Ottawa

Hey, we always knew we had it in us to do a long drive. Yup, after pricing flights and trains, we decided to be canny Scots and drive to Ottawa from Toronto. Blimey; that’s a ten hour round trip, we hear you cry! And you’d be right - door to door and back again is one heck of a journey. But we enjoyed every minute behind the wheel.

Being that our regular car, a vintage Mercedes 280SL, is soft top and DOESN’T feature the modern benefit of air conditioning, we elected to call our pals at Buick. We’ve been working with them for a while and have already test driven various models and find them to be fantastic modern motoring. Anyway, to cut a long story short, this time round we test drove a Verano and it MORE than swallowed up the miles!

Setting off from Toronto at 10am, we dashed first to the home of our literary agent to drop off a book proposal for the new home design bible we’re currently working on. We’ve been writing and re writing the proposal for some time and it’s finally complete. Hopefully our efforts will pay off when the publisher sees it. We’ll keep you up to date on how that goes…

Finally leaving Toronto at 11am we made it to Ottawa in just 4 hours and thirty minutes. The heat was intense but the A/C in our Verano kept us cool all the way. Blimey; as much as we love our old Merc’, for reasons of practicality, speed and comfort, the Verano was top class. So good in fact that even though we’re now back in Toronto, we’re holding on to the Buick for the next few days to help us cope with the searing heat. On Thursday we’re trading up to another press trial car; this time an Escalade and we’re SO excited about that one. As boys who need a load of space to cart furniture, colleagues and product from place to place, we know there probably couldn’t be a better truck for the job. We’ll report more when the vehicle arrives.

But anyway - Ottawa. We were invited to a ‘30 days to The Olympics’ party by His Excellence, Andrew Pocock, British High Commissioner, and his wife Julie and we had SUCH a lovely time. Together with several hundred guests we gathered in the grounds of his beautiful home Earnscliffe and enjoyed wonderful food prepared by a host of local chefs. With the sun beating down on the beautifully landscaped gardens and against the backdrop of the beautiful manor house (which was once home to Canada’s first prime minister) the late afternoon yielded to early evening as the crowds mingled and celebrated ahead of the London games.

Later in the evening we headed into Ottawa for dinner and found a really buzzy area near the market. Full of cute resto’s and cool bars it was really friendly. A couple of light courses - and a few glasses of wine - later we headed back to Earnscliffe where Andrew and Julie had prepared The Thatcher Suite for our overnight stay. We felt thoroughly spoiled and rather entwined in political history…

After a long relaxing sleep we ventured downstairs and enjoyed breakfast with in the commodious Earnscliffe dining hall. His Excellence had already headed off to a government appointment, but his equally excellent and utterly charming wife Julie joined us and we chatted for a while, looking out over the manicured grounds to the city beyond. Sated, we set off for Prince Edward County, a three hour drive from the Capital. We stayed overnight in Picton but spent the afternoon spread eagled on the golden sandy beach. Blimey - it felt more like Mauritius than inland Canada on Lake Ontario. GORGEOUS!

The following day we raced to Port Hope and spend the afternoon ‘antiquing’, or, in other words, bargain spotting around a host of cute wee second hand stores. A fun way to pass time; we love to discover treasures from days gone by….

As the day drew to a conclusion we jumped back in our trusty Buick and headed back for the bright lights of Toronto. Parking up beside our trusty old ’68 Mercedes, we breathed a sigh of relief. Sure, he’s a gorgeous old car and we love his every inch… but a 1,500 km trip to Ottawa and back via Port Hope and PEC was made SO easy by the modern convenience of our Buick Verano.

Trust this finds you well, hale and hearty. More soon!

Visit Link: http://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=12684&pid=0