Almonte is a small town about 50 km outside of Ottawa. Growing up in Toronto, I feel that even Ottawa is small, and admittedly I had not had much interest in small towns where the population is only marginal greater than the population of my former highschool, lol. However, recently, my husband and I were on our "staycation" and we decided to venture out to Almonte in search of new scenery. I won't be packing my big city bags for the small town life anytime soon, but I'm glad we had our little jaunt into Almonte.
So Almonte is a picturesque little town that I discovered is very popular with tourists. I foolishly thought that one of the advantages of a small town was free and readily available parking. The streets were teeming with tourists and we had to circle the main street a few times before we found a parking spot. Parking was free though.
So "downtown Almonte" is along Mill St, which is where the touristy stuff is. The newer strip is along Ottawa St where you will find businesses like breweries, distilleries, and coffee roasteries. We visited both areas.
The downtown area is mostly coffee shops, restaurants and antique/vintage/second hand shops. It was nice to stroll around, but honestly, the place was not my jam. We had lunch at one of the cafes and it was good, but nothing that I couldn't get closer to home.
They had a statue of the inventor of Basketball there, since he was born in Almonte (I think it was actually Ramsey, but after the amalgamation, it's all technically called "Mississippi Mills" now anyway). Yeah, I snapped some pictures like the tourist that I was.
Now I'm going to tell you about the real gem of Almonte, and what made our trip worthwhile: a doughnut shop called Healthy Foods Technologies, where the doughnuts are fried in a machine that the owner invented so that they absorb less fat and are thus "healthier." They taste like normal doughnuts and they are delicious! We bought a dozen and I may or may not have eaten 6 for dinner that night, lol. read more