Cottage in the Woods

The last we left off on my great Canadian adventure, we were in Niagara Falls. We left Niagara in the morning for Evan’s family’s cottage. If you read Lindsey’s blog, you know she’s all “Cottage! Cottage! Cottage! I love cottage!” so she was very excited to take us there. But first, we made a pit stop at Tim Horton’s. Tim Horton’s is the Dunkin Donuts of Canada and Timbits (their donut holes) were on my list of Canadian delicacies to try. In the great American/Canadian donut hole challenge, Tim Horton’s wins. By a lot. I also ordered an iced coffee and apparently that comes with a “sugar base.” In the U.S., you only get sugar in your coffee if you ask for it. I just took this as Canada’s first of many attempts to fatten me up.

We also stopped to pick up some booze along the way because cottages are for drinking. I thought I might actually die when I saw a bottle of Absolute is $27. That is madness! The same size bottle in Orlando is $14. Now I see how Canada can offer free health care, cuz you guys are paying out the ass for everything else.

We dropped off our things at the cottage and made a B-line for lunch at the Golden Beach Resort.

The Golden Beach Resort is a cottage resort and it is kind of in the middle of nowhere so it is very quaint and…woodsy? I liked it. The restaurant there is small and homey and has a patio, and patios are important.

The shrimp flatbread sounded good so I ordered that for the table. And man, it was delicious. I could have eaten that for my meal. It was also served on a fish plate which is adorable.

We also got (authentic!) poutine for the table. Lindsey was not going to let me leave Canada with our last poutine experience in my memory. It looks like a giant cow patty but it was delicious, and I’m not even a fan of gravy. Now I know what she has been talking about all these years. Poutine. It’s what dreams are made of.

Those cheese curds melt and get all stringy and delightful.

I also got the fish and chips because Lindsey said it was the, “best fish and chips of her life” the week before on her blog. So, that had to happen.

Very good. The best of my life? Probably not. But close.

After lunch, we went back to the cabin. The weather was a bit chilly and it started to rain, so we all took a nap on the couch. Not one couch. There were three, lest you think we just piled up. That’s when I knew Lindsey and Evan were our soul mates because I love a good rainy day nap. When the rain stopped, we hung out on the dock and drank while watching Evan try to unsuccessfully fix a boat motor. There’s nothing like drinking and watching someone else do manual labor.

Once the sun went down, it got pretty chilly so Lindsey made us all look like lumberjacks.

The most exciting part of the night was getting to see lightning bugs again! I haven’t seen those since I lived in Illinois. Also exciting: ketchup chips.

These were on the list and Lindsey bought them before we knew the list existed, so she gets some extra Canadian points for that. I don’t really eat chips much and I took that bag out. I thought they sounded gross at first, but they have a little kick to them and are amazing. Why don’t we have them in America?

I’m not even sure what we did after that. I think there were games but we ended up just chatting all night and hanging on the dock for awhile to check out the stars. It was a really fun second day in Canada even though the weather wasn’t that (says Lindsey because I’ll take 55 degree weather any day).

You can also check out Lindsey’s post about the day and see what pictures I stole from her.