Our house!

We moved in on Wednesday to our flat in Dundas. It's really the top floor of a duplex that has been split into two flats. Originally our top floor flat would have been just a living room and a bedroom as part of a bigger house including downstairs, but the owner built a cape cod extension on the back to add a kitchen and bathroom so it could be separated from the downstairs (which must presumably have had some extra living space added to compensate). This first photo shows the front of our flat. The two upper windows with the lights on are us. I've only photographed our half of the building; the other half of the duplex is a mirror image of what you see, and is still all one house (as opposed to being split into flats like us). They have a large extension on the back so it probably ends up being a 4+ bedroom house.

I started taking photos today of the inside of our flat but then realised that it looks like a bomb hit it, so I'll leave that for another day. This next photo is sort of inside; it's the view from our kitchen window looking over the stream that goes past the backyard. There's not much snow here now, it all melted in the last few days. We assume it will snow again soon (there was a little falling this afternoon). January and February are supposed to be the coldest months, but this year they had the coldest December first-half on record, and then it's been an Indian summer (Australian winter?) ever since.

Our house backs onto the "escarpment" - a long cliff about 100m high -that winds around through Dundas and Hamilton. The escarpment is actually called Niagara Escarpment which presumably means it continues all the way to Niagara falls which is about an hour's drive away. Daphne and Charlie showed us a Mike Moore movie (of Bowling for Columbine fame) called "Canadian Bacon" from way back in 1995 that shows off the area really well. See if you can find the movie! (The yanks hated it because it took the piss of them and their foreign policy, so clearly you want to see it!)

We have a little bit of backyard space across a footbridge that's a bit rickety but kind of romantic. There is a scarecrow on the park bench that we'll probably get rid of. There's a bird bath and a clothes line fitted with a pulley. I figure we can interrogate people by tying them up to the clothes line and pulleying them over the creek and threatening to dunk them.

The creek is flowing steadily at the moment and will probably continue to do so. It hasn't rained significantly in the last few days so this must be water from snow melt mostly.

Our house is close to shops. I walked today to Canadian Tire (used to be spelled Tyre like normal people) to buy everything. Canadian Tyre have grabbed the hardware/home market, so even though there are a few aisles devoted to car parts and tyres, there are kitchenware aisles, bathroom renovation aisles, electrical aisles, furniture aisles, and probably other stuff I haven't even seen yet.

We're also a street away from some very cool grocery shops. One is called the Horn of Plenty and sells grain, herbs and spices wholesale. I think it started as a health food shop, but their premises is a converted cinema (and it still has the box office out the front although it's empty). Now they sell everything from brown lentils to vegemite (yes we found a place that sells vegemite, although at $4 for the smallest size jar). There is also Picone's grocery which is run by Italians and has two whole shelves of olive oil, as well as fresh fruit and veg.

When I went outside to take these photos today, I didn't put my coat on cos I figured I'd be out for just a minute or so. Bad idea. It's subzero temp outside at the moment because the cloud has cleared (it may actually snow now). The punchline is that I also forgot to take my keys and the door clicked shut behind me. It was funny for about 3 minutes which was long enough to take this photo of me curled up on the front porch. 30 minutes later when Rachel got home I wasn't laughing...

Anyway, more posts soon. We have heaps of table space but I realised that that doesn't actually help us store anything. So the place is a mess. When we get stuff cleared up I'll show you what our flat looks like on the inside!


Bye

Ben