In the evening we headed out to the New York State Fair which was a crazy experience - one of the biggest fairs my parents had ever been to. When we lived in New York, we used to go to the Ulster County Fair every year and I guess that's what my parents expected but the place turned out to be huge - basically everyone had driven there from everywhere in the state. there was a lot of awesomeness. sheep. sheep wearing bathing suits. llamas. cows. butter sculptures made from the milk of the cows. rainbows.
my parents wanted to go to the International Tent (or rather, Barn), and i suspected it wasn't out of multicultural curiosity, but rather because they hadn't eaten any Asian food for nearly forty-eight hours and were probably dying inside. can't say we were totally impressed by the international choices though; we had German, Italian, Mexican, and Tim Horton's (Canadian!). we did try some American beer (it was not that good).
Sunday morning we went to downtown Syracuse, solely for the purpose of getting my dad a Starbucks. we actually saw more Tim Hortons in upstate New York than Starbucks. it was weird. Downtown was really nice. much larger and happening than i expected for a city only a bit larger than St John's, Newfoundland. I put it on my list of "Places I should try visiting for a weekend to go drinking".
You can't visit Syracuse with a shopaholic family without hitting up the Carousel Center. I have fond memories of this mall, even if no one else in my family remembers shopping here. I was sixteeen. There was an Old Navy. There were 50 cent bikinis. It was instant love. These were the times before Ottawa got its first Old Navy, you see. And Ottawa still doesn't have a Forever 21, or H&M or Victoria's Secret.
My parents made attempt #2 to have asian food at the food court. They decided to go for Chinese. We went for Japanese. Turns out the food came out the same.
afterwards we drove up to Alexandria Bay, which is so close to Canada that you get reception from Rogers. AND THEN WE WENT ON A BOAT.
it was a pretty good way to spend a Sunday afternoon, cruising through the many islands on the St. Lawrence. it would have been even better if there had been a working toilet on the boat (too much watery American beer)
we went to the castle on Boldt Island. I usually have a lot of cynicism for North American castles (ooh, Casa Loma is ALMOST A HUNDRED YEARS OLD) because historically they are nothing compared to some of the European castles i've seen. but this one was pretty cool, mainly because it was unfinished. Go find out the story sometime. it's kind of neat. People find it romantic. Me, it definitely made me feel like I should try to go and make friends with some rich people so they could invite me to their castles in the summer.
after a sweet dinner at a diner-pubby kind of place that America is great for, that we drove back up to Ottawa, where I realized that I had eaten nothing but junk food all weekend. Good old American fried junk food. McDonalds' burgers, pizza, beef stroganoff, ships, fish and chips. my body is still struggling to recover.
