Elmvale Maple Syrup Festival April 16th 2011

Saturday 16th April
Emma and I headed north to the little town of Elmvale for the very yummy maple syrup festival.  Elmvale is about an hours north of Aurora.  Unfortunately it was raining and super cold - we even had some late April snow on the Sunday! Due to the rain many of the festival events and stalls weren't set up or closed early.  That didn't deter us and we had a great day eating pancakes with of course maple syrup for lunch, sampled maple fudge and chocolate, bought maple syrup and maple butter ... and of course some fudge and chocolate :-)

We even went out to the 'sugar bush', farms that tap maple trees to see how it is done! and of course that meant more sampling :-)   Little 'taps' are inserted in the maple trees and as the maple sap drips from the taps either a bucket collects it or a more modern way is a hose pipe connecting all the trees vacuums sucks the sap right into the shed where it is all collected and boiled and boiled into delicious maple syrup!

The pancake house for lunch

Main street - Elmvale Maple syrup festival

The 'sugar bush'

Tapping the maple trees

Making maple syrup

 

The maple trees being 'tapped' the modern way!

Tapping the maple trees

Riding the horse and buggy through the sugar bush

Sunday 17th April
Emma stayed with me in Aurora over the weekend!  Due to the surprising spring snow fall and chilly weather we decided to head out to the factory outlets near by!  We headed north to Cookstown and south to Vaughan Mills factory outlet shopping centres.  I am now an expert right side snow driver :-)

Ice Hockey - weekend in Toronto April 2nd - 3rd

Saturday 2nd April
I spent a weekend down in Toronto as we had some tickets to see an Ice Hockey game!  Everyone seems to play ice hockey here so it is certainly the thing to do.  We saw the Toronto Marlies (the feeder team for the Maple Leafs, tickets for them sell out really quickly and are quite expensive - they don't seem to be that good though!)  Anyway the Marlies were playing the Lake Erie Monsters!  It was a really fun afternoon and although we lost 2 - 0 and I still have no idea about any of the rules I really enjoyed it.  Having been ice skating over here a couple of times and knowing just how hard it is to simply skate - to watch the guys go so fast and be able to control the puck all whilst being bashed up by the other team really is something.   It was a crazy fast game, each player is really only on the ice for approx 40 secs - yep!  They go all out for that 40 secs and then change over - the amount of change overs is silly and how they know who changes with who and who is doing what I'll never know, as there was always someone changing over! Not only was there a constant change over happening but somewhere at every moment on the ice someone was being bashed, shoved or hit into the wall - just crazy!  I didn't understand why they weren't sent off for 'interference' but throughout the game a couple of guys were for what I thought was just standing there!!!  Then how any goals were scored was beyond me :-) 
Canadians really get behind their teams - the heckling of the other team was truely unsportsman-like ... but fun to do :-) Ha!  Even the Marlies mascot (a big dog) was often seen waving his bottom or throwing water at the other team - how could you not get into that! 
They really were quite talented and I enjoying watching the game! 

Singing the National Anthem 'Oh Canada' before the game

Let the game begin!

Go Marlies!

Meeting a player after the game!

Sunday 3rd April
We spent Sunday wandering around Toronto and went to the 'Distillery District'.  An old distillery and warehouses turned into a groovy arty and food area - it reminded me of the 'Rocks' in Sydney.  We spent the afternoon wandering through art galleries and funky little shops and of course eating!  Well you just couldn't leave without trying Toronto's best cookies! 

Wandering through the Distillery District

View of the CN tower!