Our journey continues east from Kalamazoo … we slept late (happily) but had to fly out of there at 11, sans breakfast. Suddenly the ubiquitous Starbucks at exits seemed to disappear, so I was worried about  my morning coffee.  I tried a Bigby Coffee instead, a local chain, and was a very happy driver again.

Luckily it was not a heavy driving day, just a border crossing into Canada at Sarnia to fret about (it was nothing, just a short queue to be asked “what’s in the car?” and “any firearms or weapons?”). Our ATT phone data plan stopped at the border, which I had expected except I hadn’t thought about the impact on using dictation on the iPhone to communicate with John.  We knew we’d have wifi in the evening, but in the meantime I took advantage of short stops to type questions and answers.

So there we are in the lovely country of Canadia, with their metric clocks and Homo Milk , Tim Horton donuts and so-called “dollars”.  They wouldn’t take an American Visa at the pump at the gasbar (aka gas station) so I went inside to pay.  “How much do you want” the nice lady cheerfully asked. “You mean in liters?” I asked.  She must have seen my panicked look before since she quickly said “why don’t you just go fill it up, but be sure to come back and pay!”

Our destination for the night was Hamilton Ontario to see our friends from travels abroad, Richard and Christine. They met Tony and Joy first in Cambodia, then traveled with us all to Turkey, Egypt and China. Here’s what greeted us on arrival:

Some 30 steps up the front, or 10 steep steps down in the back

John, plucky as ever, said he’d rather climb (down steep steps without a rail is not in his comfort zone). And climb he did!

Not shown, the part where we pushed him in the wheelchair up part of the grassy hill, but still an awesome feat in 92 degree weather, sorry, I mean 33˚C!  The proprietors, concerned about the impact of a bad blog rating, urged me to note the generously wide front door into the easy to navigate-to-the-back-patio floorplan.  A couple of Gin and Tonics cooled things off quickly and we had a delicious home made Thai dinner by the pool.  Here’s Christine’s fabulous homemade Pad Thai

Because the house was rather vertical overall, not just the front lawn, we are here tonight in the awesome Hilton Homewood Suites. They let us park right next to the elevator, in a spot seeming not marked for any parking, even meeting us in the garage to show us where. Then we went up to the room

Yes, that’s a full kitchen and large sitting area. The bathroom is the best so far; check out the really big roll-in shower

Hard to fault a place so so very nice, but I did notice one oddity. Notice the towel rack above the toilet, effectively eliminating the usefulness of the towel bar under the shelf. This would not have been so bad but for the lack of any other bath towel bar in the room!  Too bad there was not a convenient blank wall nearby where the rack could have hung instead 🙂

By the way, if you are wondering how John exited Richard and Christine’s, a quick 2-person fireman’s arm carry up the back stair did the trick. Richard and I weren’t the most graceful but we got the job done without dropping John.