Meet the Folks

We’ve now had our first visitors here in Canada! My parents arrived two and a half weeks ago and left last night. It was a lot of fun having them here and it was sad to see them go yesterday, but I’m sure they will be back!

For the first week of their visit, I was on holiday from work so we had a little bit more freedom to do stuff during the days. It was one of the hottest weeks of the summer when they arrived to coming from Helsinki’s ca. 10 degrees to Hamilton’s +30 degrees was a bit of shock to their systems. Although I have to say that although the whole summer here has been exceptionally hot, the week before last was not only really hot but it was also crazy humid so stepping outside felt like you were getting slapped in the face with a warm wetwipe. Not a nice experience. But anyways, we spent the first week around the Hamilton area and checked out the university and its surrounding areas, downtown, went to check out Port Credit, had dinner with our Airbnb hosts and their extended family on two separate occassions and went to see Niagara Falls. The falls were absolutely beautiful and once again reminded us of how small a part of this planet we really are. 

The horseshoe falls which are primarily on the Canadian side:

 The Horseshoe falls feat. The Maid of the Mist boat (USA): The American falls, with USA on the right and Canada on the left of the river: Joonas and I at the base of the Horseshoe falls on the Hornblower cruise: During the first week of my parents stay Joonas and I also moved from our Airbnb apartment to our own apartment in Port Credit. Because furnished apartment that allow pets are so hard to come by, we were forced to rent an unfurnished place and so that meant a shopping spree at Ikea. So Joonas and I set off one morning to buy all the essentials we needed. We managed to find some crazy good deals and got super lucky on a couch which was being moved that day to the ’As is’ department and so got that for a really good price as well. This time around I got my way and we went with a lighter coloured decor and I even managed to talk Joonas into buying a bedframe rather than just mattresses with legs 😀 The second week of their stay I had to go back to work and so they managed to find themselves stuff to do during the days. We had a couple of really nice dinners at our place and out at some restaurants and on one day they escaped the heat and went to the movies with Joonas. The last weekend of their stay we spent shopping with mum and took a day trip to see Toronto. We took the train from Port Credit to Union station and form there a taxi to Kensington Market. Kensington was cool, it was a couple of blocks filled with small stores, bars, restaurants and coffee shops all of which had a hippie/bohemian vibe to them. Apparently in the day its a nice place to shop and eat and in the night it turns into a clubbing district. Right next to Kensington is Chinatown which we walked through on our way to Toronto city center. Walking through Chinatown was like stepping back into 1997 Kuala Lumpur. There was so much to see and so many street vendors that I am sure we will be going back several times! Before heading back to Port Credit we had a nice lunch at The 3 Brewers where mum – much to our surprise – tried the Canadian food staple, Poutine.  A glimpse of Kensington Market, Toronto: So now I’m back at work, the parentals are back in Helsinki and Joonas and Bugi are chilling out at home. All is good in the world! Until next time,-Elli