Maisonette

This means condo/apartment rentals on multiple floors of a home. In our case it is in a pleasant home surrounded by many gardens and with quality appointments in keeping with our Timeshare Vacation Rentals.

Rentals

Our Ottawa Vacation Rental is an independent one bedroom apartment supplemented by additional bedrooms on property. These bedrooms double as Orleans Bed and Breakfast rooms which is becoming too onerous to maintain as we age. Our timeshares in the eastern and south-eastern USA have been rented on occasion but in the past this has taken too much effort. Future focus will be on renting club points to friends and helping them use our Marriott and Holiday Inn vacation clubs.

Crafts & Quilts

Nenita sold some quilts to friends and visitors. More than a dozen queen and king sized quilts have been made by Nenita prior to the past four or five years when it became too difficult with arthritis pain. A special Bernina sewing computer was purchased to make quilts more easily, since It has a very deep and large throat with automated embroidery attachments, however, she only made quilts with her original Pfaff machine.

Gardens

In our Ottawa home on the Ottawa river we maintain a dozen gardens and water features; with walk ways and benches that highlight special views. We get pleasure from maintaining these for friends and visitors; as well as from visiting other botanical gardens on our vacations through our touring. The Keukenhof Gardens (Keukenhof.nl) were a highlight of our European trip, and the Royal Botanical Gardens (rbg.ca) were an important part of experience, the Brookgreen Gardens (brookgreen.org) south of Myrtle Beach are another frequent venue that we attend and their Nights of a Thousand Candles in December are very special.

Travel

We travel each fall season to Boston, Vermont, and New Hampshire; not only for the display of fall colors but also for tax free shopping in New Hampshire.

In spring 2009 we travelled to Europe for 9 weeks using our timeshares for hotels and reserving full villas every couple of weeks for laundry, kitchen, and extra living space. This took five months of planning and involved taking delivery in Sweden, of a Volvo with license and insurance for our 10,000 km/6,000 mi trip.

From September 2015 through seven months into 2016 we toured 16,000 km/10,000 mi of the eastern and south-eastern USA using our timeshares exclusively. We started in Boston, and travelled to Gatlinburg, TN in October. We then travelled south along the Atlantic coast through West Palm Beach and then over to Marco Island and around the Gulf of Mexico to Galveston. We spent two to three weeks at each resort along the way then returned through New Orleans, Panama City, Orlando until we got to Hilton Head Island for the month of March. We returned home through Canada week in Myrtle Beach and Williamsburg. One highlight of our trip was an annual membership at Hershey gardens that allowed us to visit many other botanical gardens along our journey under reciprocal arrangements through the American Horticultural Society.