Note: This is the blog for Tuesday, July 26.
Tim Hortons is a chain of stores that is everywhere in Canada. I mean McDonalds level of everywhere. And like McDonalds it does breakfast right and has one stellar performer for the non-breakfast times. The analog to McDonalds’ frappe (yum, yum) is the maple dip donut. Anyhow, I’ve become addicted to them and what I once thought was a fictional restaurant on How I Met Your Mother has become terrifyingly, deliciously, real.
Anyhow, woke up and ate one last time at Mr. Coco’s. Checked out and had to walk down the street to exchange our boring U.S. money for colorful (and, as of now, more valuable) Canadian money. I noticed one of the pennies had a male royal on it so I knew it had to be old (Queen Elizabeth the II having become Queen of England in the early 50s). Yep, 1950!
Hopped on to the highway and beat a quick retreat out of Niagara and to the west and north around the western edge of Lake Ontario. We had several stunning views of the lake and crossed a bridge near Hamilton at the extreme western edge that was really neat. We could also make out Toronto and the CN Tower across the lake miles (oops, kilometers) away as it was a very clear day. We may have also stopped at Tim Hortons for a couple of donuts and a map of Ontario (which, despite the $2.95 price was given to me for free — I think they were helping a clueless American out).
Yay Tim Hortons! Now where did I put that maple dip donut?
As we rounded the western edge, however, traffic steadily picked up. We were still cruising at about 100 (…kilometers, stupid metric system) an hour but more and more lanes kept getting added. Toronto was very, very busy and a bit stressful driving-wise and honestly it reinforced my decision to have us do Ottawa instead. Sure, we’d miss the CN Tower but we’d hopefully enjoy the slower pace more. Yeah, we’re getting old.
One-hundred miles p... oh, never mind.
Toronto has a cool system of express and collectors. Basically the right lanes split off constantly and “collect” (or, I suppose “disperse”) three or so streets worth of traffic. Then the lanes combine back in with the express lanes and another set of collector lanes split off. It worked pretty nicely, seems like something we should do more of in the states (and, no, the area near I-40 and US-64/1 near South Hills does not count).
I saw some shops that were blasts from the past: EB Games and Chuck E. Cheese. Chuck E. Cheese, are you kidding me?! Is Canada the place where all the haunts of my youth went to pasture? Also saw a “Hockey Life” store dedicated to selling, I suppose, hockey stuff that I just had to take a picture of. I also tried to snap pictures of signs that kept referring to “O.P.P.” — Ontario Provincial Police. But I couldn’t help thinking “yeah, you know me.”
Canadian Hockey Life -- Stanley Cup on back-order since 1993
We also stopped at a McDonalds for a sweet tea and frappe. Here’s the blow by blow:
Do you have a frappe?
A what?
Ok, never mind, we’ll take a sweet tea.
A green tea, got it.
No, a sweet tea.
Yes, we have iced tea.
Never mind, we’ll just take a bottled water.
Michelle didn’t even want the bottled water, but we couldn’t just admit total defeat.
As we drove further east along the north shore of Lake Ontario the land transformed from mostly flat with tons of suburbs and commercial buildings to beautiful rolling hills with farms. Further east near the Thousand Islands area the terrain became noticeably rockier and reminded me a bit more of the Adirondacks. Oh, and birch trees! Yay! I also started stupidly looking for moose. It’s a bit of a running joke in my family since the failures to see a single one in 2007 in Maine and 2010 out West. This year is my year, though!
Beautiful Ontario farm
Leaving route 401 behind we turned on to 416 towards Ottawa. The land here was also quite beautiful, hilly at first then becoming flatter and more boggy. I was sure I’d see a moose now, but to no avail. We arrived in Ottawa around 7p or so and somehow made it to our hotel (amid lanes dedicated to buses and taxis only, one way streets, and the like) — the Chateau Laurier. I’d do that fancy French accent thingie but I a) don’t know how and b) am lazy.
Our hotel, the Chateau Laurier
Anyhow, we pulled our Town & Country up to the hotel entrance. I’ve been watching lots of that show “Lie to Me” (recently canceled — FOX, you sure don’t know how to support the good shows!) and I zoned in right away at the micro-expression of disgust that flashed across the valet’s face. While the car ahead of us, a Porsche, was encouraged to do valet parking (with the valet eying it greedily and calling to mind the wonderful scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), it wasn’t even offered to us. So we slunk off to the parking deck and checked out our room.
Turns out they upgraded us to a nice room — and assured us that our view would not change. WOW. What a room. I’m typing these blogs literally staring at the illuminated Parliament building. And the beds are so soft… All for less than $200 a night.
View from our hotel room
We reluctantly left our rooms to go to a bookstore, Chapters, that Michelle saw on the drive in so she could pick up the latest Harry Dresden book. Addison picked up some Fighting Fantasy books (but he’s finishing The Hobbit first, only a hundred more pages to go!) — now that’s a blast from the past. Genetta re-bought the first Ranger’s Apprentice and I got… a French – English dictionary. Weeee. Nice store, though, and it’s funny — they have their own version of the Nook / Kindle called the Kobo. I just looked it up and it is an anagram for “book.” Kinda shocked the Quebecois didn’t want it called the Liver or some crap. Canada, eh?
It getting late and us not knowing where the heck we were (turns out we were a block away from much better dining) we went to the food court of the Rideau Centre, a mall in downtown Ottawa. They had some fancy stores and even a Sony Style store, but we didn’t bother — we needed to get our respective grubs on. The kids ate KFC (yay globalization!) and Michelle had some Chinese and I ate at some place called “Teriyaki Experience.” It was OK, but I’d stop short of “experience.”
Returned to our room and I took Addison down to the pool for a quick swim. Wow, the pool (in the lower lobby) is nice! All tiled and Biltmore-y (though the one in the Biltmore was cooler) and deep — none of this modern wimpy shallow pool nonsense. Addison swam several laps in freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, etc. He refused to do butterfly, however — he always hated that stroke. He also did a couple of cannonball dives which echoed loudly about the room.
Pool at the Chateau Laurier
Outside they had an article from Construction magazine in 1908 about how proud Canada was that the plans for the hotel were from a Canadian firm that beat out a New York firm. To the right of that was another article, from later in 1908, comparing the New York firms rejected plans with the Canadian firm’s — nearly identical. Oops. The article rightly pointed out that while it was right that work on such an important structure be given to a Canadian firm that it should not violate professional ethics. A fascinating read.
Went up to the room and noticed that the center bloc of Parliament had some kind of projected images playing across it. It was spectacular but we had no idea what it was. We’d find out the next day…
Route for July 26, 2011