A reluctant visitor

December 29, 2025December 29, 2025 / Greg / Leave a comment

Like many fellow Canadians these days, the thought of a trip south of our border into the United States brings a lot of feelings. Back when I was heading down to Washington, DC for work, I was apprehensive. Aside from being excited for an interesting work-related opportunity, I didn’t have a lot of desire for the travel and exploring aspect of a trip like this that I normally would have had in the past. Maybe some of that was because I had been to Washington previously, maybe some of it was the feeling like I was heading directly into the belly of the beast… but work was calling so I packed my bags and decided to try to make the best of it.

How did that get started? A February day with the temperatures hitting close to 20C made for perfect unexpected patio beer weather and I took advantage one afternoon at Aslin Beer Company. They had a wonderful array of beers across some favourite styles and I luxuriated in the opportunity to do some tastings while feeling the heat of the sun on my skin for the first time in a couple of months.

Beer tasting at Aslin Beer Company in Washington, DC

Continue reading →

Winter fun in Toronto

November 23, 2025November 23, 2025 / Greg / Leave a comment

I have grown fond of taking a quick winter trip each year to escape what can feel like endless darkness and cold in Saskatchewan. Given the extremes of living on the prairies in winter, it means just about anywhere else for a short visit will be less harsh. Well, not so fast this past winter. I booked a four day visit to Toronto on account of my current boycott of the USA and the fact that a direct flight holds a lot of cachet when traveling across this country in the dead of winter. While my flights miraculously went off without a hitch, I clearly picked the wrong days to explore Toronto as I was hit with more winter weather and snow than I would see in Saskatoon for almost the entirety of the winter season.

My visit got off to a lucky start as I arrived in Toronto just after the first blizzard had cleared away and with my flight there being the first in about a day and a half to not be canceled out of Saskatoon into Toronto. As I waited for a street car to take me to some craft brewery exploring, there were blue skies above and a reasonable amount of fresh snow on the ground.

Continue reading →

Atlanta with my favourite person

October 18, 2025October 18, 2025 / Greg / Leave a comment

My second trip to Atlanta was, for me, a mostly work trip. Luckily, my wife was able to join me on this visit and we squeezed a few experiences around my conference activities. While I was off doing conference things, she visited the aquarium and the zoo, and was nice enough to indulge me on our first (and only) free day in the city touring some craft breweries. I made sure to pre-scout these so they had ample gluten free offerings for her. We had a grand time touring a few neighbourhoods we wouldn’t have otherwise visited. There was lots of laughter, some great Mexican food (the barbacoa tacos at Wild Heaven were tremendous!), a lot of tasty patio beers, and a few games of Yahtzee to get our trip kicked off well.

Continue reading →

Non-stop fun in Cincinnati

June 6, 2025June 6, 2025 / Greg / Leave a comment

I love my annual baseball trip. Last summer, with eleven stadiums and cities left for me to visit to have seen a major league game everywhere baseball is played, I decided to head to Cincinnati. It was to have been my baseball trip in 2020 on account of a ridiculously cheap plane ticket I had found. I had done just enough looking at the city before the world shut down to know that there would be plenty to keep me interested for a few days there. Cincinnati may not strike you as a “must go” destination, but as a baseball fan, there was plenty to like. A downtown stadium I could walk to, six games in five days on account of one double-header, and some fan apathy due to a number of down years for their team that made my tickets pretty inexpensive.

Cincinnati Reds game at Great American Ballpark

Continue reading →

Echoes of the past

June 1, 2025June 1, 2025 / Greg / Leave a comment

It has been a year since I lost both my mom and dad in a span of 20 days. I think, like a lot of people, I underestimated the effect grief would have on me. After the difficult process of cleaning out and selling their house all while trying to stay engaged with work from New Brunswick, I was exhausted. In hindsight, I should have taken some time off to recover, but the first break I gave myself was a short trip to Montreal to get away from everything and unplug.

I wasn’t thoughtful about choosing Montreal. I had decided on Vancouver for an escape, but the hotels were so expensive that I ended up booking my trip to this city that has been so much a part of my life over the years. I was so tired in organizing all of this that it didn’t even occur to me that I’d be away for what would have been my dad’s 85th birthday. More on that in a bit. But I was “with it” enough to book a seat on the left side of the plane for this view. Olympic Stadium on the final approach brought a tear to my eye.

Continue reading →

Wine group on the road

March 30, 2025March 30, 2025 / Greg / 1 Comment

Over the course of living in Saskatoon, we have become part of a great group of friends who take pleasure in wine tasting. That’s a fancy way of saying a group of us gets together a few times a year to enjoy wine, usually with food, sometimes on someone’s patio and sometimes in a favourite wine store in Saskatoon. We open a few bottles, then a few more, and the laughs begin to flow. Over the pandemic, we turned our group virtual for a spell and those zoom wine tasting nights felt like nights out and kept us going until things returned to normal. In those zoom wine tastings, we talked a lot about wine travel and as a group have now attended the international wine festival in Vancouver on two occasions including last year.

For this most recent wine trip, my wife and I headed to Vancouver a day before our group activities started for a bit of “us” time. On a cold, rainy night, we tucked into the cozy Chickadee Room cocktail bar for a couple of happy hour drinks and the free gluten free fried chicken that comes along with your order. This was a great first stop – excellent cocktails, tender juicy chicken all in a retro vibes bar that warmed us up.

Cocktails at the Chickadee Room in Vancouver

Juke Fried Chicken at the Chickadee Room

Continue reading →

Seattle two ways

March 9, 2025March 9, 2025 / Greg / Leave a comment

They were simpler times in so many ways. Crossing the border into the USA wasn’t something that made my stomach churn like it did for a trip I just took to Washington. And while I’m debating with myself how frequently I’ll be back down to the USA for pleasure over the next little while, there was no such hesitation on my last two visits to Seattle. Seattle feels a lot like Vancouver and I’ve been there enough that I have a good sense of the city and a few favourite haunts by now.

The first trip, my wife made the journey there with me while I was attending a conference, and it was fun to both see the city through her eyes and to also experience some new things with her. A tradition we have on all of our trips is some form of Yahtzee championship. We spent a couple of hours at TeKu Tavern + Cafe and while I enjoyed a couple of delicious pints of Washington state beer, I demolished my wife in our Yahtzee matches. She was terribly disappointed at how the games went.

Continue reading →

Then and now

November 16, 2024November 15, 2024 / Greg / Leave a comment

August 6, 2006 is the date I first set foot in Brussels. I have written about the inauspicious start that trip had, but even after quite an arrival calamity, that one trip changed the way I view a lot of things in my life and set me on a course to explore and travel as much as possible. When I set foot again in Brussels last year, more than seventeen years had passed. A lot had changed, as is the case when seventeen years pass. But near as I can remember, the feeling of awe wasn’t one of them while standing in the middle of what I now have more authority to claim as the most beautiful public square in Europe. The Grand Place stopped me in my tracks in 2023 much as it did on my first night there so many years ago.

Continue reading →

A quiet day in Ghent

November 6, 2024November 5, 2024 / Greg / Leave a comment

When I boarded a train in Brussels to make my way to Ghent for a day trip to explore the city, something felt off. Sometimes when I’m on a solo trip a touch of loneliness or homesickness creeps in and it usually dissolves pretty quickly. As I disembarked in Ghent and started walking toward the historic city centre I chalked up the feeling to the grey skies of the day and the threat of rain and put it out of my mind. It helped that after crossing a few interesting squares on the way, my first stop of my day of wandering here was in the beautiful Patershol neighbourhood.

Continue reading →

A gateway to Belgian beer

November 2, 2024November 2, 2024 / Greg / 1 Comment

While I liberally sampled many beers to kick off my European trip last year in Amsterdam, it was in Antwerp that the real beer tastings started. As a beer nerd, I had long wanted to do a deep dive sort of trip in Belgium to learn about and appreciate one of the best and richest beer culture countries. Antwerp was a literal and metaphorical gateway. Arriving there from Amsterdam on a Thursday afternoon there was only one thing on my mind… a visit to maybe the most unique beer bar I have experienced…. and visiting it wasn’t a guarantee.

Kulminator in the centre of Antwerp is a quirky place. I was met at an obscure door that doesn’t reveal what is inside by an older gentleman who asks what your purpose is. If he doesn’t like the look of you or you answer incorrectly, he’ll simply shut the door in your face. I arrived, and in my best French said I was from Canada and I wanted to (and this is *very* important) “taste” some exceptional beer. In this bar, you don’t drink beer, you “taste” it. The gentleman nodded and motioned for me to come inside and that started a beautiful, sensual beer tasting experience. I looked over a large binder of all of their cellared beers and made my selection. The gentleman’s wife poured me a gorgeous Rocherfort 8 from 2014. It tasted of chocolate, candied fruit, spice and everything nice. I was in heaven.