Thursday, 1 May 2014

Day 6 - Friends and Family

It was a grey day, the sun having decided that it should hide.  So it turned out to be a great day to catch up with my friends Paul and Yvette who have an apartment near the Byward Market.

We met them after getting off the bus and headed off to the market as the decision had been taken that we have lunch at the their new apartment.  It was nice going around looking at the beautiful range of food available and having someone else make the decisions.  We even got a couple of bottles of Canadian wine to have with lunch.  The salads were just what I wanted, the smoked salmon was nice and the cheese very interesting.  The Canadians are making some very nice food.  The wine was a pleasant and positive surprise,  I had doubted that they could make any decent wine but the Riesling and Chardonnay from what I think is the Niagara region is good. 

It was a nice leisurly lunch looking out over the park and brown grass which spring has yet to touch.  The food and wine were very nice and it was also great to catch up on North American politics which Paul follows with some passion and to find how seriously talented they are in art and music (I was seriously jealous of that talent I have to say).  After lunch we walked through a nice little area which has not been touched by cars too much and towards the Governor-General's mansion, Rideau Hall.  Their place is almost on the banks of the Rideau River.
Near the mouth of the Rideau River

Bridges over the Rideau River

The evening was with family.  Hedy and Graham took us to this rather nice gastro-pub in Wellington Street on the western side of the city, not surprisingly it is called the The Wellington Gastropub.  The food was superb.  We started with a couple of nice tasters but I can't remember what they were called.  My main was magret de canard which was superb and Bev had halibut which had bacon around it and it too was cooked to perfection.  There was a steak which Graham had which pronounced to be very good and the sea scallops were well done too.  We all shared a bowl of ice-cream with the only one I liked being the maple syrup flavoured one.  Peanut butter and ice-cream do not go together (sorry chef).

So a very nice day filled with lots of interesting conversation and nice food.   I felt sorry that we had to go as it was such a nice brief visit.

It was also very interesting to see the city without its cloak of snow and ice, such a spectacular contrast.  It looked like it needed a huge tidy-up.  There are works going on everywhere with roads being done up and lots of building going on.  I guess you don't get to do much of that outside stuff when the ground is covered in snow and it's -20 degrees Celsius. 


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