Oh Canada...

I loathe Canada!
Before I tell you about our most recent experience with Canada I'm going to tell you about our first trip (as a couple).

It was 4 years ago, in the middle of July, I was 9 months pregnant with Leia and we had the bright idea of going to Niagara Falls for our anniversary. The weather was sweltering but we didn't really think much about it since we had A/C. Everything was running according to plan we drive 4 hours to the American side of Niagara hopped on the bridge to cross the border and got stuck in a humongous traffic jam on the bridge. We're moving about a foot every 20 minutes , we're sitting there in fairly good moods just waiting for our turn then the A/C decides to stop working. Now not being the brightest bulbs in the box we don't stop to get drinks before entering the bridge. So there we are sweating to death in a 100 degree car with no drinks. When we finally make it to the hotel we checked in as fast as possible, changed and then jumped into the hotel's pool. After going through all of that we head out to get some much needed dinner (did i mention that I'm 9 months pregnant?). From the time we get out of the pool I start to feel a little funny but just figure that I'm hungry, you know since I'm not due for another 4 weeks. We leave the hotel make it down town, find a parking spot and get out ready to find some place to eat. All this time having contractions but not telling Marc because i didn't want him to freak out. So we start walking up the street and I realize "wow these are pretty strong, I can't keeping walking like this". I tell Marc and we hop back into the car, drive back to the hotel, and call his mom (she knows seems to know a thing or 2 about having babies). She thinks it's probably just dehydration and that I should drink something. We decide we should call my Dr. also just to make sure. He says the same thing as Julie. So I start drinking and after a few hours the contractions go away. However, since we feared that our baby was going to be born in Canada we decided the next morning to just head straight back home. So in the end we went to Niagara Falls and didn't even actually see the falls at all. Oh and by the way Leia was born 2 weeks later.

Now our second adventure in Canada: The B&B Marc and I stayed at was super nice, but also out in the middle of nowhere with not a lot to do. So when the innkeeper suggested we visit Ottawa we thought "hey that might be fun". We get ready and head out with only driver's licenses to prove U.S. citizenship. We get to the border hand over our stuff tell them where we're going and almost instantly get our car searched. So that eats up a little time but nothing too major. Now as soon as we cross the border into Canada our GPS goes blank as if we've fallen off the end of the earth. But we have a little hand drawn map from the innkeeper so we basically know where we're going. We go down into downtown and try to find parking, we park and pay the $14 all day parking pass, get out and start walking. It wasn't horrible where we parked because we were shielded from the wind by buildings, but as soon as we turned the corner...The biting wind starts tearing through us. I mean this is cold!!!!! We walk probably a 1/2 a mile to the Parliament building to take a tour, find out the tour doesn't start for 20 minutes (or so i thought, it was actually a hour and 20 minutes, OOPS!) and that we can't stay there to wait. So we have to go back out into the Arctic chill and walk some more. I saw a sign for a photography museum so we head toward that. It ends up being closed for construction so we head to another museum that is supposed to be housing all the exhibits from the photo museum. We get there and it doesn't look too promising. So we stand in the lobby to warm up a little and then head back out again. Now mind you if we had known it was going to be so cold we would've brought more clothes, like long-johns, thicker scarves, warmer coats, snowsuits. But since we were being spontaneous we got rewarded with frostbit noses, toes, and basically everything else (my jeans were doing literally nothing to block my legs from the cold). We ended up getting so fed up with all the cold and walking around to find not too impressive stuff that we headed back to the car and went back to Canton. I think we only ended up spending about 2 hours in the city. Thankfully entering the US didn't require getting our car searched again, so it took a lot less time. But still in the end we ended up using the whole day either driving or freezing. I think it's going to be a long time before we venture out to Canada again.