Just say no to strip malls

This is a bit of a rant post about time spent in London, Ontario.

I came back from my too much travel in November and had under a week at home before needing to fly out to London to support Rachael's mom, who was in the hospital.

We booked two weeks and extended that to 3, and helped get her into palliative care and spent some good time with her.

Then back to Vancouver just before Christmas, spent Christmas Eve day with my parents making a nice meal, and then realizing that we had to quickly make our way back to Ontario.

I booked us back through Hamilton on Porter, Rachael's sister Kathryn picked us up, and we stayed at a hotel with a kitchenette for a week. It was temporary until the nice AirBnB we found was available.

London (Ontario, as I am at pains to point out again), is not a big place. Both population wise (420K in 2021, maybe close to 500K today - and for reference, City of Vancouver is only 660K) and also distance wise.

People talk about living in the south end or the north end ... but these places are like a 10-15min drive to anywhere.

From driving around, I have determined there are like ... 6 streets in London - a couple of north / south, east / west, and a few more thrown in for good measure.

Yes, driving. I am used to walking everywhere in Vancouver, or taking a scooter, or hopping on a bus. Or taking an Evo to actually go 30-40min across town, or a couple of hours to the greater region of Vancouver.

In the strip mall lands of the south end of London, right by the highway, it was like light industrial with half a dozen suite hotels, that I still can't really figure out why they are there. I guess, because they're just off the highway?

It's been scary driving around in blowing snow. Specifically, Google Maps reminds us there is an "Orange Warning" around snow squalls.

The first trip in particular, with the snow coming down as we drove our rental car from Hamilton to London, cars following the tracks in one lane on the highway and often driving with flashers on so its easier to see them through the snow. The 5am drive back to Hamilton was the worst, with snow coming at an angle that the headlights just turned everything into a wall of white, and I'm driving at max 50-60km per hour on the highway because I just can't see.

So we're in this suites hotel because it has a kitchenette so that we're not always getting take out. But it's clear they don't expect you to actually use the kitchen.

The listing showed a nice pool. But wide angle photo tricked me again, so it's actually a mini pool and mostly filled with children or closed for maintenance.

Breakfast is included. I know, I know, I am spoiled by German hotel breakfasts. We make a joke about whether the meat will be lines, tubes, or circles (bacon, sausages, or sausage patties), and whether the potatoes will be squares, triangles, or half moons (hash browns, hashbrown patties, or potato wedges).

There is no walking. Maybe it's doable when it's not extremely snowy, but the one time we tried to go for a walk, we turned back because it's too dangerous: we're trudging along the side of the road and need to basically stand on top of a snowbank whenever a car goes by.

It's 22 minutes on foot to Best Buy, but it's unclear if we have to traverse a snow covered ditch to go in through the back loading bay. I give up getting an HDMI cable, because the hotel not-so-smart TVs don't have sharing turned on.

Strip mall land. It's a 10 to 15min drive to anywhere, and I've gotten used to the two roads I need to take. There's varying levels of snow, and the biggest traffic issue is ... cars going into drive through fast food places, blocking things as they go on or off the road.

I just don't understand strip malls. So there's a 4-6 lane road, you can't walk from one side to the other, every parking lot in a strip mall needs to be driven around and out in complicated ways.

And it's just a parade of the same fast food, drive through, chain stores.

I am intrigued by Shelby's Legendary Shawarma "Home of the Longest Shawarma in the World", but not enough to stop there.

I don't really care if my coastal elite is showing at this point. I had 2 forks and no kettle and didn't have a good coffee for a week.

That's me reaching for some routine and ease as we make trips to palliative care day and night.

I finally broke down and found an actually good coffee in ... I guess I'll call it "the good strip mall", the one where Farm Boy is. Dark Horse Espresso is inside the Indigo's (because of course it is) and has cortado listed on the menu, and also made a chocolate peanut butter tart that was pretty great.

(Dark Horse also runs a stand in the Hamilton airport, recommended)

This whole area of Southern Ontario does have lots of "stuff" - towns, farm areas, wine country, Niagara, etc. We did a day trip to Stratford the first time in December. I have a fascination with Bullocks Corners, which is a bend in the road outside of Hamilton.

And yes, I'll put together a London Adventures post at some point, because we did find some good food while we were here.

But it's been a rough 4 weeks, with two more to go, and this needed to be just a rant.

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Honorary mention to Browned Cafe in White Oaks Mall, your honey cardamom latte was nice.