I decided to order the best pizza on the continent for dinner. The last time I phoned in an order was, oh, 15 years ago or so.
So I’m rather a little amused that it was only after I ended the call that I realised that I dialed the number without looking it up. I couldn’t tell you what my last phone number was, but after 15 years I still remember the number for Tre Colori. The human brain never ceases to amuse me!
Yesterday, Wednesday August 1st, I had a lunch date with my former colleagues at Industry Canada. I was delighted that what was supposed to be a quick meeting at the food court was turned into a proper reunion at a restaurant and that the organizer even remember that I love Thai food, so she reserved at La papaye verte (The Green Papaya) on Laurier right in front of the Museum of Civilization.
The old gang hasn’t changed, I apparently haven’t changed, and the work environment has changed. It was great to see everyone, catch up, laugh, and be reminded that I was lucky to work with those people for three years.
After work, I headed up to La Pêche (fishing), the community in the Gatineau hills where I lived for five years (one year in an apartment, one year renting my house, three years owning my house). The community has a number of villages, the biggest ones being Masham and Wakefield.
Wakefield is very picturesque and touristy. A popular thing for visitors to the National Capital Region to do is to take the steam train from Hull to Wakefield for a lunch at a quaint bistro and an afternoon of shopping in the boutiques. The steam train was having financial difficulties when I left and is not running this summer. I hope this is a temporary setback.
The drive to Wakefield along autoroute 5 was a little different as the autoroute is finally, after 30 years of planning, being extended. It used to stop at Tulip Valley, but not goes a few kilometres farther to Farmpoint, just before the grocery store. It will soon come all the way up to Wakefield and the junction with the 366 to Masham. There is no way that kind of road work won’t change life up in those sleepy little hamlets. Wakefield now has a Tim Hortons, a major sign that life is about to change radically.
I was early to meet my friend for dinner, so I decided to push on to Lascelles to see if the old homestead is still there. It is! There were cars parked out front, so I didn’t go up the laneway to get a better look at the house because I used to freak out when people did that.
Back in Wakefield, I parked outside the Black Sheep pub and grabbed an outside table at the Rutherford Bistro on the main floor of the pub. I had time to check out the menu before my friend arrived and was rather disappointed that my top two choices for dinner were sold out. I wound up having a decent buffalo chicken burger with delicious fries.
After gabbing for ages, I headed out to my friend’s house. She has been building it with her dad for six years as time and money are available. It is her dream home in her favourite place in the world.
The house is inspired by the Swiss chalet style, but is built with modern eco features, including walls lined with styrofoam and filled with concrete. The house feels really out in the middle of the bush, but she’s only a couple of minutes on a horrible dirt road from main highways and the autoroute. She can get to Ottawa in 25 minutes now and it will soon be no more than 20 minutes. The extra 10 minutes I had to drive to get to my house combined with the lack of services made a future there unappealing.
A lot of people, including politicians, have cottages in the hills and I think that the extended autoroute will bring more people to have their full-time home in the hills. Even without the autoroute, it takes much less time to commute from Wakefield to downtown Ottawa than it does to go from Orleans or Kanata (the eastern and western edges of the city respectively) to downtown.
The drive back from Wakefield was not without incident and I will get into that once I’ve caught up on sleep. 🙂
on Laurier Avenue in Hull looking at the Museum of Civilization
on Laurier Avenue in Hull looking at the Museum of Civilization
on Laurier in Hull looking across the Ottawa River to Ottawa
on Laurier Avenue in Hull looking at the Museum of Civilization
La papaye verte, a yummy Thai restaurant
driving north on autoroute five just out of Hull at the Chelsea limits; this was my commute for several years
the Gatineau River from main street in Wakefield
Wakefield
the Gatineau River from main street in Wakefield
the Gatineau River from main street in Wakefield
I’ve been in the National Capital Region (NCR) for about 24 hours now. As soon as Montreal was behind me yesterday on the 40 west I felt a weight fall from my shoulders. I was looking at three days in a region where I wouldn’t need a GPS, where I know the myriad ways to get from point a to point B, where I would return without hesitation if I ever had to be housebound again.
I’m here on business with my mother and we took my truck, so I drove. We arrived after dark and it was no big deal for me. I knew what was the best exit to take on the 417 at that time of day, exactly where the hotel is, and even the construction around the Lac Leamy casino was a non-issue. In any other city in the dark, after a very long day, and with a GPS squawking in my ear, the sight of construction would have been overwhelming.
Getting to the client this morning was easy and I took us to Toscano’s on Saint-Joseph in Hull for lunch.
A good friend and I had made plans to have dinner tonight, so I headed to her place after work. Being just a couple of blocks from St-Laurent in Vanier, I told her we were going to Lonestars for dinner where I got their fajitas. My last meal in Ottawa four years ago was at the west end Lonestars, so that might give an idea of how much I’ve been craving their fajitas. 🙂
Tomorrow evening, I am heading north to the picturesque village that was the closest bit of civilization from my house. If I have time, I might even go see if the old shack is still standing. But first, I am heading to Place du Portage to have lunch with my former colleagues!
A bit of nostalgia is nice, but there is no going back for me. It’s still nice to be home. 🙂
It was a spur of the moment invitation from old family friends and former bosses that brought us to a Chez Lien Vietnamese Restaurant in Saint-Constant, a place my mother had been to a few times and really enjoyed. Chez Lien is a chain, but she says that they have different owners and vary in quality. The one in Saint-Constant is the cleanest.
I’ll just make a parenthesis here to say that I started working for my bosses more than 20 years ago. I can’t believe it’s been that long! I last worked for them 14 years ago. We are still close and I can’t believe their boys are all grown up and starting to have children of their own. It makes me feel about 10 years older than I am.
Anyway, back to Chez Lien. They have a basic but mostly authentic Vietnamese menu with some Thai and ‘Chinese’ items as well as a very opinionated server. My mother gets a kick out of him. Everyone else had a combination fish and seafood platter with soup. I went for one imperial roll and the lemongrass chicken sauté. I wanted rice but when the server told me he was bringing me vermicelli, I felt it best not to argue. My mother said that I would have heard about it for five minutes if I’d argued with him for wanting the wrong carb with my meal. That sounds unpleasant, but he was hilarious!
The hearty roll came with fish dipping sauce (a clear and sweet sauce made with fish but not tasting like it at all) and a nice salad with a yummy peanut dressing. My dinner was very late coming out; my companions were halfway finished with theirs when mine arrive. But it was worth the wait! I had a huge plate of perfectly sautéd veggies and nice pieces of chicken swimming in a thin and fragrant lemongrass sauce that had just a bit of kick to it. I threw the noodles in to absorb some of the yummy sauce. Mmm! I adore lemongrass!
Chez Lien serves a variety of fruits deep fried in a wonton wrapper as dessert. Only two of us opted for dessert. My mother chose banana and I chose apple. Dessert was a bit ho hum, needing a little cinnamon or nutmeg, but the sweet sesame sauce made it pretty special. The coffee was very good, albeit a little too close to tepid to really savour.
I really enjoyed our meal at Chez Lien, especially when compared to my last experience at a Vietnamese restaurant! If I were to go back there, I would most likely have the lemongrass chicken again. It was just too good to try something else!
Yesterday (Saturday), I met up with my sister and her family at Camping Plage [Beach] Kirkland, in Venise-en-Québec along the shores of Lake Champlain, for a day of frolicking in sand and surf. I decided to spend the night so that I could visit a nearby attraction today.
The last time I played on a Lake Champlain beach was in the early 1990s when my dad rented a cottage in the area for our summer holidays. My sister doesn’t remember this, but I do because it’s the only time I remember my father taking us on a proper summer vacation.
With taxes, a dry spot in the campground was $30, an average amount for this part of the province. It would have given me access to the beach till 1PM today, but I left at 9 to give my planned activity, subject of my next post, all the time it would need.
Lake Champlain
Lake Champlain
fun on the water
the water was VERY shallow; you had to wade all the way out to the boat moorings to get enough depth for swimming
Entrance to the Kirkland beach campground
This little guy is wearing a flotation vest!
Not a bad spot (nice and big), but it needed shade!!! It was only 7:30 this morning that the sun was already beating down through the driver’s side window, cooking me in my bunk!
I was on my own by about 5:30 Saturday evening, so I decided to get the truck bed set up for sleeping and then head out in search of dinner. It was really hot in the truck, but the outside temps were going down steadily. I cracked open the windows, set up the curtains, and then took off on foot to explore the dining options.
To my surprise, there aren’t many restaurants in Venise-en-Québec despite it being a very hot tourist location. To the left of the campground, I found a snack bar offering poutine, hot dogs, smoked meat, and the like. To the right, there are a few ice cream parlors and the only real dining option, Papa Suzie Pizzeria. Besides pizza, it offers fast food items like hot dogs and poutine, but also some sandwiches and full dinner options like pasta, fish and chips, and chicken. Nothing gourmet, but definitely a step up from a snack bar.
I ordered the chicken breast dinner. It was modeled after the meals served by Quebec’s quintessential St-Hubert restaurants, an absurdly popular rotisserie offering insipid yet strangely addictive food. So that meant I got a quarter all-white meat chicken, French fries, colesaw, half of a toasted hamburger bun, and gravy.
The chicken was moist and flavourful (St-Hubert’s is dry and bland), the fries were brown and sweet (St-Hubert’s are frozen, what?!), the coleslaw was okay (St-Hubert offers an oil and vinegar slaw that is more to my liking than the kind with mayo), the hamburger bun was of better quality, and the gravy was thicker. I wasn’t able to finish everything and the bill came to less than $15 with tip!
It was going on 7:00 when I got back to the truck and the interior was nice and cool. I laid down with the iPad and wiled away the evening playing games and reading.
The night was very comfortable, but without shade, the truck became an oven very early this morning. Note to self: park in the shade when the temperatures promise to be torrid!
While the campground was adequate for my needs in the truck, I would not have wanted to drive through its narrow streets with Miranda. This is the second campground I’ve visited this summer where people are packed in really tightly. I don’t know if that’s the norm out here or if it just happens at the primarily seasonal campgrounds, but I would not find a stay there too relaxing.
My sister and her boyfriend are thinking of moving their travel trailer to this campground next summer. Like many other Quebecers, they use their trailer as a cottage set on a seasonal lot in a campground, probably because, as in Alberta, registration on a towable RV is a one-time fee. So this option is much cheaper than owning a cottage and you can move the trailer when you get bored with the scenery (or get annoyed with the neighbours!).
I enjoyed my time on the shores of Lake Champlain this weekend. Let me get some sleep and I will move on to my adventures on the Richelieu River in my next post.