so a nice windown the night before and an assload of walking and i'm up and off in the morning... i've got one stop left, or three in canada, and one of them is mill street brewing.

I love the mill street and it's fine coffee porter. It's good, but i didn't drink a drop of it while I was there... I had 3 glasses of the framboise they had on... it was clean and dry and tartly sour in a subtle way and I wouldn't have kicked it out of bed for all the hops in washington...

So a pleasant sit inside the confines of mill street lead to their store... they have hockey jerseys... not in my size... but they have them... killer swag for those planning on going up... settled on two bottles of roggenbier and a couple of metal coasters with bottle openers on them... yeah. you'd hafta see em.

The distillery district is just begging to be photographed... so I obliged her whorish attentions with my lazy eye. When i got back to the hotel the night before... tommy boy was on... the scenes where farley is sitting in front of his dads company at the beginning were shot in the distillery district... it was kind of a cool... hey I recognize that moment... So wanting to be there for 15 minutes and just buy and go turned into 2ish hours of grazing with a bakery and chocolate shop filling out the breakfast aspect of my morning.

So pulling away, I headed southeast toward my next destination...\

On my way down the 403, I ran into some road construction, but with a gps and no set schedule other than to meet steve tasker that evening at coles, I pulled off the highway at a random exit and powered on the gps and went to trafalgar ales... Look at their website as they offer "real strong beer"... I stopped in and bought a few bottles, they're very small. and 2ish bucks so worth the stop just to try... the pub wasn't open until 4, so I just poked around and asked my questions... it's a mom and pop beer joint for shure with set clientel... it'll be one of those places you wonder how stays in business, but just does... But anyway...

Back on the road and headed into Niagara falls... Slowly I turned...

I went to niagara falls and while there beer related stopped by 2 different LCBO's. All Lcbo's are NOT created equal... and the niagara ones really stink compared to some around the toronto area... it's really strange when you hafta use their website to look up stock allocations... but anyway...

I went to niagara to see niagara again, and all the horrible people watching with all of the schlocky crap I could get my hands on... It inspired me to go to the dells after great taste, the dells is tame compared to niagara... (sans the upside down white house) and after maid of the misting it using up most of my bills and most of my change to park for a few hours... I got my fill...

I almost felt obligated to buy some random tourist crap just to buy it, but satan compelled me to save it for beer. So I did.

Duty free and 30 min later and I was stateside again... yay... Getting back into the states was good... felt at home...

The ride from canada to buffalo isn't that far...

First stop, premier gourmet... the tips I got on here were really helpful, I woulda hit the wine section of the gourmet and gotten frustrated with the place...

premier gourmet is like the blandest crappiest most swapmeet like liquor store you've ever been in... the outside is a nice facade, so I was worried... most of the best liquor stores are ugly on the outside as well. But the beer selection was good... I didn't get much, maybe 6 bottles... 65 bucks in beer... easy money. Was expecting to spend more.

from there I dropped tasker another text and we firmed up plans of when to meet at coles, but from the gourmet, I went over to the village beer merchant...

This is more what I would have expected from premier, but the corner craft beer shop in the hood it was in was just right... it's a cozy sorta joint...

I hunted around and stumbled across an ithaca 10... that went to brac. Found some other beer and another 50 bucks in beer in my cooler.

After that, it was coles and conversation with steve tasker for a few hours.

Real good kid, kinda stuck in a wasteland with no craft beer friends, but he's got a cutie of a girlfriend and he could live in north dakota, so there's that...

It was funny... showing up at coles on a monday is a crapshoot... they don't rewrite their boards till midweek, so "sorry sir, that keg blew this weekend was uttered 4 times" and when I asked for a gueuze on their beer list, sorry that's out was well, but we do have some dogfish peche... check please.

Coles is a great drinking establshment that I hafta think was made by a couple.

One side is casual dining with a bistro vibe... the other side is fratboy, collector, dark, with a beautiful oxblood bar and seating for 30 at at the bar proper... I really took a liking to the merry go round horses they had.

I tried talking steve into hitting 4 more bars with me, but he had work... (in the middle of the week, can you believe it... come on...) and from there the obvious choice was to go to pearl st. which I passed on the way to my hotel... but that was not to be... I went instead to ulrich's...

driving to that neighborhood, I thought my gps had gremlins inside of it cause it was directing me to a hospital and I was like... and there it was.

Ulrich's is a great bar... I just went in and drank 3 beers and chilled and people watched. That suggestion was great thanks bakes and bison. I haven't been in a joint like that since wolski's (if ever in milwaukee, wolski's is wisconsin's ulrich's)

super chill on a weekday night... just what I needed.

after that sleep and then a slow run down to cleveland, but before that... one of best breakfasts I've had, top 5 for shure. 

Pano's had exceptional pancakes. Fresh oj, great sausage... I was in heaven.

Funny part was on my way from my hotel back up to pano's... I started craving cereal... like I was pregnant or something... I look around to see a post factory in the distance and it smelled like oats and malt... It was great... But after that and hunting down some potato chips... (meh... bakes I need to send you some mrs fischers... those are good potato chips) I was off to cleveland...