Miles and Miles of Ontario Province, Canada

Though we picked up our car on Monday, it is today (Friday) before our real driving holiday starts. In previous years in the US and Canada we have tended to stay a few days somewhere at the begining, drive for four days or so, have a few days staying, four days more driving and so on until we come to two or three days at the end of the journey. But the human geography (the population centres) of Canada doesn't allow for this approach.

With Quebec, Montreal and Ottawa all, relatively close together in the East and the sights of the Rockies and Vancouver close in the West it means there is a big bit in the middle that most people fly over, but that we (because we are odd) will be driving over in the next few days - and when I say few days, as this is Canada style, I mean a week.

The route we will travel today is this:

Ottawa to Sudbury

But first a quick update on our pre-journey activity.

Breakfast

I awoke at 3.30am and got up. The hotel wi-fi is fast, but won't upload all my photos, so I focus on the blog instead. As is now our tradition I make coffee at 5.00am and we go down to breakfast at 6.30.

As it is Friday, a meat free day for us Catholics, my options are a little limited. 

I had a bagel with cream cheese, I followed this up with two boiled eggs. 

Haydn's Bagel and Eggs

Drew opted for the meat, scrambled eggs and sauteed potatoes. The meat was a flattened sausage pattee which Drew thinks may be Turkey, or some other unidentifiable meat!

Drew's First Course - Breakfast at the Comfort Inn, Ottawa

A honey muffin and a doughnut, unusually for North America that was a very traditional Jammie Doughnut, like those at home which Drew loved.  

Drew's second course - Breakfast at the Comfort Inn, Ottawa

We went back to the room completed our packing and were on the road by 7:54am

Previous Day's Driving

Drew and I tend to share driving duties. I like busy driving, so always drive into, and out of big towns, and around places with lots of people. Drew likes what I call 'point and click 'driving', that is you set the car in the direction, click the cruise control at the speed limit and sit there for miles and miles. I find this boring, while Drew finds it relaxing. <<Co-pilot's note: He, dear readers, forgets about the times he has made me drive through urban sprawls such as Ozona, Texas and Jamestown, North Dakota!>> Editor's note - Ozona has a population of 3,225 and Jamestown just a little larger. 

Given the geography which I mentioned above I have driven all the miles from Marblehead to Ottawa, a total of 791 miles. Drew starts his driving today, and is likely to overtake me in very little time at all.

Ottawa to Sudbury

The directions on Google Maps for the day is as follows:

• Leave the Hotel Car park and turn left. 
• Go 280 feet and turn left. 
• Go 0.1 Miles and turn right.
• Go 440 Feet and turn left.
• in 300 Feet use the right hand lane to take the ON417 slip road. 
• Merge onto the ON417/ON17 and travel for 301 Miles 

Very much point and click.

For the most part the ON17 - the Trans-Canada Highway was an empty road with only us on it (or at least only us on the part we were on, there may have been many people driving at the same speed as us all the way along). 

About 10 miles out of Ottawa we come to the end of dual carriageway part of the road and this, the main national highway becomes an ordinary two lane road, that every five or six miles becomes three lanes if there is a road turning off or for the occasional passing places on one side or another. The passing places, when they occur, are often when there is a hill so that slow traffic. - if there was any, wouldn't hold you up. 

It may be Canada's Main Highway, but it is not what you would call busy!

We headed for Pembroke via Renfrew, familiar names for unfamiliar places. With one or two exceptions the towns are 5 or 6 miles off the road to the right or the left, so apart from the signs you see nothing of them.

We continue to head north-west for most of the morning. At 10:03, two hours and eight minutes into the journey (121 Miles), we stop for a Coffee and and for Petrol at the Town of Deep River. 

Welcome to Deep River

Deep River (population 4,109) is popular as a stopping place, the Tim Horton's there was not only full inside, but there were queues in both the store and in the drive through, but we managed to park. I grabbed two seats and Drew went to get the coffees. 

Drew at the back of the queue

Drew came back with the coffees chortaling to himself and said: "That queue was like an episode of Fargo." Fargo is a favourite programme we watch. Drew then described the dialogue of the two people in front of him in the queue, who had been strangers to each other, but knew someone in common.

They said in a style very reminiscent of Minnesota: 

Person 1: "Ookkkay like; I know Ziggy."
Person 2: "Yep, Ziggy must be getting on now."
1: "Yep, sure he is, well you know I'm 73 and, well, Ziggy, he's older than me, older by a long way"
2: "Really?!"
1: "Yep, by a long way."

We had a coffee and a toilet visit and drove next door to the Petrol Station. The unleaded petrol was $1.235 here, 8 cents cheaper per litre than in Quebec. Ontario has a slightly lower tax rate which makes a big difference when filling a car with petrol.

As we drove out of Deep River a hat Drew bought five years ago in North Dakota came back out. Coonie, as he is known for obvious reasons, is Drew's Point and Click hat, so he was back on his head.  

Drew and Coonie - concentrating on the road ahead

The road was lovely with small lakes popping up on either side to break the long stream of trees and occasional fields. The road remained quite quiet. The next excitement (putting some irony into that word) was the Roundabout in Mattawa!! The excitement was that it is the only roundabout, and a small one at that, for some 200 miles.

A roundabout, warnings about it appeared about 25 miles earlier!

By 12.40pm. the temperature was 74F, cooler than yesterday,  but still very pleasant. 

Our next stop was our destination Sudbury. When we eat last night in the Lone Star Restaurant in Ottawa our server, Super Dave, as he was known, said in response to asking Drew where we were going: "Sudbury, what are you going to do there??!!??!! There is absolutely nothing there!!!" As it turns out, Dave, who hailed from Toronto, has a biased view of the City. It turns out to be a nice place with a wide selection of hotels and restaurants. 

We arrived at the Comfort Inn, Sudbury at 2.45pm and checked in, it had great wi-fi, so the photos that had not gone up from Ottawa were uploaded here, as were the latest batch. We had travelled 303 miles and this was only our second stop of the day.

Dinner at Tommy's Not Here

Given the wide range of restaurants in Sudbury, and the requirement to have fish or vegetarian food (for me anyway) we looked online at a selection of restaurants and saw one about half a mile away called Tommy's Not Here. It describes itself as a Canadian restaurant with Italian influences. 

We called into the restaurant about 7.00pm and found that we could get a table if we were willing to wait until 8.00pm. So we returned to the hotel and went back at 8.00pm. 

The restaurant was a real pleasure. It turns out that it is called Tommy's not here because it was owned and run for many years as an Irish Bar in its underground space (it sits below an hotel). When Tommy, the man who owns it, decided to give up running the bar and let his sons take it on, they changed its focus to a upscale eatery. However for the first three years of running the place the most common question they had to answer was: "Is Tommy here?", so the reply stuck and became the permanent name of the restaurant. Tommy's two sons still work here, one had taken our booking and the other waited on us through the meal.

Tommy's Not Here

The restaurant was a real find and a great delight. Though it only have 40 covers there were six waiting staff, plus kitchen staff. The menu was small but well developed and included two special appetisers and two special mains.

Starters

For my appetiser I had Mediterranean Calamari - this was marinated squid tubes, pan seared in lemon and olive oil  with diced roma tomatoes, basil, dill, red onions, capers and hot peppers alongside baby arugula with lemon garnish. It was served with garlic bread and was utterly delicious. 

Mediterranean Calamari

Drew went for the Baked Portobello Mushroom which was oven baked portobello mushroom with the top taken off and filled with roasted vegetables, smoked salmon and goats cheese and the lid put back on. Drew said it was amazingly tasty, the saltiness of the salmon and cheese went well with the richness of the mushroom and the crunch of the vegetables.

Baked Portobello Mushroom

Mains

For Mains I choose one of the specials, a fillet of wild Ontario Pickerel pan seared and finished with orange and thyme butter sauce with capers, shallots, baby spinach and tomatoes with  roasted Californian red potatoes, zucchini and corn. The pickerel tasted similar to pike, I guess the similarity of name implies a connection. It was strong enough to carry the busy flavours and the whole meal worked well together. The crunchy zucchini (or courgette as we call it in the UK) was a lovely texture and the corn on the cob was crisp and juicy. Wonderful.

Fillet of wild Ontario Pickerel

Drew choose the Spicy Mediterranean Beef Linguine - which was linguine pasta tossed in a spicy tomato arriabiatta sauce, combining seared strips of Beef, grilled artichokes, zucchini, roast shallots, garnished with a fresh basil, Kalamata olive and crumbled feta cheese salad. Casey, our server, said it might be a bit hot, so Drew told him all about his Chilli growing. Casey then offered to compliment the dish with a Scotch Bonnet sauce. Drew agreed. The extra spice in the sauce went down very well, the olives were nicely salty and between them and the sauce they drew out the tast of the beef effectively.

Spicy Mediterranean Beef Linguine

Dessert

Drew finished with Hot Chocolate Fudge Cake, the first dessert of his holiday. The dessert had think fudge ganache flowing from the centre of a hot baked moist chocolate cake studded with chocolate chips and served with vanilla Ice Cream. It was juicy and lovely, with a great chocolate flavour. The softness inside was just of the right texture and the cake itself was finely made and full of chocolate flavour.

Hot Chocolate Fudge Cake

We completed the meal with a double espresso each and left the restaurant at 10.00, getting back to the hotel soon afterwards and to bed by 11.00pm