Towards Paris, Kitchener and Lake Ontario

Towards Paris (Sept. 4th)

Gongyu on the beach one more time in the morning.

   
After an outdoor breakfast at the Harbor in Port Rowan we headed towards Coyle's in Tilsonburg. Coyle's is a mixture of a dried food/baking shop and some sort of art/lamp/vases (they call it giftware) type shop. It is large and we indeed discussed (and bought) several items. 

Our next destination was Gunn's Hill Artisan Cheese. I came across them in the Picton Cheese Festival earlier in the year. Their cheese making house and shop is in the middle of nowhere and our GPS was off by 1 or 2km but with the help of the house number system we found them. We bought their Handeck, 5-Brothers and Brie cheeses.

We had lunch in Paris, Ontario. Paris is a neat little town. Definitely worthwhile to spent a few hours. I only detected when back home by perusing "Going to Town: Architectural walking Tours in Southern Ontario" that we should have walked into several more areas and streets. But so what, it won't be the last time that we are going to visit the area given Margaret is down there.

The river above is the Grand River (flows also through Kitchener and Cambridge). It is no problem to find a decent place to eat/dine.

Kitchener (Sept. 4th and 5th)

We spent the next 2 days staying over night in Kitchener and visiting various places. Our most memorable evening was dining at MPC Public Kitchen & Bar. A small Spanish tapas style restaurant. It wasn't exactly cheap but their scallop on lobster sauce with rice, their pork taco and their roast salad were heavenly. They had an exhaustive wine selection as well. Definitely recommended. Other places we dined were Cameron Chinese Restaurant in downtown Kitchener (we had good dim-sum) and The Bauer Kitchen which is a bit like Milestone in terms of style and food (I was actually looking for a German style restaurant but this is not along that line despite is German name ;-). It is a place where you could also have a business dinner or lunch with a group of people).

In Kitchener itself we walked through a larger part of King-Street forward backward. King Street is the main down-town street there. It is a mix of small shops, some shopping malls and some administration buildings (city hall had a good new architecture). The majority of the street portion we walked consisted of small shops in older style houses. 

The St. Jacob market was also on the todo list. I liked the market but it has grown quite a bit compared to 18 years or so ago. Unfortunately the main market hall (a wooden structure) burnt down (a while ago?). The burnt remnants are still visible. I assume that is the reason why relatively few bakeries and butcheries were there. But the farm produce was plenty and varied (definitely more compared to anything in Ottawa). I ended up buying a lot of locally grown plums, peaches and apricots.

Our last place in Kitchener was Sproll's Fine German Bakery. The place is in the outskirts of Kitchener (supposedly they are also in St. Jacob at the market but I did not see them there). With hindsight 5 days later in Ottawa I have to say their rye-bread with caraway and their bretzels are definitely worthwhile. I bought enough bretzels but I should have bought 4 loaves of bread instead of one ;-).

Port Hope and Coburg on Lake Ontario (Sept. 6th)

We headed homewards on Friday via breaks in Port Hope and Coburg. Unfortunately we have no pics from Port Hope (Gongyu thought I messed up bring the camera along when walking through town while I assumed she accidentally deleted the pics when back in Ottawa. But I think now that she is correct). Anyway Port Hope is worth a visit.

After spending about 90min in Port Hope we went to Coburg. Again this is a worthwhile town to visit. Both towns are described nicely in the "Going to Town: Architectural walking Tours in Southern Ontario". I ear-marked both towns as future break places for dinner and lunch when heading back from Toronto to Ottawa. Below some pics from Coburg with their beach, down-town and harbor areas as backgrounds.

We had lunch at the The Dutch Oven. The elder ladies there offered a very decent simple meals (will go there again). Their sign is visible to the right of Gongyu.

I plan to provide another post for the Guelph Arboretum. It deserves a post of its own.
Aside from that next time I would peruse the "Going to town" book before heading out and not simply look online at its table of content. We did not make it to Stratford and its Shakespeare festival either. That is also ear-marked for another time. Same for Goodrich and the area north of the 401.