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“I have SO much to write about when the teacher asks me what I did this summer!” – Sierra, walking home from Cirque du Soleil in Montreal.

This encapsulates exactly what we’re in this for.  We want life to be full of memories for our kids to look back on with a smile.

I have always wanted to stop near this sign when entering Quebec.

Vero is the queen of booking Airbnb’s.  When she found a Friends themed apartment in Vieux-Montreal, we knew it was an instant acquisition.  It was the highlight of my trip.

It even came with a chick and a duck!

For all the years I have been to Montreal, I cannot recall ever going near the waterfront.  It felt like a different city.

A ride up in La Grande Roue

A photo for my cousins.

From the top of La Grande Roue, Ezra spied some bumper cars below.  We tried them out and it was great fun!  My bumper car wasn’t working all too well at the beginning and it turned out that the batteries needed changing, so we got some extra bumping time because of that!

At the end of our trip, Ezra said that this was his favourite thing he did in Montreal.  It was also on Sierra’s list.  This is an important point to remember for the future.  Sometimes the fun things are things that can exist in any city in the world.

Night view

The kids thought this looked like PacMan

Having a chat with Gladys before bedtime

Showing the kids an episode of Friends, as they have never seen it before.  Various objects in the apartment had little papers next to them explaining what they were, and what episodes they were from.

Early Wednesday morning.

 

Ezra and I walked around to find some food for breakfast.  The kids mentioned that we were going to get some crepes so we picked up a few cinnamon buns from Olive + Gourmande.  Ezra and I waited 20+ minutes to get them.  Popular spot!  

I thought we were going to get crepes fairly soon after arriving with the buns, so I suggested we just split one of them.  This turned out to be a mistake as we didn’t leave until closer to 11am and then I was getting too hangry to be a nice guy.  Mental note: always eat, especially on a trip!

We headed to an aerial park, but found out that there were no spots until the afternoon (because of summer camps?).  We ended up at SOS Labyrinthe which was a super fun experience going through a labyrinth trying to find four treasures.  I thought we would be done in 20 minutes but I was surprised when we came out of there 1.5 hours later!  I was also surprised to see that they change the labyrinth up every week, which is cool.

I had left my phone at home because they said not to bring it to the aerial park.  No pictures from SOS Labyrinthe exist, but we will always have fond memories of Sierra telling us “I told you so” when she found the right path through the labyrinth.  I will also remember a whole lot of dead ends, and the funny circus type mirrors to look into.

We took this photo a day later while walking to Cirque du Soleil because I wanted at least one photo of the place.

After SOS Labyrinthe, my feet were sore so we walked back 15 minutes to the apartment.  I loved being that close, but it was a bit too much to expect the kids to walk back and forth multiple times a day. 

We then headed back to the old Port to check out the aerial park which was part of a pirate ship!  It was very cool.  I felt like I was on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean with kids flying overhead and underneath me.

The four of us all started out together on the ‘green’ path.  You start on green, then can advance to higher levels if you wish.  Ezra’s shoulder was hurting from a fall at Shannon’s cottage a few days earlier, and he was also having a hard time reaching some of the wires so after going through the green path, he didn’t want to take part in the activity any longer.  It allowed me time to hang out with him, eat some popcorn and take some videos of Sierra and Vero going through other obstacles.  Let’s not kid ourselves, I’m not the most adventurous person, so I didn’t really mind hanging out with Ezra on the ground.  However, I wish I would have known this would happen before spending a lot of money for us to hang out on the ground!  We could have just paid $5 if we knew we were hanging out on the ground from the beginning.  Ah well.

After the aerial park, the kids wanted a treat.  Ezra bought some candy called Toxic Waste which was supposedly very sour.  It was.  Vero’s reaction is captured here on video.

We had some supper at a nice patio in the main tourist area of Vieux-Montreal (Comptoir 400)

With an hour before closing time, we went to the Musée des illusions which was a ton of fun!

I saw this on the sidewalk near our apartment.  I thought it was thought provoking.

On Thursday, we took a trip on the metro as the kids were excited to try it out.  It is quite the marvelous way to travel across a city.  We ended up at the biodome!

The kids were extremely excited to see a capybara

I thought these jellyfish were extremely cool.

A quick lunch before heading over to the planetarium.  Passport holders, don’t forget you get 15% off for lunch!  We ended up buying a yearly passport because it was cheaper to buy a family passport than individual tickets for the biodome, planetarium and insectarium.  Plus, we can go back sometime this year!

The planetarium had some really cool movies about black holes and the cosmos. The screen envelops the entire room and I felt like I was in space.

Check out this story about a meterorite from Penouille!

The city was celebrating 50 years since Olympics 1976

It’s incredible to see these ants at work at the insectarium.

The butterfly garden was incredible.  I had never seen so many butterflies.

After an afternoon visiting the biodome, planetarium and insectarium, it was time to dress up and go out for a nice supper at some Mediterrean restaurant that we walked by.  I quite enjoyed the chicken. The kids found that the lemonade was too sour to drink!

I enjoy the fact that when we asked Ezra to dress up nice for supper, he brought his Angine de Poitrine shirt along with some ‘Live Fast, Pickle Hard’ socks!  I know my bud Clive would appreciate that.

The kids pointed out this hilarious sign.

Going to see Echo, a Cirque du Soleil production.

The show was quite incredible.  I always get a bit overwhelmed seeing a Cirque du Soleil experience.  I just can’t get over how magical it feels.  But it’s just some humans pulling off some incredible super-human feats.  The family really enjoyed the circus.  It’s important to point out that Ezra said that if he had to choose between the ‘infinite cube’ toy he got after the show, or the show itself, we can get him the toy in the future.  Duly noted!

The walk back after the show.  Final night in Montreal!

I went to pick up an assortment of baked goods for breakfast.  Ezra really wanted a breakfast sandwich, but I found a hotdog wrapped in some dough and he said that was even better!

 

The Friends-themed apartment on Rue de la Moyne 

One last shot before we packed up and left the apartment

Before leaving the city, we checked out a Quick Room which was an hour long game show type experience for the entire family to enjoy!  It was quite fun and I enjoyed the fact that you had access to ‘jokers’, which were limited superpowers like blocking someone from answering a question, or stealing someone’s points.  Ezra won the first round, Sierra won the second round and she was also the gold medal winner.  Ezra came in second and I came in dead last.

After the Quiz Room experience, we knew we had to try some smoked meat from Reuben’s before leaving town.  I had never been in the original Reuben’s which is a diner down in a basement.  I quite enjoyed the experience compared to the other Reuben’s down the street.  The kids said that the lemonade was life changing.

The final photo is of Ezra trying on his night vision goggles he bought at Indigo while Maman went shopping at Simon’s.  We hit the road at rush hour and were back home in 2.5 hours.  It was an incredible trip.  I personally felt that we were living in an entirely different city that I am used to.  I have spent time in Montreal going to concerts, or visiting Philipp in the Plateau and Mont Royal.  But I haven’t spent a whole lot of time in Vieux-Montreal.  I really enjoyed just having a little corner of the city to spend time in.  A day into the trip, I kind of had a sense of where we were in the neighbourhood and how to navigate to the waterfront and back.

I also really enjoyed the vibe of the port area.  I wish Ottawa had something like that going on.  Maybe that’s what they are attempting to do over in Hull near the water.

I also enjoyed how it gave us a taste of what to expect if we wanted to go on longer trips with the kids, and have them walk around a lot.  I can say that the next time, we might want to have them walk a bit more to get their leg muscles ready before the trip, as they said their legs were hurting the first couple of days.  Mine were too!

The weather was great, the activities were fun, and everyone emerged happy from the experience.

I bought an Insta360 Mic Pro and this is my current workflow, for historical reference.

The Mic Pro splits recordings into multiple files.

Drag those multiple files into Audacity.  Logic Pro doesn’t import 32 bit files well (yet?).

Click Tracks -> Align Tracks -> Align End to End

Click Tracks -> Mix -> Mix and Render

This will create one file to deal with.

Select all the track (CTRL A).

Effects -> Volume and Compression -> Normalize

These are the settings I’m currently using.

 

 

 

 

 

Once normalized:

File -> Export -> WAV -> 32 bit signed

Drag the file into Logic Pro.

You will need to flip the channels if you were recording with the microphone upside down.

On the track (not the stereo out track), right click on the pan knob and select Stereo Pan.

Command Click and it should turn orange.  That reverses the channels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another thing I have been playing with currently is the Mastering Assistant.  Verdict is still out if it’s awesome or not.

Alex was having a pool party at his house on Saturday afternoon to celebrate his fiftieth birthday.  It was a bit cool on the way over there so we weren’t sure if we would make it into the pool, but we did when it started getting warmer!

On the way over, we stopped by the Vars garage sale and we scored big time.  Ezra got a Blue Jays hat, Vero found an old Super 8 film editor/splicer and Sierra found a Harry Potter board game.

Lots of laughs were had at the birthday party.  There weren’t a lot of kids, but our kids were nice enough to let us chat with our friends for the majority of the day.  I enjoyed catching up with everyone, especially Holly’s mother who I haven’t seen in a few years.  She also gave me the great tip of hopping into the hot tub after swimming in the pool!

Alex enjoyed the photo album I made for him.

 

I haven’t been to the Ottawa Ribfest in a few years but the thought of bbq through Sparks Street brought me to my senses.  I had to go!  I organized a work outing during lunch hour and it was great, as always.

Sierra’s birthday was fun with some decorations and a supper at Eastside Mario’s.  We surprised her by picking up a friend along the way.

Vero and I spent lunch hour putting this aerial silk up.  Pretty sure Vero will get as much use out of it as the kids!

 

 

“For my tenth birthday party, I want it to be a surprise!” – Sierra

“Oh boy.” – I thought.

Surprise birthday parties are quite popular in movies, television and books, but I’m not entirely sure what Sierra’s expectations were, considering she still had to provide us with an invitation list, some options for where she would like to have her party, and what she wanted to happen at the party.

But it all worked out perfectly!

Lots of planning and preparation was done while I was away in Europe, but Vero managed to pull it off!

The ploy

We marked a few events on the calendar to throw her off.  One was an event at Uncle Mike and Aunt Mel’s place on the Saturday before her birthday.  We also put a different event on the Saturday AFTER her birthday but kept it ambiguous.

The day of her birthday, she knew she was going to Uncle Mike’s place in the afternoon.  Vero, Danielle and Ezra went to “Giant Tiger” ahead of us to pick up something.  Ezra was NOT in on the plan, so it was funny to see he had no interest in going to Giant Tiger when really, he was going to help set up the party at the Russell Bowling Lane!  Ezra is still of an age that keeping a secret is hard.  He tries his best, but when he started whispering really loudly about something for Sierra’s birthday party while Sierra was in the room, I knew that we had to ‘plug this leak’ temporarily.

Sierra and I hit the road and I stopped in at Giant Tiger pretending to have received a text message from Mike saying that it’s going to rain so plans have changed and he was wondering if we wanted to go bowling instead.  Sierra is ALWAYS excited for bowling, so there were no issues there!  At the same time, Vero was over at the bowling lane with everyone else, setting up the surprise.

Sierra and I walked into the bowling lane, chatting about something and then the plan worked perfectly when everyone yelled SURPRISE!  Sierra didn’t really know what was going on, until she realized that the surprise was for her and all her friends were rushing to see her.  She was like a deer caught in some headlights.  It was great.

The party

Pretty standard party shenanigans happened after that…we had a couple of bowling lanes reserved, kids were being kids just goofing around while bowling.  We had some great cupcakes, opened some gifts and bam!  Two hours had flown by.  Everyone was happy with the event.

That evening, we also celebrated with another cake made by Danielle and opened up a few other gifts.  I had made a presentation showing all her previous birthday parties and we laughed at the fact that there was a particular shirt I had worn to the birthday parties over the years!  In honour of that, I adorned the shirt another time for this photo.

 

 

Not much to report about the last day in Italy. We packed our bags, ate some breakfast and got dropped off by Philipp in Verona.

I stayed awake most of the flight back by watching some films like Ready Player One and BlackBerry, and some episodes of Mandalorian.

When I got back into Canada, the border agent was asking me where I had travelled to BEFORE my trip to Europe. It took five minutes of hard thinking to remember that I had crossed the border to Ogdensburg, NY to pick up a package, back in February 2025. It’s quite hard to remember something like that when your brain is still stuck on Europe time. It felt like it was 3am in the morning!

Because of the delays with the border agent, I missed my chance to switch my flight to one that left at 8pm and I had to wait until 11:30pm to get my flight home to Ottawa. Nothing much to report about the entire trip. It was nice that the person next to me decided to move to another seat so I did have some extra legroom on the long flight over the ocean.
I arrived home via an Uber and was glad to be back, but I was also glad to have made the trek to see some good friends. We had some good laughs, and saw some marvellous things. What more can I ask for?

The highlights of my trip:

• Talking to Philipp’s dad via a translation app
• The sights from atop a mountain
• Exploring the city centres of Italy. I feel that I have done enough of the northern part of Europe (France, Belgium, Germany, etc.) and am now excited to explore the southern portions.
• Seeing two great friends after many years apart.

The best part of vacation is not having a schedule. Many mornings were spent waking up quite late and starting our day after noon.

Introducing the boys to Angine de Poitrine!

Unfortunately for me, at this point in the trip, I had caught a cold and was waking up blowing my nose and having a headache. Noooo! This would prove to not be very fun on the trip back. I’m pretty sure wearing a face mask makes my nose worse!

Philipp had some things to do at the bank so he dropped Chris and I off at Sirmione which seemed to be a hot spot for tourists. I can understand why! It was a peninsula with a castle built on it and full of fun city streets to walk through, shops to peruse, and a beach at the end of the peninsula.

Chris and I took our time walking the paths and making our way to the beach at the end. On our return back, we looked in some shops as Chris still hadn’t found the ‘best gift’ to bring home to his son (hilariously, the best gift turned out to be a stick of salami at the airport the next day!).

I managed to check into my flight while touring around Sirmione. It’s incredible how useful a smartphone is while travelling. If I didn’t have one, I might wanted to remain home for the day to wait for the 24 hour mark to check into my flight. But I could do so, sitting and eating gelato in the heat.

Chris and Philipp went to the beach while I took a nap in the late afternoon. That evening we had a bbq on the rooftop patio. Philipp’s apartment came with a section of the rooftop patio all for ourselves.

Dipping my toes in the lake while waiting for Philipp to pick us up

There were thunderstorms coming in so we quickly ate, went back inside and watched the Brothers Grimsby which was over the top hilarious.

 

We decided to drive around Lake Garda for the day. Philipp says that driving without stopping would take around four hours.

 

It was quite scenic compared to later in the week. Generally, the mountains in the distance are obscured by haze but it was clear today and you can see snow peaked mountains during the drive.

We stopped in various places along the way. It was quite incredible to drive along winding roads along a mountain side, with a view of water and mountains ahead of you.

 

James Bond’s Quantum of Solace opening car chase scene was filmed in a section of Lake Garda so it was cool to drive along that.

We went up Lake Garda’s famous picturesque route called Strada del Forra. It a long and winding road up the mountain and took us into the mountain at various points. It felt like we were entering a cave system with water coming down the mountain side at various points.

We arrived at the top in a village called Parco dell’Alto and that was where I witnessed one of the most beautiful sights of my life.

Philipp brought us to a spot which protruded from the mountainside. If you looked down, it was hundreds of metres to the water. If you looked across, you saw snow peaked mountains. All around you was beautiful. I was very moved by the entire scene and spent a few minutes taking it all in. You see these kind of sights in movies, but I had never witnessed something as beautiful as this, in real life.

We continued along the lake front and ended up in Malcesine where we spent a few hours looking at souvenir shops and walking through the city. A lot of people there.

I did find myself a nice hat which I think I now regret buying for $80 Canadian dollars! 50 euro didn’t sound that bad, but then I realized the exchange rate would put this hat into the ‘high fashion’ price tag! Haha.

We walked along the water front and stopped at a spot overlooking the lake. We sat on beanbag chairs and had gelato. Chris ordered a deluxe gelato which was enormous! We all had a good laugh when it arrived.

The rest of the day was spent driving home, taking it all in and enjoying the sights. We arrived quite late and decided to have another pizza across the street. I decided to order the anchovies on my pizza but it was incredibly salty. I should have known that going in!

We finished off the night watching The Hangover and staring a bit of Old School. Chris couldn’t get over the fact that I had watched The Hangover with Nanny Ruth one Christmas evening, considering how raunchy it i

The apartment we stayed at is pretty amazing, especially considering Philipp was snoring and keeping Chris and I awake in Heidelberg! Haha. He did mention that there were two rooms and a pull out couch in Italy so we should be safe from his snoring.

We started off the day by walking down to the supermarket and picking up some supplies for the next few days. I didn’t see too many different items in the supermarket, other than some differently shaped tomatoes.

The best part of the day was that there was no rain in sight and it was actually pretty warm compared to the start of our trip together! Could we be entering ‘vacation weather’ territory?

No rain!

We spent the early afternoon eating and trying out the translation capabilities on our AirPods. It took us awhile to figure it all out, but once we got it working, it was quite incredible to have live conversation with Philipp in German and it’s translating on the fly for whoever was listening to him. The future is now! This will come in handy for Philipp’s new girlfriend chatting with his father.

Around 2PM, we ventured out into the town. We were overly excited to finally see sunshine. There were some hilarious photos taken to show our excitement.

Lake Garda is quite beautiful with its clear water and the view of the mountains in the distance. The water was so clear that I could watch a duck dive in to catch some food for its ducklings and come back up. Philipp and Chris figured the water is so clear because the beach is made of small pebbles and not sand which can be moved around and make the water brown and murky.

The rest of the afternoon was spent walking from Rivoltella to Desenzano along the waterfront. I would love to be able to do this walk every day of my life. It is beautiful. I really enjoy the neighbourhood (Rivoltella) that Philipp lives in. It’s quiet and seems far away from the tourists of Desenzano.

Desenzano was full of life when we arrived and there were plenty of bachelor/bachelorette parties happening around the city center. We’re not sure if this is a common occurrence or not.
We were getting tired of walking so we sat and had a drink in an area where boats can drive up to get out and have a drink. It must be a popular spot because Philipp has a painting of the area in his kitchen at the apartment.

On our walk back, we checked out a castle, and some souvenir shops. When we got back to Rivoltella, there was some kind of protest going on with loud techno music coming from a truck and thousands of people in the street. I saw an Anarchist flag on the truck. They seemed pretty peaceful for protesters.

Oranges!

We ended the night by eating some olives on the rooftop patio, eating some pasta and watching Wedding Crashers which we hadn’t seen in many years. Many laughs were had.

 

 

 

Chris was so excited to go to Liechtenstein that all of us became excited with the thought.

We finally ended up with a plan. We would stop there for lunch and continue onto Italy.

The German countryside was nice to see from the backseat. The rolling hills are quite different from the thousands of kilometres of forest in Ontario.

It’s funny how many countries we pass in a small amount of time. We went from Germany to Austria to Switzerland to Liechtenstein in a span of thirty minutes.

The Alps reminded me of the mountains to Murdochville until we started going through tunnels. One of the tunnel was six kilometres long and I was told there are some that go to fifty kilometres long!

Liechtenstein did not disappoint. We parked the car, took an amazing photo of our excitement, had some lunch, toured the two blocks of a city centre in Vaduz and walked away without a good looking T-shirt. That was the only disappointment. We got back in the car feeling we accomplished something other mortals have never done. Made it to Liechtenstein!!

We were all tired getting back into the car for another four hours but we made it through the Alps and Milano traffic to finally arrive at Philipp’s apartment in Rivoltella along Lago di Garda.
It was 9pm so we went to a pizzeria across the street and filled our bellies before settling in for the night back home.

I was trying some non alcoholic red wine at the apartment. The first sip was not appealing but after, it tasted ok!

Good ongoing jokes happening:

• When Chris first mentioned Liechtenstein to me, I looked it up on Google Maps. I had zoom in. « Is it here? » « No, zoom in more, » « There? » « No, zoom in more ». It was so small I had to zoom in six times to see the 25 km long country! Haha.
• The trip started out with listening to Nightseekers « Shotgun Beer » song and quickly became the days theme song. It even was the last song played when we ended up in Rivoltella!