Brits at The Cottage

I’ve lived in Canada for the last 15 years. I was introduced to the phenomena also known as “going to the cottage” early on. As soon as the spring hit it was very common for someone to say, “Want to come to my cottage this weekend?”

What I also learned early on was how painful it is to bruise your buttocks on a jet ski in Muskoka, but I will save that story for another day.

One of my best mates and his family finally came to visit me this summer. After 15 years of me telling him to come over he finally braved the flight with his wife and two kids. Realistically, he should have come over pre-kids, but whatever.

It is summer so I naturally asked them if they wanted to go to the cottage. (My wife’s cousin’s cottage that is.) Now when you tell a bunch of Brits that we’re going to a cottage they think it’s a quaint little house somewhere in the woods and I’ll bet they don’t really get why we want them to go there.

What you should say when speaking to Brits is, “Want to go to a cabin by the lake?”

There are some major differences between a Canadian and an English Summer. First off no one really goes to the beach in England. And if they do it’s not a two hour drive from their house, it’s a short flight to Marbella, Algarve, Tenerife, Mallorca… I think you get my drift. There is no cottage by a beach back in jolly old England, when we go to the beach, there really isn’t a lot of sand, but pebbles. We don’t swim at the beach and we usually go in a caravan (trailer), tent or stay in a B & B — and guess what? It rains.

So my mate and his family were pleasantly surprised. The beach had sand! The water was clean! They could swim! They also kept calling it the sea, but it’s a freshwater bay… I guess they just figured that something so vast must be a sea!

I’m happy to say that I gave them a true Canadian experience.

I go to the cottage almost every weekend in the summer even though my wife doesn’t love it, my kids do. What I loved about this particular cottage trip is that I was able to drive a Honda Crosstour instead of my mini van (that my wife still cries over).

Driving the Honda was a real treat. I much prefer driving it to my mini van.

It was a really smooth drive, the cruise control worked well, it had loads of trunk space.

The seating was comfortable and when you signal you can see your blind spots on the screen on the dash. I loved it for the way it drove and for how comfortable it was. My kids on the other hand loved that the windows rolled down (as the back windows in my van don’t) and were over the moon about the sun roof. They also loved that they could share an arm rest that had two drink holders in it.

My only problem now is that my wife is really trying to get me to buy one.

I took some pics of this car, but I much prefer this one.

*Disclaimer: All opinions are my own. Honda did allow me to borrow the Crosstour and graciously gave me a break from my minivan for the weekend.