On Wednesday we decided to head out East and ultimately take a trip to Ikea in Burlington, I've been to Ikea in Scotland, but Kata had never been before. Ikea only have 11 stores in the whole of Canada, 4 in Ontario and the closest to us is in Burlington, more than 140km away. Now you may think this is a long way to travel just to look at and buy inexpensive Swedish designed goods, but in Canada 140km isn't much in the way of travel, its a factor of scale in this massive country.
Our first stop on the way to Ikea was a yarn store in Burlington called Spun, a cute little place in a "strip mall" situated next door to a sewing machine store and a "bar and grill", pretty typical for a strip mall. Kata was looking for some yarn for a project and when we take trips she likes to visit yarn stores. We spent about 10 minutes in the store and Kata bought the yarn she needed, as well as some yarn she didn't but really wanted.
The next stop on our trip to Ikea was Booster Juice, a smoothie company we'd discovered on a trip we made to the Toronto Zoo. Kata had directions for the entire trip printed out for us (thank you Google maps) and we were travelling along the same street that Spun was on and we spotted a Licks burger restaurant. We were both hungry and we had eaten Lick's Nature Burgers before that we'd bought from the store (the nature burger line is Lick's vegetarian burger, for which they are famous), but I'd never eaten at a proper Lick's restaurant so I pulled in and we headed in. We ordered nature burgers, nature coney fries (fries with vegetarian chili and cheese) and cherry cokes. The food was freshly prepared, the burgers topped to our specification (something I love about Harvey's and Lick's) and we tucked in happily.
We finished our food and headed onto the road once more. The Booster Juice (for we weren't going to give up on our smoothies) was about 5km away and on the way to the Ikea (Kata had planned wisely). The Booster Juice was also in a strip mall. It shared part of a health club's building and was next door to a "glow in the dark" mini golf. We both ordered the Mango Hurricane, mine with a protein booster and Kata's with a fusion booster (thus the name Booster Juice I guess). With smoothies in hand, we headed off to Ikea, another 5km away.
Ikea was pretty much the same as the Ikea I'd experienced in the UK, lots of nice, not overly expensive, relatively stylish products on display to purchase either as is or in flat pack boxes. We bought some candles, candle dishes (to burn the candles on), a pizza cutter (we didn't have one), a cast iron skillet, a messenger bag, some chocolate and lingonberry jelly, none of which was particularly expensive and most of which was pretty good quality. Kata enjoyed herself and admitted that we could have spent hundreds of dollars in there if we had a house to put stuff in.
We left Burlington around 5 and headed back for London along the 400 series highway, the traffic wasn't too bad and we headed to the Wal*Mart in the White Oaks area of London as we needed a couple of things, stuff for my bike and food for Blackie. The Wal*Mart was really busy and finding parking was a chore, but we took care of what we needed and headed home.
For Thursday we planned a day trip to Port Stanley on Lake Erie to visit another great lake (I've been to 3 now, Ontario, Huron and Erie) and on the way we planned to visit St. Thomas, Sparta and ultimately Port Stanley. The weather was fantastic, around 28C, clear skies, a gentle cool breeze and we headed out around 11am. We had planned our trip away from any highway, so we knew we'd be travelling past lots of farms and we knew we'd pass at least a couple of roadside farm stalls.
Not long out of London we happened upon a farm store selling fresh fruit and corn and we bought 14 of the most amazingly fresh and huge corn, we would have bought more but I managed not to bring any cash with me (apart from $7 in change) so we didn't get to buy anything else, but it all looked spectacular. We headed back on the road and passed km after km of farm land, either covered in soy (first pic), corn (second pic) or hay. Its quite a sight and it makes me happy to see how productive the land is around here. There are orchards and vineyards, all manner of fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, herbs & spices grown in Ontario, granted nothing that needs tropical climes, although there are a huge number of hot houses around the country too.
After a short while, we arrived in St Thomas, its not far from London, only 26km by Google directions avoiding the 401 highway. We started to look for Parkspin (another yarn store) which was closing down (the reason to go there, a little bargain hunting), but there was an Iron Horse event on in the town which blocked the street we were trying to drive down, we had to take a few detours to get to our destination, who'd have thought such a small town would have a one way system? We went in, didn't find much that we were interested in until we found a button bin where a bag, a decent sized bag, of buttons were $1+tax. Kata saw some cute plastic buttons that she wanted to get and we dug in hunting them out. After maybe 15 minutes we had collected what turned out to be over 1400 buttons, quite a haul. We paid and petted the shop owner's dog and headed off on the next leg of our trip to Sparta.
Our first destination was planned to be Sparta Candles' store in Sparta. We reached the cute, tiny town after about 30 mins of driving through the countryside. We reached the point where our directions told us to take a left turn and drive 1km. I noticed a store called "Anything Used" and thought "that looks nice, maybe we'll stop in for a look later". So we continued to drive along this small road in Sparta (it's the Sparta Line), and we went past the 1km mark with no sign of what we assumed would be a well signposted store/house, we did see a sign for a lavender farm (Lavender Blue) but we decided to keep driving since the day was so lovely. As we continued to drive we saw many pretty houses and many trees covered in what looked like webs (see the pic), we were so amazed by this we had to slow down and take some photographs. We continued driving and we decided there was no way we were going to find the candle store on that road, but we decided to stop at the Lavender farm and check it out, we were so glad we had.
The Lavender farm, at least the part we could see, was an area of lavender bushes, hoards of butterflies and other insects, crickets chirping loudly, a pretty farm house with a patio and the pathway leading to the store. The store inside is minimal, but nicely presented, all the products are on display and the proprietor had samples of her lavender honey and lavender jelly for customers to sample, along with other samples to test of the cosmetic products. We bought some soaps, some lavender jelly and some lavender chocolate. I asked about the trees with the webs on and we were told that it was caused by the tent caterpillar on birch trees. We also asked about Sparta Country Candles and we were told that it was back the way we came 3km (about what we'd travelled) in the Anything Used store (well that fixed the prospect of us stopping in for a look around).
We headed back into "town" and stopped to visit Anything Used, its a typical gift store with all kinds of garden nick knacks, candles (naturally), books, fudge and all manner of other things. There were another 6 rooms of items upstairs (we only looked through 4 rooms downstairs) but we'd seen and found as much as we wanted to buy in the store (a candle and a resin frog for Kata's mother), so we paid up and headed out to visit another store in the Sparta area called Winter Wheat which Kata's mother had suggested we visit (one of her favourites in that area).
Winter Wheat was only 2 km down the Quaker Road from "downtown" Sparta and is set off the road in a shady wooded area. The building looks like an old farm house, there's also a little tea house, the residence of the owners and a goat house in the clearing. The store sells all manner of "folksy" items, furniture, prints, garden ornaments and all manner of other cutesy stuff. The store offers free tea, coffee and cookies (with a donation to charity greatly appreciated) and Kata bought a few cards to use on her pen pal letters. As I was waiting for her to finish paying, I noticed a hanging bird feeder out the window and to my surprise, some humming birds were flitting in and out feeding from the feeder. It was my first time seeing them in the flesh, a wondrous sight. We tried to get a picture or 2 of the birds, but people were milling around and they didn't return to our field of view before we left.
From Winter Wheat its 15km to Port Stanley, so we headed off and made our way there. One of the primary reasons for going to Port Stanley was to visit the beach there and for me to get a look at another Great Lake (my first visit to a Great Lake was to Lake Huron at Grand Bend in the Spring, the weather was warm but the lake was cold and the town itself wasn't open for the influx of guests that flock there in the summer. We walked on the beach, dipped our feet in the freezing water and headed on our way). Getting to the beach required a little "off our map" navigation but we got to the parking area (free unlike Grand Bend) and we parked close to the beach and headed out for the shore.
The weather was idyllic, air temperature around 28C, the sand a lovely golden colour by the parking lot, I was so excited, I took my sandals off (de rigeur for summer in Canada) and walked to the shore bare foot. The sand was hot, almost too hot, but it was wonderful to feel it under my feet. As we neared the shore we saw multiple life guard stations (not like Baywatch, the tower type that 2 guards sit on under a parasol) and on the back of the one nearest us was information on the weather, lake temperature, sun UV index and other factors I didn't bother reading. The lake was 20C and the sun was "fry you in minutes" strong, at least for North Americans and Northern Europeans, there were hundreds of people at the beach despite it being a Thursday afternoon and many were sun bathing or playing with their kids and generally having a great time. We walked down the shore for 10 or 15 minutes, we paddled in the water (cold compared to the sand but warm), we took some picture, did some cute stuff (drew a heart in the sand with our feet) and then decided to head off to Starthroy to spend some time with Kata's mother and step father. We got lost a little leaving Port Stanley, but we worked things out and headed off cross country (again avoiding the 400 series highway) for Strathroy.
We drove for about 24km on paved roads and then we reached the area around Muncey. A sign stated the paved road would end and we entered into the reservation of Oneida. It was all rough track for about 3km and at one point a collie dog was laying in the road and chased at us as we drove past (we were both pretty shook up worrying that we could have hit the dog had it not pulled out of the chase). We passed out of the reservation and back onto paved roads through Muncey, it was my first time in a Native reservation and Kata told me that it was one of the places that Mixed Martial Arts fights take place in Ontario as the Ontario athletic commission won't sanction MMA fights (the reservations being sovereign territory). I've since learned that the area around Muncey has 3 reservations (Chippewas of the Thames, Munsee-Delaware and Oneida).
We made our way to Strathroy and we went to Kata's parent's house and we learned that her parents had a BBQ to go to that evening (they have a very busy social calendar) so we stayed until it was time for them to leave and we left them 6 corn to enjoy, then headed home to London.
It was a wonderful day out, the best I've had so far in Canada, the weather was wonderful, the people were adorable, the drive was fun and everything went smoothly (more or less).
p.s. If you want to see more pics from the Thursday trip, here's Kata's flickr set.
Our first stop on the way to Ikea was a yarn store in Burlington called Spun, a cute little place in a "strip mall" situated next door to a sewing machine store and a "bar and grill", pretty typical for a strip mall. Kata was looking for some yarn for a project and when we take trips she likes to visit yarn stores. We spent about 10 minutes in the store and Kata bought the yarn she needed, as well as some yarn she didn't but really wanted.
The next stop on our trip to Ikea was Booster Juice, a smoothie company we'd discovered on a trip we made to the Toronto Zoo. Kata had directions for the entire trip printed out for us (thank you Google maps) and we were travelling along the same street that Spun was on and we spotted a Licks burger restaurant. We were both hungry and we had eaten Lick's Nature Burgers before that we'd bought from the store (the nature burger line is Lick's vegetarian burger, for which they are famous), but I'd never eaten at a proper Lick's restaurant so I pulled in and we headed in. We ordered nature burgers, nature coney fries (fries with vegetarian chili and cheese) and cherry cokes. The food was freshly prepared, the burgers topped to our specification (something I love about Harvey's and Lick's) and we tucked in happily.
We finished our food and headed onto the road once more. The Booster Juice (for we weren't going to give up on our smoothies) was about 5km away and on the way to the Ikea (Kata had planned wisely). The Booster Juice was also in a strip mall. It shared part of a health club's building and was next door to a "glow in the dark" mini golf. We both ordered the Mango Hurricane, mine with a protein booster and Kata's with a fusion booster (thus the name Booster Juice I guess). With smoothies in hand, we headed off to Ikea, another 5km away.
Ikea was pretty much the same as the Ikea I'd experienced in the UK, lots of nice, not overly expensive, relatively stylish products on display to purchase either as is or in flat pack boxes. We bought some candles, candle dishes (to burn the candles on), a pizza cutter (we didn't have one), a cast iron skillet, a messenger bag, some chocolate and lingonberry jelly, none of which was particularly expensive and most of which was pretty good quality. Kata enjoyed herself and admitted that we could have spent hundreds of dollars in there if we had a house to put stuff in.
We left Burlington around 5 and headed back for London along the 400 series highway, the traffic wasn't too bad and we headed to the Wal*Mart in the White Oaks area of London as we needed a couple of things, stuff for my bike and food for Blackie. The Wal*Mart was really busy and finding parking was a chore, but we took care of what we needed and headed home.
For Thursday we planned a day trip to Port Stanley on Lake Erie to visit another great lake (I've been to 3 now, Ontario, Huron and Erie) and on the way we planned to visit St. Thomas, Sparta and ultimately Port Stanley. The weather was fantastic, around 28C, clear skies, a gentle cool breeze and we headed out around 11am. We had planned our trip away from any highway, so we knew we'd be travelling past lots of farms and we knew we'd pass at least a couple of roadside farm stalls.
Not long out of London we happened upon a farm store selling fresh fruit and corn and we bought 14 of the most amazingly fresh and huge corn, we would have bought more but I managed not to bring any cash with me (apart from $7 in change) so we didn't get to buy anything else, but it all looked spectacular. We headed back on the road and passed km after km of farm land, either covered in soy (first pic), corn (second pic) or hay. Its quite a sight and it makes me happy to see how productive the land is around here. There are orchards and vineyards, all manner of fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, herbs & spices grown in Ontario, granted nothing that needs tropical climes, although there are a huge number of hot houses around the country too.After a short while, we arrived in St Thomas, its not far from London, only 26km by Google directions avoiding the 401 highway. We started to look for Parkspin (another yarn store) which was closing down (the reason to go there, a little bargain hunting), but there was an Iron Horse event on in the town which blocked the street we were trying to drive down, we had to take a few detours to get to our destination, who'd have thought such a small town would have a one way system? We went in, didn't find much that we were interested in until we found a button bin where a bag, a decent sized bag, of buttons were $1+tax. Kata saw some cute plastic buttons that she wanted to get and we dug in hunting them out. After maybe 15 minutes we had collected what turned out to be over 1400 buttons, quite a haul. We paid and petted the shop owner's dog and headed off on the next leg of our trip to Sparta.
Our first destination was planned to be Sparta Candles' store in Sparta. We reached the cute, tiny town after about 30 mins of driving through the countryside. We reached the point where our directions told us to take a left turn and drive 1km. I noticed a store called "Anything Used" and thought "that looks nice, maybe we'll stop in for a look later". So we continued to drive along this small road in Sparta (it's the Sparta Line), and we went past the 1km mark with no sign of what we assumed would be a well signposted store/house, we did see a sign for a lavender farm (Lavender Blue) but we decided to keep driving since the day was so lovely. As we continued to drive we saw many pretty houses and many trees covered in what looked like webs (see the pic), we were so amazed by this we had to slow down and take some photographs. We continued driving and we decided there was no way we were going to find the candle store on that road, but we decided to stop at the Lavender farm and check it out, we were so glad we had.The Lavender farm, at least the part we could see, was an area of lavender bushes, hoards of butterflies and other insects, crickets chirping loudly, a pretty farm house with a patio and the pathway leading to the store. The store inside is minimal, but nicely presented, all the products are on display and the proprietor had samples of her lavender honey and lavender jelly for customers to sample, along with other samples to test of the cosmetic products. We bought some soaps, some lavender jelly and some lavender chocolate. I asked about the trees with the webs on and we were told that it was caused by the tent caterpillar on birch trees. We also asked about Sparta Country Candles and we were told that it was back the way we came 3km (about what we'd travelled) in the Anything Used store (well that fixed the prospect of us stopping in for a look around).We headed back into "town" and stopped to visit Anything Used, its a typical gift store with all kinds of garden nick knacks, candles (naturally), books, fudge and all manner of other things. There were another 6 rooms of items upstairs (we only looked through 4 rooms downstairs) but we'd seen and found as much as we wanted to buy in the store (a candle and a resin frog for Kata's mother), so we paid up and headed out to visit another store in the Sparta area called Winter Wheat which Kata's mother had suggested we visit (one of her favourites in that area).
Winter Wheat was only 2 km down the Quaker Road from "downtown" Sparta and is set off the road in a shady wooded area. The building looks like an old farm house, there's also a little tea house, the residence of the owners and a goat house in the clearing. The store sells all manner of "folksy" items, furniture, prints, garden ornaments and all manner of other cutesy stuff. The store offers free tea, coffee and cookies (with a donation to charity greatly appreciated) and Kata bought a few cards to use on her pen pal letters. As I was waiting for her to finish paying, I noticed a hanging bird feeder out the window and to my surprise, some humming birds were flitting in and out feeding from the feeder. It was my first time seeing them in the flesh, a wondrous sight. We tried to get a picture or 2 of the birds, but people were milling around and they didn't return to our field of view before we left.From Winter Wheat its 15km to Port Stanley, so we headed off and made our way there. One of the primary reasons for going to Port Stanley was to visit the beach there and for me to get a look at another Great Lake (my first visit to a Great Lake was to Lake Huron at Grand Bend in the Spring, the weather was warm but the lake was cold and the town itself wasn't open for the influx of guests that flock there in the summer. We walked on the beach, dipped our feet in the freezing water and headed on our way). Getting to the beach required a little "off our map" navigation but we got to the parking area (free unlike Grand Bend) and we parked close to the beach and headed out for the shore.
The weather was idyllic, air temperature around 28C, the sand a lovely golden colour by the parking lot, I was so excited, I took my sandals off (de rigeur for summer in Canada) and walked to the shore bare foot. The sand was hot, almost too hot, but it was wonderful to feel it under my feet. As we neared the shore we saw multiple life guard stations (not like Baywatch, the tower type that 2 guards sit on under a parasol) and on the back of the one nearest us was information on the weather, lake temperature, sun UV index and other factors I didn't bother reading. The lake was 20C and the sun was "fry you in minutes" strong, at least for North Americans and Northern Europeans, there were hundreds of people at the beach despite it being a Thursday afternoon and many were sun bathing or playing with their kids and generally having a great time. We walked down the shore for 10 or 15 minutes, we paddled in the water (cold compared to the sand but warm), we took some picture, did some cute stuff (drew a heart in the sand with our feet) and then decided to head off to Starthroy to spend some time with Kata's mother and step father. We got lost a little leaving Port Stanley, but we worked things out and headed off cross country (again avoiding the 400 series highway) for Strathroy.We drove for about 24km on paved roads and then we reached the area around Muncey. A sign stated the paved road would end and we entered into the reservation of Oneida. It was all rough track for about 3km and at one point a collie dog was laying in the road and chased at us as we drove past (we were both pretty shook up worrying that we could have hit the dog had it not pulled out of the chase). We passed out of the reservation and back onto paved roads through Muncey, it was my first time in a Native reservation and Kata told me that it was one of the places that Mixed Martial Arts fights take place in Ontario as the Ontario athletic commission won't sanction MMA fights (the reservations being sovereign territory). I've since learned that the area around Muncey has 3 reservations (Chippewas of the Thames, Munsee-Delaware and Oneida).
We made our way to Strathroy and we went to Kata's parent's house and we learned that her parents had a BBQ to go to that evening (they have a very busy social calendar) so we stayed until it was time for them to leave and we left them 6 corn to enjoy, then headed home to London.
It was a wonderful day out, the best I've had so far in Canada, the weather was wonderful, the people were adorable, the drive was fun and everything went smoothly (more or less).
p.s. If you want to see more pics from the Thursday trip, here's Kata's flickr set.
1 comment:
I've been hearing rumors of Ikea's impending arrival in London ever since I moved here over 11 years ago. I've learned to discount them, which on balance probably isn't a bad thing. The last thing we need, after all, is another big box store here. Wal-Mart has already done a pretty good job painting our landscape.
I like your road trip philosophy. You take the road less traveled and, as a result, you end up with a richer, more meaningful experience. Good to have you in this part of the world - and blogging, too!
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