Canada

After mostly day trips for the last few weeks, it was time to take the car and start traveling around the country again and this time in Canada :-). From the first day in Toronto we directly fell in love with the city. Even though Canada looks similar to the US, the general vibe is very different in comparison. For some reason, it feels like everyone is more relaxed and also much friendlier to each other.
There are so many things to see in Toronto and I think we managed to see the most important ones. First one was the visit to the CN Tower. We were lucky, because we went on a day with great weather and could see real far. Most importantly was the Toronto Islands, because of the heavy rains there was a flood and they closed the island for

visitors. Next, we did a walking tour through the business district and it was great. The guide was really good and as a cherry on the cake he showed Yohan in what building the tv serie "Suits" always films their episodes. So cool to recognize the main entrance of the building were you normally see Harvey Specter walking :-)! Another special location the tour guide showed, was a huge bank safe somewhere in the basement of a hotel. In the past, it was of course officially to store all the money and gold of the bank and now you can rent it for little parties, like receptions and bachelor parties ;-) We enjoyed the tour guide so much that we ended up taking also the second tour of the day, through the historic part of the old city. Again, absolutely great with us ending the tour at the St. Lawrence Market that we planned to visit anyway. How can you go wrong with walking over a great market and taste all the different kinds of foods you have their :-D. As we got the taste of going on walking tours, we continued the next day in the Royal Ontario Museum with another 2 tours. After traveling

for so long and visiting so many places, it so much fun sometimes just to walk behind a guide and the only thing you need to do is listen and take in all the great stories and museum pieces. Absolutely the best way to see in a short time the most important things in a museum or city :-D. The best highlight in the museum was the display of real dinosaur bones and they showed really nicely which bones were real and which ones were replicas. The last 2 things we visited in Toronto were the Ripley's Aquarium and the Casa Loma. The Ripley's Aquarium is simply fun. They have a great collection of sea animals and the highlight is walking through a see-through tunnel and being surrounded by these crazy big sharks. You can really feel how big they are and how scary it must be to encounter them in open sea! And last, the visit to the Casa Loma. This is an Gothic style house with gardens in midtown Toronto and it give you the real feeling how it would have been to live there around 1915. And even though it is a

huge house, it was still surprisingly warm and cozy. Not a bad place to live in ;-)

Next on our list to do was a 3 days visit to the Niagara Falls. You can visit the Niagara Falls on both the US and Canadian side, but we decided on the Canadian side as you can see from there also the US side. Together we have visited so many waterfalls, but the Niagara Falls is really impressive! There is a smaller part of the waterfall on the US side and then you have the enormously wide waterfall on the Canadian side. It looks like a crazy amount of water that falls down, but only when you take the boat that takes you very close to the waterfall, you realize how much water it is! Even though we protected ourselves with ponchos, we got off the boat soaking wet. Hahaha... as always around waterfalls Yohan was the happiest person in the world and I was happy that it was over, while enjoying the fact that it made

Yohan so happy ;-D. Besides the waterfall, we found out that there is also a small park where you can make a short hike, so that's what we did on one of the other days. And our last stop before continuing more North was a city called Niagara-on-the-Lake. A sleepy little city with sweet old building and probably the nicest houses in Canada. Enormous villa's with huge gardens, a dream place to live in!

After this visit we continued driving to Ottawa, Canada's capital. A long and tiring 5 hours car ride in crazy rain, but we made it to Ottawa safely. When we rent a car we always choose the cheapest car, but this time we were very lucky. When we arrived in Toronto to pick up the car, they had problems, because they made a mistake and didn't have the car we rented, so after 1.5 hour waiting they gave us the first car that was brought back and in our case that was a Jeep. Hahaha... even though the waiting part was irritating after traveling all day, to end up with driving a Jeep all month made definitely up

for that ;-P So driving through the heavy rain was definitely easier in such a big car :-)
On the first day, we explored Ottawa by our self and stood already at 7.30 AM in the line for the tickets to visit the Parliament and the Peace Tower. Really worth of standing so early in line, because the building is beautiful. Apparently, we are lucky as well, because we were told that they are starting very soon big renovations and that it will be closed for the public for the coming 10 years. And after coming home later and to see on television politicians standing in the hallways we visited that day, that was kind of cool as well. By the way, the nicest room of the whole building is the library. It makes you feel like standing in a Harry Potter movie, very impressive!

Next was the visit to the Canadian War Museum, a nice museum with, as highlight, the car that was owned by Hitler you can see in many historical pictures. On the other days, we saw the last 4 activities we wanted to do in Ottawa. First, we visited the Rideau Canal that is very famous for becoming an ice skating place in the winter, after we visited the Notre Dame Basilica, what is a cute pretty church that is located next to the National Gallery of Canada. The National Gallery isn't a huge museum, so we managed to finish seeing everything in 1.5 hours. Enough time left for going to the ByWard Market. And you won't believe what I ate there, a Beavertail. It doesn't sound good and it maybe even doesn't look good on the picture, but my g'd, it tastes like heaven! It's fried dough, still warm with a layer of chocolate and on top of that fresh banana. Maybe it's the baby hormones, but that was seriously amazing (and luckily, we found another place that made them later in the trip in Quebec City ;-D) Another very tasty, but really unhealthy thing we discovered in Ottawa was Poutine. It's a

plate of french fries, covered with gravy, cheese, chicken and green peas. Pff... not healthy, but SO good!

I went crazy with food in Ottawa, but in Montreal Yohan had his favorite lunch food at the Jean-Talon Market: a combination of oysters, olives, bread and cheese. You see, even though we eat generally much healthier and definitely much less than in the past, we still love to eat good food!
As the same in Toronto we went on a walking tour in Montreal and it was great. The tour guide did a great job and showed us lots of hidden places in Montreal. By ourselves, we also walked a lot in Montreal. Normally we take a motel more outside the city, but in Montreal we had a hotel close to the city center, but it was harder to find parking, so we practically left the car the whole time at the parking spot we found and walked to everywhere. Montreal is a really nice city with a lot of activities and especially festivals. They have like every weekend a festivals (at least, that's how it feels it) and what is also nice, is it's nice combination of old historic and modern buildings. One of the most famous places to visit is the Notre-Dame Basilica, a gorgeous church that is really impressive with a beautiful blue sealing. For me personally, it was the prettiest church we have seen all trip! Besides the great lunch on the market, we also had the chance to taste the world-famous Montreal bagels. Our tour guide told us that it's the only bagel ever been taken into space as there was a Canadian astronaut that took the bagels with him. Hahaha… he must have really liked them then ;-) Of course we didn't only eat in Montreal, we also did some serious exercise by walking through the park and climbing up all the stairs to see Mount Royal. Because Yohan is walking so many stairs as sport every other day, it was easy peasy for him, but I had to take a break every 10 meters up. Pfff... I hope it is the pregnancy, because my body is behaving like an old lady. Walking is still fine, but I practically die walking up the hill or

climbing stairs :-(
Except for wanting to visit Montreal, because of the beautiful places to visit, we also really wanted to go there to visit friends. Friday night I had the pleasure to have a great dinner with Vanessa, an old college and friend of mine. I so much enjoyed to catch up and to hear all the news and gossip of the office ;-) Vanessa, we really enjoyed seeing you again, you definitely have the cutest dog, cat and house ever and we can't wait to have you come and visit us in the Netherlands! Next day we visited Jean, Amalia Pizem and their granddaughter (after Yohan not seeing them 20 years) and had an amazing lunch. I really hope that one day I will be able to cook a lunch like that! And after visiting them we took the decision, that when we buy a house it really needs to have a garden, because it's SO nice to have lunch outside in the garden! Jean and Amalia, thank you so much for your hospitality and it was great to spend real quality time together!
Our last city we visited in Canada was Quebec City. In all other cities,

the languages is a real combination of English and French, but in Quebec City people speak mostly French. It's a pretty city with a beautiful old part where you can walk around. We walked around again with a walking tour, how surprisingly ;-) that I wasn't personally very impressed with, but he showed us the highlights of the old city anyway. Most well-known is the Fairmont hotel (the number 1 pictured hotel in the world), and located next to it is Terrasse Dufferin, a combination of a boulevards and square. Very nice to visit and pretty to take pictures off. Also the little street below the Terrasse Dufferin is really nice. One of these really old streets with lots of nice shops to see. On the last day, we visited La Citadelle de Quebec, a still active army base with lots of history and an interesting museum and tour over the base. From there we were also able to take the nice picture of the famous hotel from above. On the way back to the car we past for the last time the Fountaine de Tourny a beautiful fountain. And just to finish the day we passed through the Montmorency Falls Park where you climb a stairs to visit the waterfall from upstairs and that made for a perfect ending of our visit to Canada. After we only needed to drive all the way back to Toronto in order be able to fly to the East Coast of the US, our last month of the world trip.
Canada, you were amazing! Such a nice place to live in, we can't wait to return soon again!

(Travel plan: Toronto, Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City and Toronto)