The weekend after my Birthday (but absolutely still within the FoJ) we had guests. Ke and Dan drove up from New York city to spend a weekend, making them the very 1st non-family visitors of our posting to Ottawa.
On Saturday while Lilian was napping, we parked Thomas under a babysitter and the adults all hit the ice. We went for a quick skate on the public ring at the Governor Generals (very nice) and then loaded up and went back to Winterlude. It was tremendous fun without the kids, although I suspect that may not be the way it is supposed to work. Anyway, we had a fine time sliding on the giant slides and eating Canadian winter sweets including hot beaver tails and maple toffee. A beaver tail is basically a flat doughnut, while the maple toffee is cool because its poured onto a stick laying in snow to make it harden. The snow sticks to it, and makes for a nice cold counter-point to the warm and sticky sweet maple toffee.
That night we went out for a tasty dinner (thank you K&D). The menu presented me with an exciting opportunity to enjoy some posh poutine. Poutine is a Canadian dish consisting of chips (french/freedom fries) with gravy, cheese and optional extras like bacon, onions, etc. It is normally good cheap and hearty ‘don’t freeze to death’ food for the northern climate. This however was clearly not the people’s poutine. Instead, I enjoyed “fresh-cut fries, elk shoulder, smoke aged cheddar, caramalized onions, jus”. It was nice, but to be honest I had been perfectly happy with the poutine I’d enjoyed earlier in the week with my gaming-mates at the Elgin Street Diner.
Sunday we took the kids to the Children’s museum and had lunch at the attached café which has a terrific view across the river to the back of the Parliament building. Afterward we had a generally low key afternoon in which Ke and Dan awed Thomas with pics of their safari in Africa before heading back to New York.
Dan skates on the GG’s ice
Later, Ke prepares prepares herself for a Winterlude ice-slide.
Ke at the awesomely frozen waterfalls.
Props to the great northern posse.
You neglected to mention that we had to suddenly stop showing the safari pics after we realized we were about to have to explain life and death!
ReplyDeleteGreat to see you guys!
As it happens, only last one of the teachers was showing Tom pics of her trip to Africa, including the seeming obligatory 'lion eating zebra' shot.
ReplyDeleteTom: Whats that?
Teacher: Well, the lion is eating the zebra.
Tom: Zebras are made of meat, but I think that one must be sad.
Teacher turns page...