Easter in a Slice of Europe

Happy (belated) Easter!

Glosette Girl and I decided to do something different for Easter this year. To mark the occasion we decided to take a whirlwind trip with Glosette Girl's family (including her parents, and Les Cousins!) to Montreal. The trip was extra special because we took the train. And not just any class - economy class!

It was a fun trip. Amazingly, despite all our traveling over the years, this was the first ever train ride Glosette Girl and I have taken together in Canada.

Montreal! The City of Love! The City of Lights! Wait a minute...

Montreal is an interesting city. It's not obviously attractive (architecturally) but there's a certain vibe, a certain artsy edginess that's cool to experience. Along with Quebec City, Montreal is often described in tourism books as a being a slice of Europe outside of Europe. And everyone knows the Easter bunny comes from Europe.*

Haha whatever. We came...

...we went to the Biodome....

...we hunted for chocolates...

 and we had a big breakfast after a good night's sleep.**

A great mini-break!

p.s. Margot didn't miss the Easter bunny either. She wrote a nice letter to tell him where we were staying while we were gone to make sure he didn't skip our house.

Don't worry, he didn't forget :)

*Actually the Easter bunny was popularized by German settlers in the U.S. Close enough.

**One of Les Cousins! stayed in Margot's bed. It was a late night. Don't tell his parents!

Spring at the Farm

Why is Ottawa the ultimate family-friendly city? Two words: "experimental farm". Ottawa has a farm in the middle of the city.

Let's contrast Ottawa with famous parks at the centre of other great cities:

• New York: Central Park
• London: Hyde Park
• Paris: Luxembourg Garden
• and Ottawa: .with th..the um.... experimental farm.

Hmmm...one of these things is not like the others.

OK OK, maybe that's not a fair comparison! The experimental farm is primarily a research area rather than a tourist attraction. However, because it is so large, not to mention smack dab in the middle of the city, it does have a fair bit of impact on the city's personality.

I like Ottawa's farm - or, more accurately, the agriculture museum at the centre of the farm. But what I think doesn't really matter because Margot adores it.

She likes the animals.

 
And animals.

And more animals!

 
The place knows what its audience likes! (There are regular summer camps here and they sell out in less than one minute - seriously).

Glosette Girl was feeling under the weather this past weekend, so Margot and I had the museum just to ourselves (and a few hundred other families) for some quality daddy-daughter time. It was fun. Damn you Ottawa! You know your wholesome fun :)

The Smell of Popcorn

Growing up, I remember when going to the video store was a special event. My parents would bundle up my brother, my sister and me into our mini van and we would go to the video store where we would rent a couple of VHS tapes.

The video store was a wondrous place for a kid. There were rows upon rows of the latest films and Nintendo video games for rent. The newest ones were displayed in big groups (what is it about seeing twenty copies of the same movie lined up near each other that makes them look so watchable?!)

The store itself smelled like the saltiest most buttery popcorn you could ever imagine. Best of all, when we were very young, the store we visited (Video 99 - this was before the shortlived era of Blockbuster's video store dominance),  gave us free popcorn to munch as we browsed the shelves! I call that magical time when anything was possible the 80s".

Netflix has changed that forever of course. Now it's so easy to just watch movies online....

...or is it?

A strange thing happened on the way to Netflix's global net streaming hegemony. Like vinyl record stores, a few videostore holdouts seemed to have survived the great video store purge of the last few years and one of them happens to be in my 'hood, Audiovideo Centre. That's it's name: "Audiovideo Centre".

We were enticed into the store last week by a free coupon deal and the fact that it is literally just down the street. I hope going to the store becomes a regular family occurrence. The store has a scrappy and quirky look, which is fun on its own, but the main benefit over Netflix is that they have a lot of movies that Canadian Netflix doesn't have. Chalk one win for diversity.

Will they survive? I hope so! Ask me in a couple of years and I will let you know if they made it.