Friday: Tulips From Amsterdam

I had a day off today because we have visitors!  

The day started early as we had to take Barney to the vet - we’re lucky in that our friends, Tom & Kevin, have been able to recommend one locally.  Not to put too fine a point on it but Barney has been a bit bottom obsessed of late and has appeared to be in discomfort.  Two squeezed anal glands later and he is doing much better.

Getting him to the vet’s was interesting.  When we first arrived we signed up to a car sharing programme which we hadn’t used until today.  I hiked up to a local retirement home to pick up a pretty tatty Toyota Corolla, with absolutely no mod cons, so that we could drive Barney to the vets.

Once we got him home we decided to do a bit of a bigger shop as we had a car.  All done, I then had to drop the car back off at the retirement community.

So…….much excitement!  Kari and Pauline are here for the weekend.  Kari had some business here but they’ve tagged on the weekend to stay with us.  They arrived late morning and we began the weekend by heading over to the tulip festival.  

It’s an annual event where Ottawa is festooned with tens of thousands of tulips.  It dates back to the Dutch Royal Family being hosted in Canada during the Second World War.  Since then, the Netherlands have gifted 10,000 tulip bulbs every year.  The festival only started today but the tulips are already in full bloom due to the warm weather.

After that, lunch close to us at ‘Tavern On The Falls’ where I had probably the best hot dog in the world……ever………

And dinner tonight was at an excellent bistro in Hintonburg.  It’s been a fabulous day and we’re really enjoying having friends to stay.