Windsor, Canada For Lunch

Good Afternoon! How was your weekend? Ours was jam packed with random adventures, but that’s nothing really out of the ordinary.

Today is the first day in a long time I plan to stay put at home. Our area currently has record breaking snowfall with temperatures dropping to the negative double digits (down to -30 with the windchill!) tonight and into tomorrow morning.

Whaaa??? I really don’t think you could pay me to venture out into this weather right now. (Fingers cross practice tonight gets cancelled). For now, I plan on staying bundled up and getting some things done inside today. Probably tomorrow too!

Taking advantage a snow day (or two), I am really looking forward to catching up on well… life. My mom came into town to visit us directly from our trip to Paris, and since then I haven’t been able to organize, catch up on laundry or even chat with you guys. It’s well overdue my friends!

I promise to continue recapping our Paris trip with you, but for today I wanted to highlight some spontaneous weekend travel instead. Buckle up!

Windsor, (Ontario) Canada For Lunch

I have mentioned on the blog a time or two how close we live to another country. While Rochester Hills is about thirty minutes from Downtown Detroit, the city of Windsor, Ontario (Canada) is literally just across the Detroit River.

The area is referred to as Detroit-Windsor and the two cities are connected by the Ambassador Bridge and Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. If you have a passport and a couple of free hours you can totally travel across the border and back for the afternoon. So we did!

Our morning started a little on the rough side with a car that wouldn’t start in the driveway. (<- I told you it was cold!) After an hour of jumping attempts, we finally had a success and were on our way to Windsor.

We do our best to entertain visitors with highlights of the area, and I wanted to personally show my mom just how north we are. Driving to Canada is something a Floridian can’t just say they did every day, right?

I told her to pack per passport and am so glad we made it a point to follow through with that plan. About forty-five minutes after our departure from the house, we entered downtown Windsor, Ontario.

Unsure of an exact destination location, we somehow stumbled upon the Windsor Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Center. That turn was a lucky one because inside was an enthusiastic staff full of suggestions and information on how to make the best of our short time in the city. I highly suggest finding a visitors center if it’s close enough on any visit to a new city.

Our guide pointed us over to Walkerville with a handful of restaurant menus and recommendations. It was hard to pick just one, but the three of us eventually agreed on the Twisted Apron.

The unique menu with tons of gluten-free, vegetarian, and vegan friendly dishes brought us there, but we loved the cozy, eclectic atmosphere we noticed surrounding us once we settled in.

They even had the papier mâché animal heads similar to the ones Scott has been eying from Anthropologie for years now!

With an afternoon arrival, we couldn’t decided if we wanted to go for breakfast or lunch because everything looked incredible. I made my decision over coffee, which is completely predicable.

We settled on lunch, with a French Toast appetizer to split first.

We saw it on the table next to us and had to have it.

(Or kill it, whatever.)

Scott went with a local favorite of beef stroganoff poutine, which is the first time I have seen it served over french fries.

(Holy yum!) Both my mom and I went for a mix of healthy and splurge with our orders. She got the fried perch and I got the eggplant sliders, both served with a house salad that included greens, spiced cinnamon apples, raisins, and pumpkin seeds in a maple vinaigrette dressing.

In case you’re wondering where the tops of the mini-buns went, I took them off. Typical Heather move. Even so, the sliders were amazing and are something I would like to try putting together for a party one of these days.

We left more than content with full bellies and smiles on our faces.

The restaurant also has a general store attached to it, which we stopped by on the way out to explore the streets.

With a chill in the air, we walked quickly and found another great spot our guide led us to.

O’Maggio’s Kildar House serves typical “bar food” (I was told we have to order fish and chips if we go!), but is mostly known for their unique atmosphere experience. Next time we are in the area, Scott and I want to go inside and check it out.

We only had about a half hour to spare before having to get back to Detroit, so we spent it covering more ground by car. We found a lot of cute areas and houses with character along the way.

This one stood out a little…

Actually, this is a famous mansion called Willistead Manor. It’s huge!

The 1917 “house” includes thirty six bedrooms inside with 15-acre park outside. The property is accessible to the public (for a small entree fee) and is known for hosting weddings, meetings, and other special events.

Out of the neighborhood, we made our way to the shoreline and I got unexpectedly giddy over what I saw.

It’s the Detroit Skyline! I can’t tell you how many times we have driven it followed by “look it’s the Windsor Skyline!”

Being on the other side of it and seeing “our city” from the outside was a pretty cool experience.

We continued on towards the bridge to allow enough time to get to our outing planned for the night, but didn’t feel rushed or overwhelmed with our decision to go to Canada for lunch.

While we are living Michigan, we plan to take full advantage of little trips to different places as much as we can. Growing up in Florida, the concept of driving more directions than up (hours and hours!) before getting out of the state seems like we are spoiled.

We are looking forward to mapping out another trip to Windsor soon, hopefully with more than an hour or so to accomplish it in. Stay tuned for more weekend fun coming your way later today.

Happy Monday! 😀