The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
I want to become a professional cocktail tester.
The bartenders at Burleighs gave us one of their WIP cocktails, based on smokey whisky, elderflower and hibiscus. Katy and I both agree it needed something. We finally agreed on sweetness, and the bartender sent us a Mk2. It’s amazeballs. And probably a bit dangerous.
Gin cocktails and cheese & onion crisps shouldn’t work together. But they do. And we needed this.
The holidays are over, and now we’re going to be on short rations until we pay off all the bills. Still, we’d promised Bean a sushi lunch before we left, so we made good on that at Shinka, a sushi bar we found via TripAdvisor. Was so good, some tempura, calamari and soft shell crab rolls were eaten before they could be instagrammed!
It’s hard to get fresher cheese than this – straight off the production line.
Katy and I escaped for a two night interlude at the Casino Hilton. We did the usual thing of holing up in the cigar lounge to drink and smoke, except that this time they were out of Cuban cigars, so we improvised. The lounge was initially taken over by OWMWM (old white men with money), who used silly-looking clips to hold their cigars, but we managed to get our regular spot by the window the second time we went.
The first night, we went into Ottawa to go try out a burger place, but it was waaaaay too crowded. We tried another place, but that one was a bit hipster and had a 30 minute wait time because the kitchen was slammed. In the end, we ended up at the Auld Dubliner in the market to get a simple yet very effective burger and pint. We stopped by a cake shop on the way back to the hotel, but the fares looked better than they tasted (way too sweet for my tastes).
The following morning was breakfast at Eggspectation, shopping for souvenirs, dinner at the hotel (with the pudding buffet!) and getting ready for the Ultimate Queen Celebration show that evening. The show was surprisingly good! Katy would go see it again, which has to be the best praise that can be given.
We stopped at the Casino after the show. Katy lost 20$ on the penny slots, but I got lucky at roulette by hitting on a number twice in a row (we think it’s because we had the orange-coloured chips) and doubling our initial playing stake, so we called it a day and went to bed. Next day was the last little treat with the breakfast buffet, then we came home. Katy was sad to leave, because it was quiet and we had lots of space to sprawl in bed.
Nat wanted to take all the kids to see the S&T museum. They had a blast.
There was also a special lego exhibit going on at the same time.
While the day itself was… a bit rocky, the evening was very pleasant.
We took the kids to Parc Omega again. Ben wanted to get his Beaver a girlfriend. Sadly, I was wearing a plain t-shirt that day so I didn’t manage to offend anyone this time ’round.
