Ellen’s Diary

It was Thanksgiving weekend last week which means a 4 day weekend for us worker bees.

I haven’t seen my sister’s new home since they bought the property last year so I thought that it’s the perfect time to visit them in Canada. Taking off a day earlier, Blair and I hit the road at 5:30 in the morning, after an evening of watching a funny play in the Warner Theater (will tell you all about that later) and made good time. We were a bit surprised that there were not a lot of cars in the road trying to beat the holiday jam. By 2:30 pm, we were right at the Canadian border handing the immigration officer our passports.

It was a pretty easy drive except for the rain that hit the last 4 hours. We reached my sister’s house just when she got back from picking up my nephew from the school bus stop. The early morning 9 hour drive was well worth it after we saw the kids. Bella’s becoming more and more of a lady and Troy is just full of energy. They love playing with Blair and are just as happy to see us there. By night time, it started to snow so that’s our “Welcome to Canada” greeting. I forgot to mention that we planned the trip with my other sister from Ashburn, VA. We were supposed to just take their van but it broke down the day before so we had to take 2 separate cars and left from our own homes. They got there probably a good 3 hours after we arrived.

We were planning an outing to Montreal but had to scrap that plan since the eye of the snow storm is right smack on Montreal. I’m tellin’ yah, winter in Canada is no fun. At least for an Asian girl like me. I get surprised whenever I hear my sister say it’s -10 outside. Oh yeah, they use Celsius out there.

  Anyway, not to let our spirits be broken down with the cold and snow we still managed to do some sight seeing in the area. My sister and her very hospitable husband took us around Toronto. There we visited the CN Tower which has this glass floor at about 1100 feet. It was pretty scary just stepping on it. Just imagine stepping on glass looking down a thousand feet below. Yikes!

We also checked out Eaton Center to see the festive holiday shopping going on. It’s amazing how it can be quite a challenge navigating your way around shoppers with a focused goal of getting that one last piece of holiday gift.

Then we also went to Chinatown. It’s the 2nd largest in North America and you just have to go there. Our Filipino instinct told us we might find some good ol’ lansones…but they’re out of season so my other sister had to settle for longans…hehehe. Oh! And the highlight was when my sister treated us to a dinner buffet in Mandarin. This is no buffet for sissies.

The rest of the trip was spent hangin’ out with the kiddos, watching movies and eating A LOT. Food taste really yummy when others prepare it…hehehe. We headed back to the US side Sunday and were lucky to not hit too much traffic. Also took a day off to decompress. Fun times … fun times.

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