The old stomping grounds

September 23, 2019September 22, 2019 / Greg / 1 Comment

When I traveled to Halifax in June, it was for an almost absurdly short amount of time. Fly in on a Friday, meetings on Saturday, fly back home before the sun was up on Sunday morning. With so little time, I knew this was going to be a “greatest hits” type of trip. With precious little personal time on this visit, I charted a precise course through a city I know very well… but one that is changing rapidly, and becoming a touch more unfamiliar on each and every return visit.

My flight touched down at 4:30pm on a Friday afternoon, and at 5:30 I was sitting at the bar of my hotel’s restaurant, which fortunately for me, is known for its oyster happy hour. A dozen delicious oysters to reacquaint me with the taste of the ocean… this is the way you kick off a visit to Halifax.

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Into the mountains with dad

September 7, 2019September 7, 2019 / Greg / 4 Comments

I’m not going to bury the lede on this… The five day, 2,200km road trip I took with my dad from Saskatoon to Calgary, then onto Banff, Lake Lousie and Jasper, and finally back to Saskatoon via Edmonton was one of the most fun things I’ve done in a long, long time. Every time I speak with my dad on the phone since he returned to New Brunswick, we end up talking about this trip and how much fun it was. Here’s the recap of an epic road trip, at least what I’m willing to share publicly. As with any good trip, there’s always a few things that need to respect the mantra “what happens on the road, stays on the road”

Calgary

When dad booked his flight from Bathurst, NB to visit me in Saskatoon in May, I immediately booked hotels for a mountain road trip so he could see the Rockies up close for the first time in his life. He arrived in Saskatoon, got acclimatized to my hometown for a couple of days, then we packed up the car and pointed it west. About seven hours later, we rolled into a rainy Calgary. First stop was at National on 17th, a great beer bar close to our hotel. Dad seems to be a fan of the pint I picked for him.

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Windy city pints

August 31, 2019August 31, 2019 / Greg / Leave a comment

Chicago is an interesting, but slightly logistically challenging city for craft beer exploration. If you’re staying in the centre of the city as I was, and want to visit a number of breweries or taprooms, you really have to do some traveling by subway and bus to some far flung locations. Like every trip I plan, I pinned a number of potential destinations on a map, then using the limited time in the city, tried to hit the really interesting and convenient places.

By far and away, the brewery I was most excited to sample from was Rick Bayless’ Cruz Blanca Brewery. You already know I’m a bit of a Bayless fanboy, in love with every culinary thing he does, so of course I needed to see if I would be a fan of his brewery.

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Snowbanks for miles

July 29, 2019July 29, 2019 / Greg / Leave a comment

People in Saskatchewan, at least around Saskatoon, have no idea what a lot of snow looks like. Snowbank size is relative, but when I visited my mom and dad in northern New Brunswick in March after an epic winter, there was no question who should have had a licence to say something negative about their winter.

Landing in Bathurst, I was immediately taken by the amount of snow on the ground. Driving on the highway from the airport into town was like driving down tunnels of snow. Even after about a week of melting, here’s what the snowbanks in my parents’ driveway looked like.

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A mostly East Austin visit

July 20, 2019July 18, 2019 / Greg / Leave a comment

Luckily for me, this was my second visit to Austin. On my first a few years back, I had plenty of time to check out all that Austin has to offer. I had seen and experienced enough to know where I’d focus my very limited time on this past visit – food and craft beer. While I’ll need a third visit to Austin to make my first pilgrimage to Franklin Barbecue, I did manage to get to another of the city’s best reviewed barbecue joints. In East Austin, about a fifteen minute walk from where I was staying sat La Barbecue, a perfect amalgamation of restaurant, craft beer store and tap room. A real slice of heaven for someone like me.

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Portugal for beer?

April 25, 2019April 21, 2019 / Greg / Leave a comment

Portugal is for wine, right? Of course it is. And I can report back that I sampled and enjoyed a wide range of the wine of this amazing country over two weeks there. But I also found some time to explore a relatively new and growing craft beer culture.

Starting in Lisbon, I found this great little craft beer bar, LisBeer, tucked a few streets off of the main beaten-down tourist paths.

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Gary Carter and the Mets

December 18, 2018December 19, 2018 / Greg / Leave a comment

The New York Mets hold a strangely special, but very small, spot in my heart. One of my most vivid memories of my childhood was returning home from being out with my mom and dad on a December evening in 1984 and learning that my beloved Montreal Expos had traded my favourite player, Gary Carter, to the Mets. Feeling like a jilted lover is how I now recall how I felt that night. Whether or not it is possible for a ten year old to feel that is beside the point. I was devastated. After Blue Monday in 1981, this was the second of a long line of baseball-related traumas I experienced leading to my Expos leaving for Washington.

Time heals everything, and while I haven’t yet got my Expos back, I’ve learned to love baseball again. So when work took me to New York for a few days back in September, I added on a couple of nights to hang out in Queens and watch the Mets play the Phillies. The Mets to me are the team that got Gary Carter his lone World Series victory, and wearing this Expos hat got me into some great conversations around the ballpark.

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My kind of town

December 9, 2018December 8, 2018 / Greg / Leave a comment

On my previous visits to New York City, I never made it across the East River to Brooklyn. When I started planning my most recent short visit, that was something I wanted to rectify. For my first foray into Brooklyn, a grey, dreary and humid Saturday morning, I hopped a subway to lower Manhattan, then popped above ground and headed for the Brooklyn Bridge. Sometimes when you travel, experiences don’t live up to the hype, but walking across this span over the East River was everything I hoped for. Crowds of joggers, families and tourists like me. All of us (except the joggers) stopping every few steps to take pictures and to take in the Manhattan skyline. The bridge itself is also spectacularly beautiful.

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Pairs well with baseball

November 14, 2018November 11, 2018 / Greg / Leave a comment

Champagne and salty, buttered popcorn. A deep, rich California cab and a medium-rare grilled steak. A plate of fish tacos and a margarita (or three). Some things are just meant to go together. While I’m a bit of a beer snob and can give you food pairings for just about any type of beer, I think beer may be best paired with baseball.

While sitting outside on a perfect summer night at a ballpark, a cold beer in my hand is the perfect accompaniment to the three hour drama that is a baseball game. While my Philadelphia trip was mostly about baseball, its secondary theme was definitely beer. Trying new beers at the games, sampling beers at interesting craft beer bars and breweries, and beers for the hotel. I picked up these beauties shortly after landing and cracked open the definitely non-craft Yuengling first. For me, Yuengling tastes like Philadelphia and brings back all kinds of memories of being in the city in the late 90s and early 2000s.

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Memories of New Brunswick

October 20, 2018November 12, 2018 / Greg / Leave a comment

Beresford, New Brunswick is a long, long way from Saskatoon. Three flights across the country gave me a lot of time to think about the fact that I’d be visiting the new home of my parents for the first time a few months after they moved away from what was our family home just outside of Halifax. While this was first and foremost a visit to catch up, it was also a visit to check in and see how they were doing in New Brunswick and to visit an area I hadn’t seen in close to twenty years.

Shortly after getting off the plane and reuniting with Mom and Dad, I got to catch up with the other family member that had made the move… Tia. Good dog!