Well it's no forest like we had back home in France, but it's better than nothing I suppose.
Our city has a few nice wooded trails within walking distance from where we live; different ones in all directions actually so we have several options.
None of them are all that long or expansive like our French forest but they are definitely a nice bit of green space that makes you feel a little closer to nature. No wild boars or deer though.
You kind of walk down a trail for a bit and than pop out in another neighborhood, cross a street or two, and then end up on another trail.
It was kind of neat walking around our house when we first got back to Canada and seeing what's changed in our neighborhood.
"Holy shit!" That highrise is new. They built that fast. This was a field when we left. Whoa, damn. Looks like they're building another one across the street."
I can actually see these cranes in the distance when standing on my driveway. Not as close as the photo depicts mind you, but still a clear indication that the neighborhood is changing.
Most things looked exactly the same though, other than the crap ton of traffic calming measures. Those are new. I like to think of it as a fun sort of road pattern. A game really.
Divided Speed bump, bank of delineator posts, divided speed bump, bank of delineator posts, divided speed bump, kid skateboarding down the middle of the road at night veering super close to my car as I'm passing, Holly fucking shit!
Swerves car out of the way. Angrily yells at kid in his own head,
"There's a fucking dedicated bike lane 10 feet over to the right yeh fucking dipshit!!!"
In the kids defense, cars these days are much quieter and he was wearing headphones so it's not his fault that he couldn't hear me coming. Good thing he was wearing all black too, otherwise he might have stood out. No amount of traffic calming devices can fix stupidity.
I remember when I was young and stupid though. Those were the days. My mom always told me that cars can't see you at night so don't walk on the road and don't wear black. I don't know if I listened to her then but she was right. I've acknowledged that fact many times before.
A little off topic here but one of the biggest shocks when we first arrived was the price of food. The first grocery shop is always expensive but fuuuuuccccckk! I remember thinking at the grocery store I really hope that this doesn't go over $250...then we cashed out.
The shop came to...
Wait for it...
$417!!!
I about died.
The crazy thing though was that we got nothing it seemed. The cupboards and fridge were practically bare. To be honest, I don't even know what we spent it on. We didn’t get spices, condiments, or canned goods. No rice or pasta, or anything non-perishable really other than chicken broth, tomato puree and natural peanut butter (I missed peanut butter in France).
We never buy junk food, frozen food or processed food so we had none of that. We only bought meat and vegetables for the week... I really don't know what the hell happened. Obviously there was laundry detergent and garbage bags and that sort of thing and two very large boxes of tea (English Breakfast and Green) and a large tin of coffee. Those actually took a big chunk out of the bill, but still. Fucking nuts if you ask me.
The second shop was better. It was "only" (note the quotation marks on only) $200. I was really looking at the prices for round two but it was still fairly expensive. It was actually pretty close to what I would spend in France, but in France the quality was much higher for things like produce and cheese and other things and I bought a lot of organic goods there as well. That price would also include wine, and beer on occasion. If I were to buy 3 bottles of wine here in Ontario (even if it was the cheapest crap stuff available that I would use for cooking) it would cost a minimum of $40, probably more though. It's no wonder that no one cooks with wine in Canada.
By the way how long can I rant talk about food before I start losing people?
Takes a deep breath in...
Okay I'm done.
Thanks for stopping by.
P.S. stay tuned for next week when I dive into the absurdity of buying dairy products in Ontario.