Much sleeping in. Pringles. Shower. Greasy lunch. Nap. Dinner at Fid. Drinks at the Bitter End. Big slice from pizza corner. Back to sleep.
Where our day went
Category: Trips
It's dangerous to be this close
Mmmmmmmmm. We’ve only been here 12 hours and it’s already been a pretty sweet trip. Our flight was on time, our cab driver (limo driver, really) was very friendly and helpful (try Crystal Limousine if you’re ever coming from the airport), we got some great food and Garrison beer at the Economy Shoe Shop, one of the few places still serving food. Wiped, we crashed hard in our king bed.
We woke up to a beautiful morning, a welcome respite from what we’ve heard is weeks of gray and rainy weather. We didn’t have too much time before prepping for the wedding, but we did manage to have breakfast, do some emergency sock-shopping at Dugger’s and pick up some wine at Bishop’s Cellar. With all the usual festivals and activities that happen here in the summer, and with Paul McCartney playing here today, the city’s jumping right now.
OK, gotta get ready.
PSA: your eyeballs have been granted a temporary reprieve
Blogging will be spotty for the next week or so as Nellie and I traipse about Nova Scotia.
Enjoy July’s warm, moist middle y’all.
It's a freaking mall, people.
BlogTO yesterday raised an interesting topic: the differences in travel styles. Emphasis is mine.
Yesterday, the New York Times published yet another one of their great travel articles on a Toronto neighbourhood that doesn’t get much play from the powers that be who promote our city. Titled Skid Row to Hip in Toronto, the article isn’t a comprehensive look at the area, missing favourite spots like Crema Coffee, Smash and The Beet to name a few. Here are the ones they did mention:
…
Which is to say that it’s a good start and exactly the sort of story the city should be trying to get out instead of the crap about Ontario Place and Casa Loma.
I’m of the same opinion as BlogTO on this: for Toronto, or any tourist destination, the real soul of a place isn’t in the big tourist attractions, it’s between the lines of the Fodor’s guide. For many cities, and especially for Toronto, it’s in the neighbourhoods. That you could wander from Chinatown to Kensington Market to Little Italy to the Annex to U of T (to take just one example) in less than an hour is fantastic because they’re all such different neighbourhoods. That’s what I want from a city, to get a real feel for it.
Obviously lots of people want to see the big attractions. When I lived at Dupont and Spadina I had tourists ask me every other summer day how to get to Casa Loma (which was always fun ’cause I could just point to the giant castle on top of the hill) and now that I live downtown I’m often asked where the Eaton Centre is. It always horrifies me that this is what tourists want to see, but that’s what’s in the guide books and, as BlogTO points out, the tourism promotions.
Should there maybe be two sets of promotion materials and guidebooks? Or is this the kind of thing that guidebooks just can’t keep up with, due to the rapid emergence and decline of neighbourhoods? Is this the role of the internet now? Until now a guidebook has just been an easier thing to carry around a city, but GPS-enabled devices could change that. I’m sure there’s already an iPhone app that points out cool insider tips about the neighbourhood you’re wandering through. If not, there should be. Damn, I wish I knew how to write those things…
Soon, my pretties. Soon.
I’m depressed.
One year ago today Nellie and I were in the Rockies, hiking the Iceline trail (from which we took the picture you see up there) and eating at Truffle Pigs and preparing to head up to Lake O’Hara. I get heartsick every time I think about that trip, and how I’m over 3,000 km away. I’m very much looking forward to our trip to France this fall, but god I wish I could be back in BC right now.
More: all my posts from that trip, and the rest of the pictures.
How do I get Rideau this cold?
As my brother has been blogging, his wife surprised him by flying him to Ottawa for a long weekend with friends and, as an added surprise, Nellie and I. He flew back to England this evening; Nellie and I returned to Toronto yesterday. It was a fun few days for us. I’ve known many of his friends since 1996 when I lived there with him for the summer, and it was good to hang out with all of them again. It was good to see Ottawa again too; I’ve not been there in a while, but it still feels a little like home. Best of all, though, was getting to help celebrate my brother’s 40th birthday in such great circumstances.
Highlights: an awesome Porter flight to Ottawa; surprising (kinda) my brother at our hotel; the food and drink at the Wellington Gastropub, including the Beau’s and a 2005 Raymond Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (also overheard a great Grant Lee Philips cover of Echo & The Bunnymen‘s “The Killing Moon” on the stereo there); getting silly (where exactly did “chicken sodomy” come from anyway?) and reliving some memories at a Royal Oak (warning: awful, obnoxious music embedded in site); struggling the next morning until I could get some sausage and toast into me at the Elgin Street Diner; Winterlude ice sculptures; marveling at just how far Lego has come since we were kids; awesome homemade pizzas at mblogler/imspycat‘s place; playing the Wii with the kiddies; breakfast at the Metropolitan Brasserie with our aunt (where we loudly berated the Senate, even as Art Eggleton dined next to us); more pizza and beer at the Prescott where people who used to work with my brother were invited out to see him (funnily enough, three of them walked up and started talking to me, thinking I was him…by the third I just said, “Hey, how are you? That’s Tim over there.”); cheap pub breakfast at the Aulde Dubliner in the market; walking (not skating…couldn’t be arsed) down the Rideau Canal to the hotel before flying home.
That’s obviously an abuse of the word “highlights” but it really was a great weekend. My biggest problem with it was that I got very, very sick. Saturday night I felt a cold coming on; by Sunday morning it was severe, and by Monday morning it was brutal. It kept me in bed most of Sunday, made me miserable for all of Monday, and made our plane’s descent into Toronto excruciating. But it could have been worse: I could’ve been sick the entire weekend, or worst of all, my brother might have been sick. So it all turned out for the best. I didn’t even mind the cold; chilly as it got, the sun stayed out most of the time.
It was a great weekend. I’m really glad I got to be part of it.
[UPDATE: Ooh, ooh, almost forgot: the brother and sister-in-law brought me some Pierre Marcolini chocolate from Belgium. Zowie.]
This city = cold
For those of you not following my Twitter feed, I’ve been in Ottawa since Friday afternoon as part of a surprise for my brother. It’s been lots of fun so far, out with some of his friends, lots of food and drink and hanging out and catching up. Too tired to post much right now; will likely have more to say later.
Would it be too dramatic to land at Juno beach and push inland from there?
At first the travel plan for this year was the Rockies in the summer. Then we thought about doing northern Italy and Switzerland with a short stint in Paris. But tonight at dinner we reconsidered…and settled on two weeks in and around Paris, Normandy and Champagne. Not sure what we’ll do there, but I’m sure we’ll think of something.
Five years later…
So…yesterday was our anniversary. Our fifth, thanks for asking. We celebrated (after our little shopping excursion to HMV and Duggers) by meeting up with my brother for some drinks at Seven Wine Bar, then enjoying a quiet, delicious dinner for two at Fid Cuisine. Fid’s been there since 2000 but we’d never tried it, and until recently I’d never even heard of it. Not surprising; it certainly wasn’t the sort of place a student would try. Here’s the lineup (some of it is from the website’s outdated menu, some is from memory):
- Amuse-Bouches: green curry mussels. I don’t particularly care for mussels, so I tried one and donated the other to my lovely wife. Happy anniversary, darling.
- Appetizers: Nellie had the caramelized scallops (which included some other bits of meat that I thought were quail) while I had the goat cheese.
- Mains: Nellie had the beef tenderloin with kale (maybe?) & artichoke. I had the pork belly with choy sum and a pureed sweet potato that we both agreed was amazing. This was my first time having pork belly; it was tender and very tasty, but really fatty and rich. I’m glad I spaced it out with the rest of my food. We had this with a powerful New Zealand Pinot Noir (can’t remember which, but it was strong enough to keep up with Nellie’s beef while not overpowering my pork) and cleansed our palates with a tea-flavoured sorbet.
- Dessert: ginger creme brulee for Nellie, outstanding molten moelleux au chocolat for me. Nellie had a ten-year-old port, I had a local Muscat dessert wine.
Sated, we stumbled out into the miserable night. The earlier snow had degenerated (as it so often does in Halifax) into freezing rain, made worse by biting wind and slippery sidewalks (and us in our fancy shoes!). We got all the way back to the hotel when Nellie realized she was missing an earring…one of the pair I’d given her for Christmas two days earlier. This wouldn’t do. We put on some shoes more befitting the Canadian winter and set back out, knowing it would be nearly impossible to spot a silver earring on the snow-and-ice-covered sidewalk, but we had to try. We retraced our steps all the way to the restaurant with no luck, double-checked the entryway, and left again for the hotel. Happily, I spotted the rogue earring about twenty steps from the restaurant’s entrance, and the evening was saved. We slid back to the hotel to warm up, dry off and digest in agony.
This morning we woke up early to have breakfast with our friend Karen and her new fiance, then made for the airport. Cab ride: no problem. Check-in: no problem. Security: bigger line than usual for Halifax, but no problem. Boarding: no problem. Flight: no problem, save some bumps at the end and a supremely annoying Newfoundland mother sitting right behind us. Luggage collection: no problem. Cab ride home: no problem. All in all, a pretty painless winter travel experience, and a far cry from last week’s fiasco.
Now we’re home, surrounded by presents, being abused by bitchy cats, completely lacking in the grocery department and overall a little wiped. But good. All’s well that ends well.
Can’t wait for the next five years.
Goin' back to Hali
For the third time (or fourth, if you count flying into the airport for a family reunion) in four months, I’m back in Halifax. This is the traditional final phase of the Christmas vacation, where we end up for our anniversary and to chill a little bit before flying back to Toronto.
Christmas eve was a gentle mix of cleaning up, beating my dad at crib, wrapping gifts and lying about. Christmas day was lots of fun, hauling away lots of booty (many DVDs & Wii games, as well as some other cool stuff…IP-enabled camera, Star Wars trivia book, etc.), having a delicious extended-family dinner at my brother’s house across the yard, and finishing off the day playing the Wii with Nellie, the nephew, the nieces, the brother and the sister-in-law.
Boxing Day started off well — driving to my aunt’s house where just about all of the extended family on my father’s side gathered for yearly reunion & feast — but took a bad turn when I realized I’d left my bag (including my wallet, ID, Blackberry, Zen, camera, etc.) back on the farm. That discovery corresponded with one of the worst headaches I’ve ever had. So Nellie did some championship rally-driving back to the farm where I grabbed the bag, swallowed a bunch of advil and gassed up the car, then we hightailed it toward Halifax. Three extra hours in the car wasn’t how I wanted to spend the day, but there you go. We visited Nellie’s cousin and her family for a bit, then drove to our hotel in Halifax. A huge late-night dinner later, we retired to the comfy, quiet room. Ahhhhhhhh.
It’s been an awesome, relaxing morning…in-sleeping, breakfast-eating, paper-reading, price-checking. Now we’re heading out for a stroll and to see if we can locate any particular deals, and to feed Nellie’s craving for fish & chips at the Rogue’s Roost. Cheers, internet. Hope you’re feeling as groovy as we are.
