We are off to Europe!

Not much time this morning because we are flying to Europe today! The next blog post will be coming to you from Germany.

We fly Ottawa to Toronto then Toronto to Frankfurt. From there, we take the train to the town of Dulmen where our motorhome Max is waiting for us.

Here's the plan for the next few days...

September Expenses - things are about to get much cheaper!

September was a little higher than expected. Mostly because of our plan to ship our bicycles and a few other things to Germany with us. But, we also did a lot more driving than we originally planned, and the fuel added up.

We spent a total of $3,338 CAD ($2,620 USD). Here's how it all broke down...

The next visit will be better

Just reflecting on the past few weeks as we prepare to head back to Europe tomorrow. 

We arrived in Ottawa in mid August right at the end of a heat wave, so our timing was pretty lucky in that regard. Overall, the weather has been decent. But as I've said before, September is the best time of year to visit Canada, in our opinion.

But we've been just too busy to enjoy it as much as we would have liked to.

Getting ready to head out

Only two more sleeps. We're busy getting ready to head out on Thursday late morning. 

We're not traveling as light this time around. The bikes are all boxed up and ready to go. And besides our normal carry on bags, this time we're actually bringing a larger suitcase with us as well that we will just ditch after we've emptied it upon arrival.

Best ribs ever.

Little bit of a late post today, but I didn't have much time this morning because we were told we had to be out by 10:00am.

Saturday turned out to be better than expected from a weather perspective. The guys weren't that ambitious but we managed to get three of us out for a short 5 km (3 mile) hike in Bon Echo Provincial Park. 

Good start to the weekend

Yesterday, I said goodbye to Ruth and drove two hours to a big chalet on Mazinaw Lake near Bon Echo Provinical Park to meet up with my friends for our annual guys weekend away.

Not the best weather though. It was actually chilly sitting out on the deck, and when it started spitting with rain it almost felt like it was going to snow!

Visit with the Newstate Nomads

After three different phone calls with Air Canada, we ended up getting our upcoming flights changed around enough to be able to bring the bicycles with us. The original booking was Ottawa to Montreal to Frankfurt to Dusseldorf. But part of the problem was the Ottawa to Montreal airplane was too small to accept the bikes in the holding bay. 

The other part of the problem was that we had a codeshare flight with Lufthansa on the Frankfurt to Dusseldorf leg and it was going to require confirmation from them that they would accept the bikes.

Changing some flights

Yesterday was the first day of fall. And you can sure tell winter is on it's way. The leaves are changing color, and the temperatures are cooling off. Here in the Ottawa area, you can go from summer to winter pretty quickly. There is still the possibility of some nice weather in October, but it's hit or miss. It's also common to get some snow flurries by the end of October. 

But we are out of here long before that possibility occurs. In fact, we fly out a week from today!

Toronto Zoo with the grandkids

My own grandmother lived in Toronto and I have fond memories of going to Toronto's Riverdale Zoo when I was a kid. In fact, it was walking distance from her house! But that zoo closed in 1974, and the animals were relocated to a bigger and better facility. Good thing too, because I remember the enclosure the black bears were in... just a concrete holding cell... it really wasn't very nice.

The "new" Toronto Zoo is so much better, but there are still some animals who just don't seem at home in their enclosure. 

Made it to Pickering

We arrived at Lindsey and Justin's fairly early, just before 11:00am Sunday to pick up the grandkids. Lindsey is a chef, and she treated us to her famous Eggs Benedict. Such a delicious food item, especially with everything made from scratch.

Even the eggs were from their own chickens!

Nice bike ride down to Manotick

As I've said before, September is the best time of year for weather in the Ottawa area. It's been perfect hiking and biking weather. And so we took off on the bikes down to the village of Manotick on the Rideau River.

The Rideau River is partly a 202 km (125 mile) man made canal system that runs from Ottawa to Kingston. It was built around 1830 in case the U.S. ever decided to invade Canada, but is now used by pleasure craft.

Just as happy in our motorhome

The house we're living in is a beautiful home on a beautiful property backing onto a forest. I haven't shown many photos out of respect to the homeowners. They may not want their stuff on display. But needless to say, most people in the world would be pretty happy to live here. 

And we feel fortunate that this opportunity came along. It's been a great stay for us. And looking after the cats has been no trouble at all... in fact they each have their own personality and they're enjoyable enough to have around.

Received an offer on the house

But it's a low ball bid, with a number of conditions, and it could be that nothing comes of it. All part of the negotiation process of course, but as it stands we won't be accepting it. We're not desperate to sell... but it would be nice to get the whole thing out of our hair. In fact, if it doesn't sell within the next two weeks, we'll be handing it over to a real estate agent anyhow, and then it really is essentially out of our hair. 

And given that I am away for pretty much six of the next thirteen days, I'm starting to lose confidence that it's going to be sold by then. 

International Driving Permit (IDP)

These permits have been around since 1949. Canada only signed on to the agreement in 1965, and some countries (Germany, for example) have never signed on.

We've done a lot of driving in foreign countries. Sometimes we have traveled without an IDP, and sometimes we have bit the bullet and obtained one prior to leaving Canada. I say "bit the bullet" because they are not free. And the odds of you actually needing it are quite slim. 

How we spent $40,000 on our credit card in the last year.

The credit card we use is called the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite. The main reason we got this card is because it's one of the rare Canadian cards that has a 0% foreign transaction fee. And because we use it for a lot of foreign purchases, that's a big savings for us compared to most standard Canadian cards that charge 2.5% on foreign transactions. 

In fact, we saved about $800 over the last 12 months just because of that. 

The card also gives points, and they've been adding up!