Interesting Day in Photos, From Toronto

I ended up capturing a lot of fun pictures today. Gynweth, on her blog, captures things like her Emmy scrapbook (yes, I subscribe to GOOP. Doesn't everyone?)  

But, me, oh no. I capture exciting things I find at Canadian Tire. Like this fabulous table.

I almost bought this table. It is metal. The center lid lifts off. You can use the interior as either a cooler, OR... wait for it... A FIRE PIT. Can you imagine a more versatile piece of outdoor furniture? Can you imagine J's reaction if I had come home with it? I feel that there is an entire group of tailgaters in Maryland that would support the purchase of this fine table.

AC/DF, if you don't get this for your renovated backyard, I may be disappointed in you. And revoke your Man-Target credentials.

Also at Canadian Tire, Princess and Cars shovels. Really? Why not? Where else would you get them? And your gun lock? And your hiking socks? And fire starters? And light bulbs?

(I got everything there today except for the pictured items and gun lock. We didn't need the gun lock. I did NEED the table. But I was afraid of J.)

This was my dinner. I didn't eat most of it. J said I was feeling my meat tooth. That was for DB and FdP.

It came with an entire jar of pickles.  

 Every day should end with positive graffiti. 

I didn't get a picture of the man walking home with the enormous beer stein/trophy.

I also didn't get a picture of the man who was campaigning for Provincial candidates to make it a crime to ride bikes on the sidewalk. He had a placard. He wanted them to be fined $2000 if they were caught, because it causes several hip replacements per year.  The placard had writing on both sides. He was kind enough to let me read both sides of it before moving on. I don't think people took him very seriously. Like J. Who said, "Really? That's what he is worked up about?" I told him that maybe he had been personally affected by the issue. I think J may be a little cynical, so the last picture is dedicated to him. :)

What we did on our summer vacation part 2: HUTTOPIA!

This is a huttopia:

 Isn't it luxurious?

It is a canvas tent on a wooden platform with limited electricity, including the mini fridge, small heater, and overhead light. It also has 2 "bedrooms," and comes equipped with most everything you need. First designed by French visitors who wanted to camp (and who had this business in France), this was a great first camping experience with our young family. J had attended a Y camp briefly as a child. I had gone to camp on Catalina Island off the coast of California for several years, and was more comfortable with the idea, but both of us want flushing toilets, especially with E and S.  The huttopia is perfect.

Unfortunately for us, the huttopia, which I first saw at a Plein Air festival in Montreal when we visited in May, is only in Quebec Provincial Parks.   If you are in France, or plan to visit, they also have several locations there as well. Canada as a whole is very good with the whole cottage culture/rustic outdoor living thing, and so there are many places to stay closer to nature. Ontario Provincial Parks also have yurts, but they differ in that they have mostly single beds. And their "comfort stations" are not as close; the pit toilets located near the yurts led us to decide to return to a huttopia rather than try a yurt.  We would car camp and buy or rent a tent from our local Mountain Equipment Co-op (like Canada's REI; now we're members of both!), but we aren't proficient enough yet to tent camp. Plus, it is getting much colder.

 Because we broke out our fleece and winter hats. In August. Because we live in Canada. 

S'mores every night before bed are VERY important when you are camping. And having the perfect stick takes up at least an hour every day, giving your parents peaceful time to read at the campsite.  If you are three, you break your stick at least twice before you find one that is sturdy enough to withstand your best efforts to break it.

The kid-size sleeping bags we purchased at MEC were zipped together to make one big kid bag. Of course, it still couldn't contain marshmallow and chocolate energy.

Our cruise on the Fjord du Saguenay.  The Parc National du Saguenay is where we camped.  It is past QC up the St. Lawrence towards the Atlantic Ocean. The fjord is popular with whales, and I am working on a short video that I will post directly on facebook with the kids.  It is astonishingly beautiful.

 Canadians are way into canoes. This is not a stereotype.

We kayaked from this beach with the kids.  Our guide was amazing in pointing out the seals just meters away, and we kayaked all of the way into the waterway of the fjord.

J and I thought that this was the best way to spend our 10th anniversary. It may have been our best vacation ever. The Saguenay area is one of the most breathtaking areas on earth, full of wildlife. We hiked, kayaked, went on boat rides, cooked and ate outside. We couldn't name all of the animals we saw, from the porcupine to the humpback whale to the gray seal to the beaver dam.

We now have a stuffed black bear named Fjord who lives at our house.

What we did on our summer vacation, part 1: Quebec City

Quebec City is awesome.  Amazing.  Super cool.

We checked into our hotel in the old part of the city and was told that there was a FREE Cirque du Soleil show that evening. It was under a highway. We had a minor snafu at our hotel with both our credit card and them losing a set of our car keys, which they later found, so them tipping us off on the Cirque show was really lovely.

The show site during the day. Note the use of shipping containers, the highway structure, and the general sketchiness of the locale. The directions from our hotel literally included: and then it is under the overpass.  What?! People normally pay hundreds of dollars for these tickets. Cirque started as a street show in Baie St. Paul, a small town an hour farther east up the St. Lawrence River, so this is very much in keeping with their roots, which was part of what made it so cool.  The show had a steampunk vibe, which seems very Canadian to me - at least, I hadn't heard of this movement in the U.S., though it appears to be global.*

 This is what you walk into at night. Good thing Canada is safe. 

 The show site, and the Ringmaster, entertaining the standing crowd, below. 

The public bathrooms in QC actually have classical music playing. And they are clean. It was surreal. I have never experienced that in a municipal toilet before.  

Part of why Quebec City is amazing is the old European city feel of the city, even though it was founded one year later than Jamestown, Virginia. (Yes, Canadians, the 4th grade teacher in me needs to tell you that Jamestown was founded in 1607, one year earlier than QC. Virginia history is taught in 4th grade, and was the first grade I taught.)  There are many, many old buildings and the fortified old city has a wall encompassing it. I suspect much of the old city has been preserved because of the difference in building materials, dictated by the difference in climate. You can see from the pictures that even in August, we were wearing pants, raincoats and long sleeves.   

There are buskers throughout QC, but there is a stage outside the most famous hotel, where the best ones perform, maybe inspired by their Cirque cousins? We watched 2 shows here.

E sometimes has inspired fashion sense.

Below you can watch the funicular that takes you from the lower old town to the upper old town. S and E loved it!

We had delicious food in Quebec City. Above you can see the picnic plate J and I shared for lunch one day with a bottle of wine. It has rabbit (sorry, Mom)**, pickled carrot and onion, tapenade, local cheese, fennel, smoked salmon, etc. It was one of my favorite meals of the trip. E and S had their own 3 course lunches at this restaurant.  J also had some pork lard spread at breakfast one day. Yum, pork lard. But it was served with baked beans, which are always delicious at breakfast.

We took the Governor General's walk along the St. Lawrence, which just proved to me that we Americans were right to rebel against the British.  It was a terrible hike of many open stairs, which S hates, so we had to carry him, to get this view of the river.  It was high. We could see far. Yippee. We ended in a park that we could have accessed easily from another direction. At least it was not icy in the middle of winter.

Next up: The blog you've been waiting for: HUTTOPIA!


*The steampunk movement reminds me of the book 21 Balloons.
**My mom had a pet bunny once. It was cooked for dinner. It is a sad story.