Summer 2025—Laissez les bon temp rouler.

I bet you can’t guess where I am right now…

No, I’m not in a dust-covered campground swarming with mosquitoes and summer flies.

I don’t have my feet hanging over a murky, filmy campground pool, wondering what that is lurking on the bottom and if I or one of the kids will end up with an eye infection this summer from whatever that mysterious, blobby object is.

Nor am I hanging off the crowded RV banquette, elbow-deep in schoolbooks trying to simultaneously teach algebraic equations and the life cycle of a newt.

Nope. NOT TODAY.

I am currently in a fluffy white bathrobe, cozy in a downy, king-size bed on the tenth floor of a historical hotel, The Lord Elgin, in Ottawa’s city center, looking out my window over a beautiful park.

BY MYSELF.

No rambunctious kids. No 100-lb ridgeback shedding, drooling, or testing just how many ways he can invade my personal space.

This is so rare that I’d like to take a moment of silence to appreciate the anomaly of my current circumstances.

…

This week, I tagged along on the Mr.’s work trip to Canada while the kids are enjoying a couple of weeks with family in Mississippi. (The kids are fine: they are catching fireflies and crickets for fishing and playing Scrabble and making forts and swimming in their cousins’ clean pool. Don’t feel sorry for them.)

The first order of business after we checked into our hotel Tuesday was of course to hunt for French pastries at a local bakery, as Ottawa has a heavy French influence. This is the moment where I was kicking myself for not sticking with those French lessons on Duolingo. Très terrible. But honestly, who speaks French in the U.S.? I’ve gotten way more use out of Spanish. (For example, one day inside a public restroom, an English-speaking woman was trying to ask a pregnant Spanish-speaking woman about her baby, and I was able to translate for them: “Tú bebe es un niño o niña?” “Tú estas muy cansada?” I was rather proud of myself.)

Anyway, I tried my best to appear like a local (“Bonjour!" “Merci!”) as I ordered a sandwich and, of course, tiramisu (wait, I thought this was a French bistro…) However, I was very aware that, you know, one of these things is not like the other when we sat at our table and I noticed the very French lady sitting near us.

You know all of those Pinterest links describing life as a French woman and how to be just like her? How to dress like her, how to behave like her, how not to get fat just like her? Well, this woman was the femme modèle. Dressed in sleek, latte-hued trousers in probably a size 2 and a mocha cardigan (it was 80 degrees outside! I guess French women don’t sweat, either), delicate ballet flats and a chic leather bag, her hair pulled neatly into a chignon, daintily sipping soup off a spoon while a croissant the size of a football sat untouched on a side plate. I will never be French. I would have gone straight for the croissant. Suddenly, all I could think about was my wide-width Hokas on my feet and the mess of curls on my head, which was generating the same amount of heat as a wool afghan and expanding by the minute. (Side note: I’ve said for years to Kelley, Why don’t we move to Canada, where it’s colder? It is definitely NOT colder. I haven’t stopped sweating since we stepped off the plane.) My skin was dry from the plane, my rosacea was peeking out from behind the foundation on my cheeks. Even my BBQ chicken sandwich, though hardly the drippy, grotesque mess of the Southern U.S. equivalent, was still very much something an American would order.

Everything about her was très elegant; it was difficult not to stare. She was like a work of art, from her impeccable complexion and smooth hair to her exquisite table manners. Of course, my Aspergers went into full-on masking mode, and I picked at my food just like her. I crossed my ankles (hard to do with sneakers the width of frying pans) and stopped slouching just like her and vowed to dress a little more chic at dinner. At least I was also wearing neutrals—natural linen pants and a black high-neck tank. I’ll give it a 5/10.

After the bakery, Kelley and I (and the French woman) parted ways. (Au revoir, beautiful French woman. You have no idea what kind of mental tailspin you sent me into.) I went meandering passed Parliament Hill and through the quaint downtown area while Kelley headed to work at the Australian chancery. I made my way through the Byway Market and sat on a shaded park bench across from Notre-Dame cathedral, enjoying dreamsicle gelato from a wooden paddle-spoon (yes, my second dessert of the afternoon, don’t judge me) and listening to the unintrusive soundtrack of the neighborhood. As I sat there, a French-ish Canadian man rode up on his bicycle and remarked, “Eating ice cream alone on a park bench in the middle of the afternoon?”

To which I responded, “I prefer it that way!” (How very un-French of me. You can take the girl out of America…)

This, of course, was right before I got kicked out of the American embassy.

To my credit, I did consider this was a reasonable possibility. But a sign mentioning “embassy visitors” was displayed right beside the door, which led me to believe that the embassy did, in fact, allow visitors. I may never be French, but I am American! American, I can do. I waited until I saw a woman in regular street clothes open the door, and I walked in after her. (Surely, she doesn’t work here. She’s wearing white cropped chinos. How very American.)

Immediately, a guard appeared out of thin air. “Is she with you?” He asked the woman, pointing at me. She enthusiastically said no (a little unnecessary, if you ask me. One nation undivided and all that. We’re Americans! We’re all together!), and she briskly walked through the next set of doors. “Let’s talk outside,” the guard said to me, walking back into the sunlight. I followed him, and I KID YOU NOT, the door began to close on me. I squeezed through just before being crushed by the huge, heavy metal automatic door. The guard glanced at me, a little amused and not at all concerned by my near-door-death incident, and waited for me to speak.

Flustered, I flashed my passport at him. “Um, I’m an American! And I just wanted to see if I could take a look inside our embassy? It’s my first time in another country.” I spread my most charming smile across my face.

“I’m sorry, I can’t let you in.”

“What?? But I’m an American (as if that wasn’t painfully obvious yet). I have my passport!”

After a few back-and-forths about the current tumultuous U.S.-Canada relationship and the new no-visitor policy (President Trump, in the words of Avril Lavigne, “Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?”), I noticed he was moving between me and the door as I was silently sizing up this beanpole of a guard who was clearly younger than me and thinking for a moment that I could probably knock him to the ground and bolt past him to the door without breaking a sweat (if I wasn’t already sweating).

“What if I was in trouble?” I asked. “Could I come in then??” This was an important question I didn’t know I needed answered until that moment, as scenes from The Bourne Identity flashed through my mind.

“Then we would figure it out together. What kind of trouble are you in?” He asked.

Forget it. This wasn’t happening.

“Oh, I’m not in any trouble, sir. I just wanted to look inside our embassy…Can I just peek through the window?” He laughed, clearly amused by my ignorance. This was probably the most human interaction he’d had all day. But he still wasn’t letting me in, so we said our goodbyes, and I walked away, disappointed.

You know, in the movies, you see Americans in other countries going into our embassy like it’s a bank. They walk up to a counter in the lobby with a row of banker-looking clerks and do their business. I was under no impression I could freely walk the halls upstairs, sticking my head into random offices and chatting up dignitaries, but I at least thought I’d make it into the lobby. I took satisfaction in knowing that I had my two feet planted on U.S. ground for the 3.2 seconds I was inside the door, and walked on to the hotel and miraculously took a nap. (I guess it is possible for me to sleep during the day, when the kids and dog aren’t around and I have a gigantic bed all to myself in a quiet, dark room. How curious…)

For dinner, we ate at Brown’s Socialhouse (delicious! best fish and chips I’ve ever tasted—but I bet the French woman would have ordered a salad) before talking a stroll down the riverside path around the Rideau Canal.

Day 2, I treated the hotel like a spa and made good use of the amenities. (I love a good hotel gym.) I woke up late, took my time getting out of bed, drank my superfood greens, and headed to work out in the gym while Kelley was at work. When he returned, we had a late lunch at Starling in the Byway Market, walked around Ottawa, and then crossed the walking bridge into Quebec (where everything’s in French!) just to say we did. (At Starling, I ordered a sandwich with “fries and champagne” as a side. Of course, I interpreted that literally and expected a curious but perhaps whimsical pairing of fries with a glass of champagne. I was surprised when they delivered a poutine-ish bowl of fries topped with cheese curds and a thin, Alfredo-like “champagne sauce”—no sparkly flute. Again, a painful reminder that I am perfect for the role of a clumsy, confused American.)

Also at Starling, we sat next to three men in a business lunch meeting, scheming on how they would convince an L.A.-based tech engineer making an $800K USD salary to take a drastic pay cut and move to Ottawa. “His girlfriend lives in Toronto! We got this in the bag,” they laughed. At the sound of $800K salary, I muttered, “Woah,” under my breath, and the twitchy, rowdy one turned and shot a glance my way. I have so many questions after eavesdropping on that conversation; mainly, how do I get into the tech industry?

On the way back to the hotel, we grabbed some iced coffee and a quick respite from the scorching humidity and direct sunlight at Little Victories coffee shop. Afterwards, I swam some laps in the indoor hotel pool, relaxed my sore muscles in the whirlpool spa after walking 18,000 daily steps AND overdoing it on the treadmill that morning, and then took what felt like the longest shower of my life, not having to worry about the lack of elbow room or hot water as in the RV.

Getting ready for dinner was like the scene in Miss Congeniality where Sandra Bullock undergoes a massive transformation to become pageant-ready, except in my case, we were going to a classically French restaurant, and I needed a do-over from my first bistro experience here. I paired my black square-neck tank and silk high-waist leopard-print skirt with dainty jewelry and a woven clutch. I pulled my makeup inspiration from my be-like-the-French Pinterest board, but I had to use the hotel hair dryer without a diffuser, and there was no way I was wrangling my disobedient curls into a French chignon, so I cut my losses and wore it wild.

Is it possible to fall in love with a restaurant? We sat at a candlelit, velveted semi-circular booth in Cocotte Bistro, and everything about the place was ethereal. I ordered the summer salad (greens, goat cheese, candied pecans, vinaigrette) and the gnocchi with grilled chicken, which had caramelized onions, candied tomatoes, and the most delicious sauce that I could have drunk with a spoon. My mouth is watering just reliving the memory. (Is it dinnertime yet?) For dessert, we shared a crème brulee with fruit, which was divine and just as crème brulee should be.

As I mentioned earlier, this was my first international trip. (How I have never made it out of the country at 41 years old, I have no idea.) I’ve loved every minute of our time in Canada. It is the perfect gateway country: unique in its Canadian loveliness, with enough European influence to make it feel like a distinctly different country, though sharing enough similarities to the United States as not to be a complete culture shock. We didn’t need charging adapters or exchanged currency; paying with a card was seamless (and cheaper in American dollars than Canadian). Thankfully, everyone we interacted with was bilingual, though I did try to speak as much French as I could remember. (And they weren’t impressed or amused one bit. No one cared whether I could thank them in French.)

Here at the end of our trip (our flight leaves this evening), I’ve stopped trying to blend in as a local (as if I ever could have passed for one). This is absolutely not the blog post of an influencer sharing tips for how to pack, dress, travel, speak, or order food like a French-Canadian. I am a tourist; that is the truth, and I will walk in it. I will wear my joggers and sneakers and New York Yankees hat. I’ll carry my valuables in a sling instead of a purse, and I’ll ask questions about (not a-boat!) the menu that I don’t understand. I will fawn over all of the Canadian beauty and dream of moving here (maybe when the weather is cooler). I will stop kidding myself that I can pull off that exquisite French style, but I will not stop drooling over French cuisine. I am absolutely dragging my feet and delaying my hotel check-out until the last possible second, and I will absolutely stop at each pastry stop between here and the airport.