Claire's Catch Up... Toronto

As its been a while since I blogged and since either of us had filled you in on the last few days I thought I better do a catch up :)  so you’ve got Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Enjoy.

 Saturday 15th
we spent Saturday in the distillery district. It’s lovely. We caught the street cart up king street (where staying at one end and we went to the other) and had to walk a short distance. For me a short distance still seams long because of the negative temps. They have lots of art galleries and some shops and things in these old factories. They are rather nice. Both cool and strange to be in a gallery or shop and be able to see the artist etc working on another piece.  Most of the art galleries had a very Gossip girl/Rufus Humphery gallery feel to them.

We had lunch in a bakery there... some lovely pumpkin and sweet potato soup with some kind of special lovely bread. (I can’t remember what kind it was)
we walked past the st Laurance market. It was mostly small stalls of food. Which was nice to wonder through. There was one stall which was called brown brothers… I was like 'look!' Gemma didn’t know what we were looking at... so I said “its brown brothers!!!"still in sarcastic excitement ... she still didn’t realise the significance so I had to tell her" it’s usually a wine label" lol she then understood my excitement... yet disappointment that it was meat lol

We decided that we'd go out at night. Enjoy our final Saturday in Toronto... lucky enough Geoff was heading out to a bar called Bier Markt. Geoff is now a friend who I’ve now met through the Whites back home. [Thank you again Madleen] . We walked into the bar (now the one next door to Bier Markt) where Geoff said he would be... and approached a group at a table strangely asking for 'I’m looking for Geoff? - who I’ve never actually met). Thank goodness that he noticed and there wasn’t more than one Geoff at the table. We had a good night having a few drinks and talking to Geoff and his university friends.
He is a lover of Sydney!!! Been a few times and appears to have fallen in love with it!
He even knew a few extra things about Sydney that Gemma didn’t know... i.e. where George Street is lol. That was comical.

Sunday 16th
yesterday was a slow day as it was Sunday! Cold, we were tired from the night before and we had plans in the afternoon. We wondered down town again like we have done often. This time in search of a printer photo copy place for Gemma's visa papers. As we absolutely froze walking... we found the place... but it was closed because it was Sunday! People tried to tell us that most things should still be open on Sundays in the city. Some things are open... but not everything. We’ll have to head that way again today and have it copied before we leave tonight.
While we were down town we went to the eaten centre which is a large shopping centre. Our main aim of going in there was just to get out of the cold and let our bodies defrost. That worked... and we grabbed lunch too. We just had maccas as I don’t have much of an appetite and it’s pretty cheap. Unfortunately, maccas menus are not international. I knew this but I was still disappointed. I had a snack wrap like I would of had if I was at home... they added bacon. That wasn’t bad. But they covered it in ranch dressing/sauce... way too much! And there was an option to have extra! The ranch dressing killed it!

We walked through the eaten centre to get to the bus terminal to talk to someone about getting a refund for our bus tickets to NY that we weren’t able to use due to that snow storm we've mentioned. They just gave us a phone number to call. So hopefully when we get around to doing that it should all work out! :)

That afternoon I was catching the train out west of the city a little to Geoff’s house to stay at his place for the night. The train ride was really quick... trains come very frequently here!
Geoff picked me up from Old Mil station which is just around the corner from his place and we headed out to dinner. We walked up a main street which was lined with many restaurants... picking Thai it was lovely.
We were planning a movie later so we waited around his house just watching TV, and talking about random things. We saw the Kings speech! Awesome movie!!! We both really enjoyed it!! The movie cinema there is like a freestanding complex purely dedicated to the cinema. They had the classic Tim Horton’s *** inside with a few other food outlets. A little different to the Hoyts candy bar back home lol. AND the chairs moved! lol. not quite reclined but that general idea. I was intrigued.

*** have we described Tim Horton’s yet??? If not… it’s a very popular café type place that was named after/or opened by an (Ice) Hockey Player. They are 24 hour so very convenient and quite cheap. They sell coffee and tea and other beverages like that; as well as food. I believe they are popular for doughnuts … but we’ve only eaten soup there for lunch one time.

We got home after the movie at midnight so by then it was off to bed! I am very thankful to Geoff and his family for letting me stay! Wonderful hospitality... much more comfortable that staying in a hotel downtown.

Monday 17th
wakening up early to get ready to catch the train back to down town. And Geoff was heading to university for the week. He made me a wonderful breakfast of fruit salad and scrambled eggs!!! The eggs were really good but fruit salad was excellent! Mostly because we hadn’t had much fruit since we’d been here. We caught the train back downtown and spent an hr in the hostel catching up on email etc.

For lunch we walked up the street in search for poutine. For most of our trip we have had a number of people say we needed to try this poutine as it was ‘very Canadian’ and not something we could get back home. Its chips and gravy with cheese melted on top. But I have been informed that it has to be the right kinds of ‘fries’, the right kind of gravy and the right cheese. We eventually found smokes, which is THE place to have poutine, apparently. Thanks to Geoff who goggled it for me last night.

We didn’t mind it. It didn’t look highly appealing but it tasted better than it looked. Don’t think we could eat a lot of it often. Very brown and we prob have a heart attack on the way.

After lunch we collected our bags and headed to the train station to get to the airport. Easier than I thought it was going to be. And people are very helpful when you are standing at the top of stairs with 2 large bags!

Now we are at the airport and have about and hr and a half to wait before we board... Gemma is reading “what Casanova called me” and I’m catching up on this blog and will prob Facebook until my battery runs out. We are set to fly out officially a 650pm here which is 1050am (ish) Australian time.  Its suppose to be a 8 hr flight to Frankfurt where we have an hour stop over before we get on our flight to London Heathrow airport. That is only meant to be a very short 1hr 40 min flight. Just like going to QLD really.

When we arrive in London it is meant to be 1030am (there time. Don’t make me work out what time in Aus)... so we are aiming to be out of the airport by lunch time where we will venture the trains to get to Hertfordshire University :) . We have some qualms about our accommodation that we need to sort out. Apparently Gemma and I may be in different locations. So we’ll figure something out

We’ll stay tuned because the next blog entry will be from England! How different! :)

Claire

xx