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niagara-on-the-lake
Aug. 27th, 2019 08:09 pmvia https://ift.tt/2Lalbgu
It’s a quaint little town, with lots of quaintly-restored old architecture because it got burned down in the war of 1812 and then rebuilt and then nothing much happened so most of that is still there.
i’ve taken brief jaunts through it in the past, but this is the first time i’d ever gone there as a destination. there are wineries and stuff all around it, and Dude’s been on wine tours up there, but I haven’t. I still haven’t; we didn’t bother. Don’t want to try to bring cases back thru customs.
We just went and stayed in a nice boutiquey hotel, and got a couples massage in the spa attached to the hotel. (It was nice, I’d never had a spa massage before; I was fine afterward but Dude had gone all noodley and couldn’t stand up. We went and checked into our room right after and then zonked the hell out.)
The hotel was lovely, with fresh roses all over the place, insane parquet floors, hand-painted oil painting replicas of famous portraits all over the place– including a full-size replica of the Arnolfini Portrait , though on canvas rather than board like the original, and in our little suite’s sitting room there was a moody portrait of a young Disraeli over the couch, for some reason, and of course next to the elevator they had Edward VII Prince of Wales (it being the Prince of Wales hotel)– anyway, it was just what I wanted; I’m not a huge fan of B&Bs or AirBNBs where you’re in somebody’s house, but I’m also not a huge fan of soulless identical Marriotts etcetera.
The sitting room had a gas fireplace, and while it felt goofy to turn it on while the a/c was also on, it was actually really lovely early this morning when it was pouring rain and I was up by myself. I sat and read a book on my Kindle by the light of the fire, and a bit later when it finally got light, turned the fire off and sat in the window seat and read a paper book.
We’d had dinner at a farm-to-table restaurant called the Treadwell, and the other patrons of the restaurant seemed to have spontaneously made friends with one another. As they were settling up, the one man was saying loudly, “Let me pick a different percentage to tip! I want to give you 30%!” because Canadian credit card machines are the kind they bring to the table for you. After a moment the man went on to explain that he was from Vermont, and Dude said, “you know, whatever else they say about Americans, let us keep this reputation where we tip well.” I know, right? We’re rude as fuck, and have terrible politics and whatnot, but our hellhole of a workplace culture with no worker protections means we’re really used to exploited workers so at least we tip well, mostly.
Earlier we’d been to an ice cream shop and noticed all the tip jars were full of American green dollar bills. (To be fair, Canadian dollars are of course coins, which would be much harder to see through the sides of the glass; almost nobody’s gonna be tipping in $5s, which is the smallest Canadian paper denomination.)
At breakfast the ladies at the next table were discussing politics in hushed and shocked tones (such a reprehensible mutter mutter, shame on those who voted for him!), and I was only a little surprised to realize that no, they were discussing Ontario provincial politics actually, they were locals. Welp! The global situation is astonishingly dire.
[image description: the author, a stout blonde woman in a black dress, takes a photo of her reflection in the brass doors of the hotel elevator: her boyfriend, a tall blond man in a plaid shirt who in this photo looks distressingly identical to his late father, is next to her, and both of them are holding ice cream cones; behind them are ornate luggage carts, and the brass surface of the door has an elaborate crest of arms carved into it, hard to make out among the reflections (it’s a trio of peacock feathers and a banner that reads Prince Of Wales Hotel). the floor looks like a fancy carpet but is in fact an insanely complicated pattern of inlaid wood, blonde wood in ribbon shapes on a cherry wood background.]
It’s a quaint little town, with lots of quaintly-restored old architecture because it got burned down in the war of 1812 and then rebuilt and then nothing much happened so most of that is still there.
i’ve taken brief jaunts through it in the past, but this is the first time i’d ever gone there as a destination. there are wineries and stuff all around it, and Dude’s been on wine tours up there, but I haven’t. I still haven’t; we didn’t bother. Don’t want to try to bring cases back thru customs.
We just went and stayed in a nice boutiquey hotel, and got a couples massage in the spa attached to the hotel. (It was nice, I’d never had a spa massage before; I was fine afterward but Dude had gone all noodley and couldn’t stand up. We went and checked into our room right after and then zonked the hell out.)
The hotel was lovely, with fresh roses all over the place, insane parquet floors, hand-painted oil painting replicas of famous portraits all over the place– including a full-size replica of the Arnolfini Portrait , though on canvas rather than board like the original, and in our little suite’s sitting room there was a moody portrait of a young Disraeli over the couch, for some reason, and of course next to the elevator they had Edward VII Prince of Wales (it being the Prince of Wales hotel)– anyway, it was just what I wanted; I’m not a huge fan of B&Bs or AirBNBs where you’re in somebody’s house, but I’m also not a huge fan of soulless identical Marriotts etcetera.
The sitting room had a gas fireplace, and while it felt goofy to turn it on while the a/c was also on, it was actually really lovely early this morning when it was pouring rain and I was up by myself. I sat and read a book on my Kindle by the light of the fire, and a bit later when it finally got light, turned the fire off and sat in the window seat and read a paper book.
We’d had dinner at a farm-to-table restaurant called the Treadwell, and the other patrons of the restaurant seemed to have spontaneously made friends with one another. As they were settling up, the one man was saying loudly, “Let me pick a different percentage to tip! I want to give you 30%!” because Canadian credit card machines are the kind they bring to the table for you. After a moment the man went on to explain that he was from Vermont, and Dude said, “you know, whatever else they say about Americans, let us keep this reputation where we tip well.” I know, right? We’re rude as fuck, and have terrible politics and whatnot, but our hellhole of a workplace culture with no worker protections means we’re really used to exploited workers so at least we tip well, mostly.
Earlier we’d been to an ice cream shop and noticed all the tip jars were full of American green dollar bills. (To be fair, Canadian dollars are of course coins, which would be much harder to see through the sides of the glass; almost nobody’s gonna be tipping in $5s, which is the smallest Canadian paper denomination.)
At breakfast the ladies at the next table were discussing politics in hushed and shocked tones (such a reprehensible mutter mutter, shame on those who voted for him!), and I was only a little surprised to realize that no, they were discussing Ontario provincial politics actually, they were locals. Welp! The global situation is astonishingly dire.
[image description: the author, a stout blonde woman in a black dress, takes a photo of her reflection in the brass doors of the hotel elevator: her boyfriend, a tall blond man in a plaid shirt who in this photo looks distressingly identical to his late father, is next to her, and both of them are holding ice cream cones; behind them are ornate luggage carts, and the brass surface of the door has an elaborate crest of arms carved into it, hard to make out among the reflections (it’s a trio of peacock feathers and a banner that reads Prince Of Wales Hotel). the floor looks like a fancy carpet but is in fact an insanely complicated pattern of inlaid wood, blonde wood in ribbon shapes on a cherry wood background.]
