Original Park

Sarah and I are sad today as Stephen and Anne left this evening. Sarah got a bit teary at the airport. She was still sad when we got home and over dinner. Fortunately, she was able to eat her dinner.

We had a good weekend. On Friday we went to the cinema. We saw the 40 Year Old Virgin. It was ok. We had a laugh in places and enjoyed the pic n mix. We had a lovely day on Saturday. We had been disappointed not to see any animals the previous weekend and when a friend of Sarah's gave us a map to a safari park we decided to cheat a bit and went to Omega Parc in Quebec. I was particularly intrigued by the Original Moose shown on the map. How could it be the original one? It wasn't until we got to the park and saw the signs for the animals in English and French that we realised moose in French is Orignal. I wasn't impressed now that I knew it was just some ordinary moose.

Most of the animals are free to roam around and come up to your car and poke their heads through the windows. Sarah got a fright when this happened and with a loud screech she jumped onto Anne’s lap. This made Anne laugh so much that she nearly went into labour for the second time this holiday. We had a picnic and walked through the fields and woods feeding deer. We really enjoyed seeing deer, bison, raccoons, blue jays and woodpeckers up close, but felt a bit sad because the black bears and wolves had small enclosures so that they were visible from the cars. Also we didn’t see a beaver and the moose (mooses) were lying down. Not that we’re being unreasonable.

Guest Restaurant Review V

Anne here with “the obligatory guest restaurant review”. On Thursday night, before our Algonquin trip, Sarah and Ian took Stephen and me out for a meal. We started the evening in an Irish pub in the Byward area of Ottawa. Stephen tried some local lager (although for some reason was offered Tennants Super by the waitress) and I had a Diet Coke (get me!). After the leisurely drink, and a spot of lady-looking from the boys, we meandered off to the restaurant.

Ian and Sarah had booked a table at Luxe, a rather smart looking restaurant in town. We arrived at the restaurant and were seated in a booth. Ian chose a rather tasty bottle of Canadian wine and I chose a champagne cocktail for Sarah, who was being indecisive.

For dinner, Ian started with the mussels and followed those with the veal. Stephen had crab cakes and then chicken, I had crab cakes and duck, and Sarah had bruschetta and chicken. At least she ordered chicken. She received tuna and it had to be sent back. (Clearly our accents make it hard to understand the word “chicken”. The next day we were at the café in The Canadian War Museum and got cheeseburgers when we’d asked for chicken burgers. Canadian fools!)

The wine was fresh and fruity, but unfortunately the pregnancy police were out in force that night. Whilst the waiter was happy to top up Ian and Stephen’s glasses, I wasn’t allowed more than one glass. Stephen attempted to give me a top up at one point, but the waiter quickly wrestled the bottle from his hands and divided the remaining alcohol between the boys’ glasses.

My crab cakes were tasty although they possibly contained some seafood of undetermined origin. The duck was lovely even though I committed the crime of having it well done. However, my mushroom risotto was a bit stock-cubey and the jus was far too strong.

Stephen reports that his meal was “nice”. So that’s a big help. He also says the men’s toilets were quite classy.

The service was a tad slow, although we didn’t mind too much as we had lots of rubbish to talk about. Sarah’s cocktail had a fly in it, but she received a fresh one for free, even though she told the waiter that she’d just drink the fly and then order another one – classy lady!

We had a lovely evening with lots of laughs, however we decided that it wasn’t good enough to go back again, we would rather try out all the other lovely restaurants in Ottawa.

Bare Park

We had more guests arrive on Monday evening. Stephen and Anne arrived. Airport customs must have thought Anne had something stuffed up her top (she does. She’s pregnant) because they took ages. The longest of all our guests so far. We waited patiently for them having printed out a little welcome sign. We hoped that Stephen and Anne wouldn’t see the huge banner, balloons and camera crew that were awaiting someone else. With our guests taken to our flat and shown round we had a nice evening chatting and catching up on news.

We thought it would be nice to make use of Ottawa’s nice park areas and have a picnic one evening with Stephen and Anne. We went to the supermarket to get our picnic provisions. We were very pleased to have Anne with us as it meant that we could park in the expectant mother parking spot, just a few feet away from the entrance. Result. Wish we had Anne with us on all our shopping trips. On the way to the park we saw a young girl who obviously has very cruel parents. They had bought her a pair of rollerblades knowing full well that their daughter has absolutely no sense of balance. There were arms and legs flailing everywhere and she didn’t get more than a couple of staggered yards before she slowly fell to the ground. We turned the car round twice just so we could follow her. Anne nearly went into early labour she was laughing so much. We had definitely picked the wrong day for a picnic because as we drove around trying to find a scenic spot by the river, the weather turned for the worse. We ended up quite a way from the river, and by the time we had parked there was a hurricane blowing. We sat desperately holding onto our paper plates and food. Even the mad-dogs weren’t out in this weather. It was a fairly short picnic!

We take all our visitors out for a meal and on Thursday we managed to get a table at Luxe in the Byward Market. We had a nice meal (except for the slow service and Sarah getting the wrong meal), but Stephen and Anne will provide a full review shortly.

We had planned to go to the drive in cinema on Friday evening, but this was rained off so we got pic n mix from the nearby Sugar Mountain shop and settled in to watch a DVD. We saw Million Dollar Baby – it was exceptionally boring for the first three-quarters and depressing for the last quarter. We were left wondering why it won an Oscar?

Over the weekend we went to Algonquin National Park, a three hour drive away. Sarah burped most of the way there and slept all of the way back. We arrived just after lunch at a B&B near the park. It looked perfectly normal from the outside and was in a great location only a few kilometres outside the park. However, when we walked in, we quickly realise that all was not right. Stuffed animals. Lots of them. Collections of teapots, floral pictures and uncoordinated brick-a-brack from garage sales were everywhere. It was very kitsch. Stephen worried Sarah by saying it would be a miracle if we survived the night as the house was like the Bates hotel in Psycho. We dumped our bags and made a hasty retreat from our over decorated rooms.

Algonquin Park is very picturesque this time of year as the leaves are starting to turn red and brown. In the park we did a few 2km walks, including Beaver Pond where we saw a chipmunk but no beavers and Peck Lake where Sarah nearly lost her hat when it blew off into the lake as she crossed a fallen tree to an island. I was the hero because I grabbed the camera tripod off Sarah and fished the hat out of the lake before it drifted away. Luckily Sarah didn’t seem to mind that my priority had been the hat and not her! The final walk we did was Spruce Bog. It had beautiful scenery and was really peaceful, only interrupted by Stephen’s hiccupping (this was only the start for poor Stephen as he hiccupped almost continuously for the next day!).

We had an early start on Sunday in our quest to find moose (or mooses) and bears. We heard at breakfast that 30 bears were shot during the Summer as they had ventured down to peoples’ backyards. Having spent yesterday looking for bears in the park we were a bit annoyed to find out that one of the best places to see them is at the local rubbish dump. The Germans who stayed at our B&B and walked around in their underpants gave us this tip as they had spent the previous night at the dump (at least that’s what I think they said).

Back in the park we walked round Whisky Rapids and rewarded ourselves with hot chocolate and cake at the visitor centre. The brownies are a real delight. There were lots of stuffed animals there as well. Perhaps that’s why we haven’t seen any in the park itself. On the way home we stopped for a Greek pizza in Barry’s Bay and Sarah and Anne had a good sing song (until Sarah fell asleep) and then had a Greek takeaway for dinner. It was a Greek style day!

Dam Beaver

On Friday we left Ottawa at lunchtime intending to get to Tremblant in Quebec in a couple of hours. This would have been easy if it wasn’t for the poxy roads in Quebec. The complete lack of road signs meant we suddenly found ourselves literally at the end of the road as it hadn’t been completed yet.

We eventually got to Tremblant and had just enough time to check in before teeing off. The course was in very nice condition and in a very picturesque setting in a forest over looking a lake. Just to prove we were in the wilds we saw a doe and her fawn eating behind the fifth green and on the sixth tee a fox came out of the woods, had a look at us and scampered up the rocks. It took over five hours to play the course and on the last two holes we had to find the ball using a torch!

After the golf we drove back to the village and had dinner with the nice couple from Ottawa who had joined us for the round of golf. After a stroll around the village we went back to the fabulous room that had a 4ft wide fireplace and a Jacuzzi bath.

On Saturday we made use of the free gondola to get to the top of the village and had a look around the shops. The village has been purpose built over the last ten years mainly for ski tourists and has been made to look like an Alpine resort with all the buildings having brightly coloured roofs. For lunch we got pizza and sat by a boating lake. Then we made use of the free tickets we had been given for the main gondola and went to the top of Mont Tremblant. The view was spectacular. Wooded hills for as far as the eye could see in every direction. We did a bit of a trek and walked around the top of the mountain to the observation tower to get 3600 views. We must have liked the view as we spent more than the obligatory 4 minutes that we had at Sugar Loaf mountain!

Back down the mountain, we had a ride on the luge. Not the Winter Olympic kind but ones with wheels. It was good fun and Sarah has asked me not to say that she got over taken by several young children so I won’t mention it. After the exertions of the luge we needed something to eat and remembered we’d seen a creperie. We ordered one each but when they arrived we realised we should have shared one. They were huge! We needn’t have had the pizza for lunch. That didn’t stop us from scoffing them down though.

To work off the crepes we decided to go for a drive and see what else was in the neighbourhood. There is the village of Mont-Tremblant which was the centre for tourists until the resort was built and on the opposite side of the Lake Tremblant from the resort we found some nice restaurants, houses and a quaint waterfall.

Being in the countryside we thought that there would be a chance of seeing a beaver, so when we got back to the resort we had a look around for what we thought we be good beaver territory. As it happens there is a marshy wetland within the grounds of the resort and we quickly spotted a beaver dam, but no beaver. We walked around the wetland to get a better view of the dam from another angle, constantly thinking we’d seen a beaver only to realise it was either a log or a duck. After thinking that we needed to get our eyes tested, I spotted another log only this one was swimming through the water. A beaver! We followed the direction he was swimming in and sat on the bank as he swam right towards us. I kept putting off taking a photo as he we getting closer all the time making the potential picture even better and then…he dived under the surface. Dam! I hadn’t taken a photo. Luckily for us beavers have to come up for air and we could tell where he was going to surface by following the trail of air bubbles. He surfaced not far from us and began swimming in circles just off the bank from where we were sitting. A couple of times he turned away from us and made a big splash using his tail. It took us a while to realise that he was angry with us because we were sitting right near another dam and he was scared to go home because of us.

On Sunday we were driving to reception and saw two deer and another fawn by the roadside. Sarah got some nice photos (see Tremblant). We checked out and drove home to get the flat clean and tidy for our guests, Stephen and Anne, arriving tomorrow.

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines

This weekend is a holiday weekend in Canada. For most Canadians this means a weekend away at the cottage in the wilderness. For us it means plenty of time to sit around drinking hot chocolate and relaxing.

Yesterday morning we took a drive out to the border with the US. It is only 40 minutes away and I had to get some paperwork corrected with the customs office. In the afternoon we had planned to go to the hot air balloon festival but as it raining heavily we didn’t think the balloons would fly so we went to the cinema instead. We saw Constant Gardner, but perhaps didn’t enjoy it as much as we could have because we had to sit in the second row and so were too close to the screen to see it properly. Sarah enjoyed it more than I did.

On Sunday we played golf at a pitch and putt course in the morning and saw a deer. Very exciting. The weather was glorious in the afternoon so we headed over to Quebec for the hot air balloon festival. All these festivals have stalls and rides and this one had more than its fair share. There were also several music stages and a strong man contest – we missed the strong man contest even though we got there at the scheduled event time. Not to worry, the main reason for going was the hot air balloons. They were supposed to begin lifting off at half past five, and as people were starting to get good vantage points at half past four, we decided we’d better too. The schedule wasn’t worth the recycled paper it was printed on and we sat for over an hour and a half looking at a field and getting grumpy at parents for not apologising when their kids trod on us.

The wait was worth it in the end though as balloon after balloon was inflated, lifted off and drifted away over the city. We were really close to a couple of teams as they set about getting their balloons inflated. At one point the wind must have changed as the half inflated balloon headed for us and the rest of the crowd before a couple of the team managed to pull it away using a guide rope. We saw about 50 balloons in all, most of them brightly coloured yet standard balloon shape. The best ones were the unusually shaped ones like the owl and Van Gogh’s head. The impressionist master would have enjoyed the surreal image of a 100ft replica of his head floating past a fairground. After we’d seen the last balloon take off, we tried to following them in our car but it seems everyone else at the festival had the same idea and it took us ages to get out of the car park.

Anyway, we’ve had a lovely relaxing weekend. We’ve had a nice roast for lunch and we’re going to head out for a walk along the river and maybe catch sight of the balloons filling the sky over the city as the festival is on today also.