumping in the car. We made it back to Toronto in no time, had a nice long shower, dropped the car off and spent the afternoon on a patio soaking up what remained of the day’s sun.
Not a bad weekend at all.
Despite it being nearly three days shorter than I’d intended, the trip to Nova Scotia Nellie and I just wrapped up was a pretty good one.
We arrived in good time Wednesday night, and spent Thursday catching up with family whilst enjoying sunshine, taking walks, observing hummingbirds (more than a dozen frequent my parents’ kitchen window), playing catch, scratching dogs and eating everything in sight. We were also quite glad we were not back in Toronto for the 51-degree heat.
That evening many people stopped by the house to say hello and catch up with my parents and brothers. My friend Adam came, and we caught up for the first time in years.
On Friday some of that Toronto heat made its way east to us, and we had to take shelter from the sun and humidity as best we could. That meant crib, playing catch in the shade and (naturally) more eating. We couldn’t escape the heat entirely though, as we helped our dad make three batches of maple cream and bottle some syrup while the ladies were off at the spa.
That night we drove into the town where we went to high school and met up with a few of my brother’s old classmates. We soon switched locales from the old tavern to Bare Bones, the lone decent spot in town as far as I can tell, where they had live music (Jenny MacDonald, on this particular night) and better wine. It was there that I had a completely random bump-into with a friend from high school, who I hadn’t seen since he graduated in 1992. But we recognized one another right away and, in the few minutes that we had to catch up, realized that we share a favourite beer: Maudite. It’s a small, tasty world.
Saturday morning we got up early and drove back to Halifax. Along the way we saw a deer walking along a riverbank, a young bear running into the woods and five cattle running down the Trans Canada median. I can’t explain that last one; I just know what I saw. Our family and our sister-in-law’s family had a get-together planned for the afternoon, but our early appointments at the airport (approved for Nexus passes…woot!) meant we had a few hours to kill, so we checked in to our hotel and found a spot on the Hart & Thistle patio. We’d been meaning to try out the new gastropub since we heard it opened. The food was nothing to write home about, but the beer was good — we each had a brewed-in-house Preacher Man’s Daughter hefeweizen to start, followed by a Propeller hefeweizen. It was just a hefeweizen kind of afternoon, apparently.
Rain hampered the family get-together somewhat, but we piled into someone’s lovely home to catch up and break bread. It brought back memories of France four years ago, when we were all together last, and the times we had there. Except with kids this time. Nellie and I said our goodbyes to everyone just after dinner as we had plans with friends, plans that involved me finally having a couple of drinks after so many nights of being on medications and/or acting as designated driver.
Another new Halifax joint we wanted to try out was Obladee wine bar. Four friends joined us there, and we perched in the window (the same table as the ladies you see in the picture on their website) trying several glasses of very yummy wine. I had an Alsatian Riesling whose name I can’t recall right now; a Bonterra organic Chardonnay; a Domaine Bernard Beaudry Chinon; an Arboleda Carmenere; The Wolftrap, from Franschhoek South Africa; and a Luigi Bosca Reserva Syrah. All were terrific, even the Riesling which was — as advertised — bone fucking dry.
It’s too bad we were stuffed from the family do — they had lots of charcuterie and cheese on offer too. Ah well; next time.
All in all it was a great, if abbreviated, getaway. Lots of family time, a few old friends, some excellent new finds in Halifax and, maybe most importantly, a gentle reminder that I really did grow up someplace beautiful.
Last Wednesday I flew to Atlanta for a conference. I sailed through customs and security at Pearson and thought I was en route to the most effortless flight of all time, but then the Air Canada workers strike bit back…the ground crew forgot to file some paperwork to get us across the border, so we sat on the tarmac for an extra half an hour. That delay allowed a huge thunderstorm to roll into Atlanta ahead of us, and that storm shut down the airport, so we circled for almost an hour. By the time we got on the ground we were two hours late. It then took me (I’m not kidding here) twenty minutes to get out of the airport; no one warned me that the terminal is so long you have to take a train from one end to the other. Anyway. I checked in to the Westin Peachtree (avoid if you’re in Atlanta — it has great views, but is old and shabby once you get past the lobby), headed to the bar and watched the end of the seventh game of the Stanley Cup finals. I never actually left the hotel for the next 24 hours, heading straight to the airport for my return flight…pity, I’d found a few decent-looking beer places in the city and was hoping to try one or two of them on for size.
.:.
Back to that game 7 for a minute. In the official order of my preference for who wins the cup, it goes Montreal first (obviously), then any of 26 other teams, then Philly, then Boston, then Toronto. So it really does pain me to say that Boston deserved to win the series. They played like the better hockey team, even if they weren’t. It also pains me that the likes of Zdeno Chara and Brad Marchand get to hold a cup, but that pain is somewhat offset by my happiness for Tim Thomas winning his first cup, and for Mark Recchi ending his career with yet another championship. As I watched the final game end and the Bruins start to celebrate, I thought that what would sting the most was that Montreal came so damnably close to knocking the Bruins out in the first round — losing only in overtime of game seven. But, of course, what would sting the most the next morning was the insanity of the rioting in downtown Vancouver, an embarrassment felt by the whole country. Surely, with Canadian teams having lost in the finals five straight times since 1994, you’d think we would be used to it now.
.:.
After the traveling and frantic catch-up at work, I was hoping for a quiet weekend of doing as little as possible. That almost happened. Friday we just had a simple dinner out and drank some wine. Saturday we did some errands and generally enjoyed the gorgeous weather and then I actually had a nap. Seriously, a nap. I never have naps. I usually can’t sleep during the day no matter how hard I try. But yesterday, since I was on twelve hours sleep over the previous three nights, I curled up on the bed and went to sleep for a couple of hours. Until an emergency came up.
We found out Smokeless Joe, one of our favourite beer joints, would be closing in two weeks. And that night was the last time our friend Kaylea would be working there.
A dire situation indeed.
We sprung into action, throwing some food down our necks and arriving to find two plum spots waiting for us at the bar. We got the scoop, and sat down with the intention of having three each. Which, of course, ended up being five each. Or possibly six, if you count the vanilla ice cream and Nickel Brook Green Apple Pilsner float that Steph made for me. We drank and laughed and listened to blues and were especially happy to see Colin and Eddie, our favourite bartenders before Kaylea began working there, show up later in the evening. We said (and hugged) our goodbyes, not knowing if or when we’d see them all again, and left the place that’s been one of Toronto’s best beer bars and our unofficial living room for the past…I don’t know, eight years?
Hopefully it’ll come back in some incarnation, but it’ll just never be the same.
Right, now that we’ve sorted through the pile of bottles and survived a week of Hot Docs / illness, I can write about what a great time we had last weekend!
We’ve been waiting and waiting and our spring just doesn’t seem to want to arrive, so we were pretty happy when we woke up to a bright, beautiful, sunny day last Saturday — perfect weather for our excursion to Niagara wine country, nearly a year to the day since our very first trip. A few quick errands and a stop at the market for the week’s groceries, and we were on our way, just 30 minutes after we had originally planned.
Our mood turned sour, however, when we got to the Discount Car Rental office around the corner from our place. They had given away our car, despite our reservation. It very quickly turned into an episode of Seinfeld where I questioned their understanding of what the word “reservation” meant. They told me it was my fault for showign up 35 minutes late, even though I’ve never heard that policy before and nothing in their emails or rental details said anything about a time limit on the reservation, let alone a time period as short as half an hour. Anyway, I gave up when I realized they a) were entirely unhelpful, b) had clearly given away all cars and c) had absolutely no power do anything to help me anyway. Much cursing and eye rolling later, we left. Ten minutes later we’d booked a nice little Toyota Prius hybrid a few blocks away via Autoshare. Lucky for us, because the staff at the Jarvis Street Discount Car and Truck rental are useless, incompetent, unhelpful twats. Ahem.
Anyway…hooray Autoshare! Only 45 minutes after our target take-off time we were blasting down the QEW, taking advantage of the high-occupancy/green vehicle lane and lack of traffic to make great time to Beamsville. Our first few stops — Hidden Bench, Daniel Lenko and Tawse — were old familiar sites, and were lucrative indeed. Heading east, we angered a long line of bikers pulling into Stoney Ridge to pick up a case of Pinot for my buddy Joe, then drove into the village of Jordan for lunch at Zooma Zooma Cafe‘s patio. The food (ploughman’s lunch for Nellie, chicken sandwich for me) was tasty, but the service was anything but zooma…we waited outside for a long time before getting our bill, during which time my pasty skin got sunburned. No matter; it was a beautiful day and we had more wineries to visit. Next we visited Flat Rock (who have a gorgeous tasting room…we could see our building back in Toronto!) and 13th Street, both for the first time. We then cut through St. Catharines, crossed the Welland Canal and began the drive toward Niagara-on-the-Lake. We stopped at one of our favourites, Southbrook, and finished our touring at an unlikely destination: Jackson-Triggs. Normally we avoid any place with tour buses parked out front, but this was the only place where we could buy wines made by their partner winery Le Clos Jordanne. Here we loaded up, stuffed everything into the car and drove to our hotel, the Shaw Club, a sanctuary from the plague of frilly NotL inns. We strolled around the corner to the Olde Angel Inn for a few pints before returning to the hotel to gird our loins for dinner.
We’d eaten at the Stone Road Grille twice before, and enjoy it so much we’ll likely never pass within 50 miles of NotL without stopping in. My go-to starter — scallops wrapped in duck breast bacon — was gone, so I went off the beaten path and ordered a cheese plate to start, along with a glass of Southbrook Whimsy cab Franc. Nellie had a glass of the 13th street Cuvee sparkling, and then the soup du jour — wild leek and potato — with a glass of Lailey Chardonnay.
For my main I chose the “weekly beast” from the special. I saw “pork loin” and ordered it, not even paying attention to the rest. To my happy surprise what showed up was a great deal of pork loin, a large section of pork belly and a crispy coppa (pork shoulder)…nary a vegetable in sight.
Nellie, meanwhile, had the flank steak with garlicky beans and frites. I’d ordered the same thing the last time we visited, and remember it fondly, but this time there was a twist: an eggshell full of bearnaise sauce which she was to pour over her steak. If I weren’t having a porkgasm at the time I’d have been jealous.
We paired our meals with a bottle of Hidden Bench’s flagship red, La Brunante. Sweet fancy moses, it was tasty, and paired perfectly with our food. Definitely a splurge, but a worthwhile one. We ended our meal with two great flourishes: a six-pack for the kitchen staff (no fooling; it’s actually an item on the menu, and they were so happy they sent someone out to thank us) and a chocolate brownie topped in salted caramel ice cream and garnished with chili chocolate sauce.
At this point we needed a medic. Or at least a walk home. We opted for the latter, and thanked the travel gods for the pleasant weather so that we could work off at least a bit of the sauce, if nothing else.
The next morning our breakfast was mercifully light, and we began day two of our winery visits. Our first two stops — Riverview and Pondview — were new to us and pleasant enough, but weren’t that remarkable. The third winery was the real highlight of our day: Five Rows. It’s a tiny craft winery which I heard about only when they won at Cuvee 2011. We met Wes, the winemaker, walking out of the vines as we pulled up. He poured us each of their wines and we loved them all. He took the time to discuss each one with us — time he probably didn’t have as he had work to do and it was clear the rain was coming — and indulged us as we gushed about each. We left with half a dozen bottles, including a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc…and I don’t like even like Sauvignon Blanc. We also got a bottle of the 07 Pinot Noir, and are laying it down for a few years…can’t wait to come back to it when it’s almost passed from memory. Five Rows, to me, was the real find of this trip, reminiscent of our visit to Shypoke in Napa Valley last year. We’re now anxiously awaiting the release of more reds next month.
Our day wasn’t done, though. We sped round the corner to Ravine, to pick up some of their fabulous bottles, to say hi to Alex face-to-face and to have lunch in their restaurant. Nellie’s sandwich (and awesome fries) and York Road white, and my plate of prawns the size of boomerangs were fine all right, but the dessert almost killed us. Lemon tart and chocolate hazelnut ‘splosion:
Rain had blasted down as soon as we were seated, but happily let up just as we sipped our post-meal espresso. I bought some treats for my team who were working through the weekend, and we took off for our last winery of the day: Colaneri. It’s very new, and the winery will be spectacular when it’s done, but for now the wines are quite young. We picked out some tasty ones though; we polished off the Pinot Grigio tonight as I was writing this.
Spent, we set out for home. Along the way we stopped at Joe’s to drop off his wine, and some Dickinson maple products he’d ordered. Full service, that’s us. In return he cooked us up some roasted garlic on baguette, and ridiculously good lamb chops, and panna cotta. At this point our bodies were begging for mercy, and a gym, so we scooted home, dropped the wine, dropped the car (Grazie Autoshare! You rock, whereas Discount sucks possum balls!) and sat our asses down for a while.
The grand result of all this, apart from an inch on our waistlines, was 42 bottles of excellent Ontario vino. Some familiar, some new, all fun to acquire. A prochaine, Niagara.
In case you’re wondering, that’s:
| iddenbench.com |
| daniellenko.com |
| tawsewinery.ca |
| stoneyridge.com |
| flatrockcellars.com |
| 13thstreetwinery.com |
| southbrook.com |
| jacksontriggswinery.com |
| riverviewcellars.com |
| pondviewwinery.com |
| fiverows.com |
| ravinevineyard.com |
| colaneriwines.com |
Nellie and I just got back from an overnight trip around the lake. No time to write about it tonight, nor for the rest of the week probably as we have Hot Docs screenings all week. Short version: we had some great food and picked up 42 bottles of wine at 12 different wineries. Later this week I’ll give up more details.
Last night we wedged ourselves into what might be my favourite place of the trip so far, and we’d been to some pretty fantastic places. The Pony Bar showed up near the top of BeerAdvocate‘s NYC beer bars, and last night we found out why.
As it turned out I never did sit down in the place. There was only one stool available at the bar, so Nellie sat and I stood. It started off a little crowded and ended up very crowded by the time we left, so a table never presented itself. Just as well — we found there was an advantage to the spot we had. Meanwhile, the music was tailor-made for old guys like me…Jane’s Addiction, Bob Dylan, Heartless Bastards, CCR…so good.
There was a board over the bar with twenty featured taps. Every time they changed a tap one of the bartenders would ring a bell, the crowd would cheer and then — depending on the new entry on the board — clap or boo playfully. One of those bartenders, Mirjana, became our buddy for the night and took great care of us. I don’t know how we always get adopted by great bartenders, but I’m not complaining either. Especially since at least one of the beers was comped.
We ended up drinking twelve beers between us (Chelsea High + Dry porter, Avery Out Of Bounds stout, Davidson Bros. coffee stout, Abita Turbo Dog, Long Trail Hibernator, Sly Fox O’Reilly’s stout and Magic Hat Circus Boy for me; Weyerbacher Fireside ale, Magic Hat Circus Boy, Barrier Bulkhead red, Southern Tier IPA and Firestone Walker Double Jack double IPA for her) and an amazing plate of sausage & pretzels. All that, plus a tshirt for Nellie, came out to $81 before tip. Incroyable.
Despite that, the twelve beers weighed on us and I knew we’d need a little extra grease in our bellies to be functional the next morning, so…back to Shorty’s for more sandwiches! It was an early evening by NYC standards, but mainly because now (the next morning) we’re up, showered, fed, packed and about ready to head to the airport. What a great wrap-up to a superb trip.
Now then…here’s hoping that EWR doesn’t screw us on the trip home.
First of all: dinner last night. Holy crapmonkey. The Strip House was incredible. Drinks at the bar. Corner table with lots of space. Maybe (but probably not) Uma Thurman sitting a few tables away. And of course, the food: scallops and rib-eye for me, crab cake and bone-in filet mignon for Nellie, all paired with a Frog’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon. We managed to avoid dessert…not that we had room for it. It was a great call; too many New York steak places are stuffy holding pens for old men, but this one was a nice mix of great red meat and laid-back vibe. Thus sated we took a cab (by the way — cabs here are so cheap compared to Toronto!) back to the hotel.
Today, having slept in once again, we got up and subway’d it down to Greenwich Village for breakfast at Gottino. What an awesome spot: eggs and toast and piles of prosciutto and white wine and espresso and nice people and walls stacked full of food. Another win for the eat.shop NYC guide.
Speaking of the eat.shop NYC book, it also pointed us to Meg Cohen Design in SoHo, where we bought two scarves and had a great chat with Meg. We did a little more shopping in SoHo (including a visit to M0851…which we seem to visit in every city) and wandered around Nolita and the Bowery, struggling to find a place that was open before finally happening on Sweet Revenge, which bills itself as New York’s only cupcake, beer & wine bar in New York. Uh, universe: why was I not aware of this place until now?!? Delicious, fun and filling enough that we didn’t need a dog from Gray’s Papaya after all, so home it was.
Tonight our plan is to hit another recommended beer place: The Pony Bar.
Our first full day in New York was our attempt to wrap up some unfinished business. In our previous trips we’d visited several museums but not the Met, or the Guggenheim, and that seemed like a miss.
Our dinner last night was quite late so we slept in, then took the subway up to the upper west side and walked through Central Park to the Guggenheim. Before checking it out we had an excellent lunch at The Wright, the restaurant below the museum. We then went through the museum, which was great…short, lots of good paintings, and obviously very interesting architecture.
After walking up and down that big spiral we were ready for dessert, so we stopped at Cafe Sabarsky, where Nellie had strudel and I had klimttorte, both mit schlag. Our strength (and sugar levels) thus restored we walked down Fifth to the Met, and spent a few hours soaking up the culture. My favourites, predictably, were the giant Rothko paintings. Our feet were complaining a bit at this point, so we walked back across the park and took the subway back to our hotel to relax for a few hours before another late dinner.
So, let’s see…since we got to New York less than twelve hours ago we:
Seriously, we could go home right now and call it a good trip.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 