Ottawa, Elgin, Toronto

Internet usage has been a little sparse over the past few days, so blog updates have been infrequent. Many apologies. Where were we...

Friday, we spent the day sightseeing in Ottawa with Kandace. Gnoman was in his glory. We visited Rideau Hall (the home of the Governor General), and got to see all kinds of neat things:






Of course, a trip to Ottawa isn't complete without a visit to Parliament Hill:


The Tulip Festival is happening in the capital city right now, so there are tulips everywhere:



Gnoman also took in all the sugary sights at Sugar Mountain:


After the sightseeing, we walked around the market a bit, had some lunch paired with a delicious Keith's White, then we hit the road for Elgin.

Elgin is a tiny tiny township about an hour outside of Kingston. It also happens to be where my friend Becky lives. If you're looking for rural Ontario farm country, this is the place to be. I loved it. We listened to a lot of Neil Young on our way to and from there.

After Becky took us to see some sights and some beautiful scenery we went back to her place and played a board game called "Name One" with a few of her friends/relatives. It was an awesome time. It is the moments like this that are making this trip even more valuable.

The next morning, good ol' Becks treated us to breakfast and we hit the road for Toronto.

Upon our arrival to the city, we stopped by to visit Allyson who is staying in Toronto for a few weeks to take a course and then we headed out to my cousin Malizza's place for a barbecue. Not only were we treated to some primo local Italian sausage, we also had an opportunity to taste some South African sausage, which was delicious. We spent the night at Malizza's drinking beers and red wine with her, her husband Reagan, and his friend Paul.

This morning, Malizza and Reagan took us for a trip around the city for what turned out to be an Asia-filled afternoon.

We ate authentic Chinese Dim Sum in Chinatown and shopped around in the Kensington Market for a bit where we ran into our friend Mary (quite random!). Maybe Toronto isn't as big as I once thought...

Gnoman thought Chinatown was pretty neat, especially since you could see the CN Tower from there:


After lunch, we drove out to a Toronto suburb where we went to a Chinese mall. It was unlike anything we had ever seen before. Over 300 stores! We went looking to score some pirated North-American DVDs, but due to the government's crackdown on piracy lately, we had no luck. Could have bought lots of Chinese films though.

Now, I'm back at Allyson's place typing up the blog and practicing my set for the solo set I have tonight @ The Boat. The girls are out shopping.

Tomorrow: Waterloo.