Canada and us................

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Week-end trip to Quebec city

We finally managed to go to the "French" part of the country all together!
I must say it was a longstanding dream, first I thought we would spend some time there during the Christmas period in order to see all the houses and windows dressed up... but as Canadians are Canadians and like to lighten up the entire winter with decorations, we even felt like Christmas end of February. Snow was still plenty around which made the winter trip perfect.
We took off from Toronto city center airport on Friday afternoon, getting into some delays due to gusty wind and snowfall. But we arrived safe and sound to Quebec city in the evening and had a great dinner with Tourte au Caribou and Paté au Saumon. Saturday was reserved for a Quebec city tour, we paid a visit to the Musee des Civilisations, had a ferry trip on the St. Laurence river and took some nightly strolls through the city. On Sunday we rented a car, as we wanted to discover the Ile d'Orleans with it's wineries and cidreries. After this tour, we headed to the Montmorency falls, visited the old Indian Reserve of Wendake and finally went into the mountains outside of Quebec for a nightly visit of the Hotel de Glace, one of the only tzo Ice hotels in the world. A truly great day of discoveries with a lots of interesting views and photo shots! Monday morning got us back to Toronto, this time in the brightest sunshine....
Here are some pictures...

Monday, February 22, 2010

Orillia Winter Carnival

Recently, I heard someone saying: "In Canada, you should enjoy winter activities as much as you can, the cold period will pass much faster...." OK, but what do you do if you're waiting for this winter since November here in Toronto? Just go up North, where the snow belt guarantees winter fun! As we did last week-end in Orillia at their Winter festival. For a Toonie you can go for a dog sleigh ride, do some treasure ice fishing (if you're a kid... a diver will put something on your hook from underneath), have a tour on a snowmobile if you' re old enough (not yet for Johann...), do some skating or a ice hockey game, play winter Olympics, visit a petting zoo, admire the ice sculptures, sliding down from the ice castle ... and lots

more (<-click here).

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Olympia Tribute

Nobody can escape the Olympic media hype these days, but rather than focussing on the medals and who's going to win the most of them, there is a short presentation on Vancouver I would like to share with you.
The German news cast "heute.de" published this lovely story about the B.C. capital and its' inhabitants. Getting a local public hero like Michael Bublé on board certainly helps convincing us of the charm of the place, but you'll also smile about the interviewed "locals".
Like the slogan goes: "Canada, true North, strong and free" and I would add: "Happy and a little bit self-content"... But that's changing refreshingly from the I-like-to-complain-mentality of other countries.

Hike at Webster's Falls (Dundas, ON)

Last week-end we decided to go for a hike at Webster's Falls. Our guide ("Toronto's Fun places") highly recommended this place, especially in the winter. We head great sunshine with us (but as chilly as usual, around -6 to -8 C) and we were surprised seeing all the ice piling up around the rocks the water splashes on. Have a look at some more pictures....