With the in-laws going to Quebec City and Montreal for a weekend package trip with Royal Tours, Lunato and I were free to visit Ottawa and meet up with Harry before he left for Indonesia.
The World’s Biggest Apple is located north of the town of Colborne, Ontario. One can’t help but notice the big apple beside highway 401 when traveling between Toronto and Ottawa. We’ve seen it many many times but had not visited the place until now.
The Apple Pie store/restaurant is bigger than you would expect from the outside. There is a souvenir shop inside the main building as well with many items related to the Big Apple.
We bought a bag of Red Delicious Apple Chips paying $4 for it. The other items are priced similarly, pretty expensive for something made out apples. However, since this was sort of a special occasion, we bought a Big Apple magnet and a pen as well.
Apparently the big apple is open to visitors and you can climb to an observation spot at the top of the apple. I didn’t know this otherwise we would’ve gone up there. Nazish, the former Carleton PSA president, visited The Big Apple a few days after our visit and took pictures of herself going inside and up to the top. Nice, I wish I had known about this.
There were only two other customers besides Lunato and I in the restaurant. The customer service was lacking and I didn’t feel welcome at all. The cashier was just standing at her post waiting for us with an impatient look on her face. It was odd and I definitely would not visit again. The souvenir shop workers were friendly though. No complaints there.
And it looks like we’re not the only one who had an unpleasant experience at the Big Apple.
We reached Ottawa around 9 PM. The plan, as had been agreed upon, was that we would pick up Harry, pick up Shekhar, pick up Dooh from his work and then go to downtown Ottawa. But Harry is Harry and when we were 30 minutes away from his sister’s house, he called and informed us that he was currently in Montreal and will just meet us sometime tomorrow.
Feh… drove all the way from Toronto to Ottawa and he is now informing us that he is in Montreal and will probably be back tomorrow. I felt so stupid.. Dooh had traveled from Ottawa to Toronto just 9 days ago and Harry had done the same then, informed him at the last moment of his unavailability because of some “unavoidable circumstances” which turned out to be him preferring to avoid confrontation and do as told instead of honouring the commitments he had already made with non-relatives.
I understand that unexpected events can occur. Priorities, expectations, and responsibilities can shift which can potentially cause a change in plans. But to be pushed in the background and considered less important twice in a row definitely means something else. Harry would never say to your face that he doesn’t want to associate with you anymore. He would rather create circumstances where it would become self-evident that he doesn’t want to associate with you anymore.
Lunato tried to defend him again but Dooh and I are not new friends of Harry. We’ve known him for almost a decade now and maybe, just maybe, he is sick and tired of us and is trying to tell us indirectly. That would be his way.
I called Shekhar, informed him of the new situation, picked up Dooh from his work and then went to Dooh’s house to bitch about Harry until all of us fell asleep. Let’s see what tomorrow holds. Maybe Lunato and I will just drive back to Toronto in the afternoon.
