Hamilton, Waterloo

Greetings!

Jon and I drove to Hamilton to see the Dundurn Castle. This castle has 77 rooms and was built in the 1830’s. It used the previous house as a foundation and built over top of it. It also had a room with a large pit where ice was stored, acting like a freezer. They would collect ice from the lake during winter and would surround the ice block with hay and sawdust so that the ice block would last all year. The castle had 2 flushing toilets which were considered high tech back then. The funny thing is that the toilets drained into the river where the local people got their drinking water. In the rooms with a fireplace, there would be a bell that would be rung so that the servants could light the fireplace. The bells had different pitches for the different rooms so that the servants knew which room to light. There were many types of irons, all of which were quite heavy. They had irons that looked like little lamps to iron the ribbons on bonnets and such. There were also samples of green ketchup from green tomatoes. We walked around their vegetable garden and the war museum which they had on site.

We drove around downtown Hamilton to try to find the Farmer’s market but it wasn’t well marked so we never got there. Jon drove to the old Studebaker plant where his 1951 studebaker was built.

Jon has reached his 100th punch buggy. I am trailing behind.

We are in Waterloo. We met up with two of our high school friends, Jeff and Chloe. We’ll be staying at Chloe’s tonight. Jeff cooked us really good food. He made delicious shrimp, soya sauce chicken and pizza. We also went to Marble Slab and got a green tea with blueberries. It was delicious. Chloe wanted ice-cream that’s not sweet but she got dark chocolate ice cream with almond in a dark chocolate and scor waffle cone. She wound up giving it to Jeff. Ha ha. It’s really nice seeing them.

Have a good night!