Saturday – Brockville

On Saturday, Vero and I made the trek to Brockville to see Joe. It has been many years since he moved to Brockville, so after much delibaration (read: guilt) we headed on down the 401.

Unfortunately, the morning started out rough as I had an impromptu night out with Krista at Patty Boland’s after a great supper with Catherine and Amelia at Milestone’s. Never really ate there before, but my meal was SO top notch, I shall return again for the shanghai noodle stirfry. Highly recommended!

So I hop on the bus to Orleans and start walking to the parking lot and realize my car isn’t there! Am I a victim of theft? Nope, just bad memory! The day before my alarm didn’t go off so I ended up parking at another park and ride as this one is full by 8 in the morning.

So there I was, without a car, and it’s parked 4 kms down the road. Unfortunately, there is no bus service out to that area on a Saturday! I hopped onto a bus which I knew would take me closer to it and got off as close as I could and walked the remaining 2 kms. It wasn’t a bad walk – nice crisp morning, birds chirping…but I started to get a headache from the liquids consumed the night before so I wasn’t in the best of shape.

After packing the car and picking up Vero, we headed to Brockville and got there around 2:30. Joe gave us a tour around the town. Brockville is an excellent looking spot! It’s right on the river and the river is beautiful! I can’t say I’ve visited the Thousand Island area at all, so I think I would like to take a trek there one day with Vero.

I love the architecture in the southern part of Brockville – old school flair with the view of the river beyond. You can’t go wrong! The rest of Brockville was decent also, although Joe said the North part isn’t commonly known as the nicer part of the city.

We then picked up some supplies for the night and Joe brought Vero out for a bike ride while I sat at home and watched Enterprise. After some supper and some drinks, we headed out downtown and hit up the newly redone ‘The Brock Pub’ which was excellent times and good atmosphere. Unfortunately, Vero realized she had left her ID somewhere else so we went home to look for it, and she decided to stay home since she couldn’t find it.

Joe and I then continued the trek over to the Phoenix which was the greatest bar in the world. It reminded me of the Empire Tavern back home, coupled with the older crowd from the Sunshine Tavern. Excellent! There was a band playing who were decent (although they couldn’t play us Copperhead Road. Come on guys! The band last night played it at Patty Boland’s!), and I especially loved their one original song called “Universal Asshole”. Ah, the beauty of small town bands and their insightful lyrics. I can’t pick out a favourite part of the Phoenix, but it’s definitely a tie between the numerous older ladies with their eyes on us, or the dude who we thought was at his bachelor party. He was decked out in a bed sheet, a fanny pack, a Frankenstein tie, two different shoes, a cowboy hat with tassles. This man was supreme. I wished I had brought my camera. After 20 minutes of him cutting a mean rug, we realized that no one had come to dance with him or buy him drinks on his bachelor party. After another 20 minutes, he realized that he can’t be at his bachelor party, he must be a freak having a wild time in this great outfit! Kudos to you Brockville Freak Man.

We headed over to the Keystorm Pub which was DOA so we packed it up and headed to the O2 Nightclub for another brew and memories of childhood (aka the younguns out at the dance club dancing to the beat.). After that, a necessary slice of pizza entered our bodies and we headed home for the night.

Hey, the Pumpkins played on a rerun of SNL that night! That was random, especially since I had seen that EXACT performance on a live video I downloaded the week before. Random.

All in all, an excellent time in Brockville with Joe! I highly recommend visiting the place, and I know it won’t be my last time there. I am hoping that next summer, there are some cool festivals we can hit up.