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

Back in Toronto

Change of plans, as that day wore on, it began to snow. By about 6pm it was heavier than anything we had seen so far although seeing as we were hanging out in the basement we didn’t really notice but other people at the hostel gave us updates on what it was like. A few hours later it was mentioned to us that perhaps this would affect our bus trip to NY? We got on the phone quick and called around various numbers for Greyhound buses before we found the right one that told us that all buses to NY were cancelled, from anywhere. Apparently a fair bit of the state was just blizzarding. So we went to bed thinking to get up early the next morning to see if it was going then.

When we called Greyhound the next day it was still cancelling all buses and it was still snowing heavily outside. We decided that leaving our trip to NY ay longer was pointless and so we found a train to Toronto that was leaving that afternoon. We hung out in the hostel again (I was starting to get stir crazy) and caught a train at 6pm. So here we are safe and sound back in our original hostel in the city.

I like Toronto, it’s quite like Sydney I think and there is plenty to see and do. Our hostel is on the corner between the entertainment district and Chinatown which makes a nice mix and we are near a Tram stop (called a streetcar here) and a subway station.

Claire is quite sick, has been since we started. So we went to a doctor yesterday morning and stocked up on more medication at the Drug-mart. We then made our way via the subway to Casa Loma. A castle on the outskirts of the city built at the start of the 1900’s by a rich entrepreneur. Its gardens were dead and buried in the snow but again, as it seems to do with everything, it made it very fairytale. We could also climb all the way to the top of a tower for beautiful views over Toronto as the sun set.

Today’s entertainment was the Hockey Hall of Fame where we spent several hours reading about the greatest players and plays (I just thought that at the start it wouldn’t have hurt to put in information of the basic rules of the game, for those like me).

To get to the hall we used a route I might have previously mentioned. It’s called PATH and it’s a series of paths that line the underside of the city. It is where all the Torontonians are (we had wondered). The paths are mostly lined with shops, food stalls and general businesses and it is seriously warm! So we thought it was fantastic when we discovered these, a way to get across the city without freezing our feet? Amazing! But as of today, the comparison in my mind will always be of the labyrinths of hell. Overstatement? Maybe. But the thing is, the paths are underground, so there are no landmarks, they don’t have names, and they do not go straight and have many, many intersections and forks. Short story, we got lost and going outside was just easier. I think Claire was keener to go back underground once we figured out where we were but I wasn’t very excited by the prospect.

Gemma.

Icicles

1812 war museum

Ice in the river

The frosted trees

We snapped some icicles to eat :)

The mist frozen to the trees

Ice weapons

This statue was only iced on the side of the falls creating a cool effect

The joining bridge to the US

Claire at the Canadian falls

Everywhere is just frozen!

She snapped this off a lightpost

Rainbow in the mist

How is this tree surviving?

The American falls

Casino

Some of the lights in the park

The falls light up

The Canadian (or horseshoe) falls from the Skylon tower

The American Falls

On the veiwing deck, holding my beanie to keep it on!

Living like locals in Niagara

Leaving Niagara soon and I’m not going to lie to you, the one night has been enough.  I’m not sure of the temperature here but it seems colder than Toronto. It could be for a few reasons, that the clouds have gone leaving vast blue skies that whilst look beautiful and make it sunny, also let all the cold air from above in. Another reason could be that the lack of buildings means that the wind is getting to us more and also because it is not a very busy place, many pathways are not cleared meaning that we are walking on snow which really seems to make all the difference.

Being a major tourist town, and it not being tourist season, most places are closed. We walked down Clifton hill which was full of amusement park style things, haunted houses, Ripley’s believe it or not, themed diners but they were mostly silent, apart from random noises from the haunted houses. Many shops are also closed, as well as just general attractions.

But there is one thing. It’s beautiful. Obviously I haven’t seen it in the summer when I’m sure it’s lovely and bustling but there is no way it is as gorgeous as it is right now. I’m talking about the falls specifically. We walked down along the parkway by the river admiring the way things gradually became more iced over. The fences had blunt icicles where people had snapped them off and lamp post’s icicles were bent from the wind. I thought the most amazing was the patch of trees right near the falls. They were thickly covered from top to bottom with ice and fairly often we could hear cracking and looked up the hill to see branches of ice falling down... stabbing people underneath them.

So ice everywhere and at night the falls, both the American and Canadian ones, were lit up by huge lights of all colours that changed and merged which I’m pretty sure they don’t have in summer seeing as they call it the ‘winter festival of lights’.... So my point is, it is sure to be more fun in summer when you can hang about wherever you want and things are open, but for braving the cold you get a more beautiful Niagara.

Today we forced ourselves out of the house because it seems wrong to be in a major tourist destination and stay inside. We went down to the Skylon tower and caught the lift to the top for a 360 view of the area, unfortunately today wasn’t as clear as yesterday, otherwise we would have been able to see to Toronto, but we could still see Buffalo across the US border.

A few facts that we learned – In winter only half the water travels over the falls compared to in summer. The maid of the mist is named from a native Indian story where every year a maiden was sent over the falls in a white birch canoe as an offering to the thunder god who lived beneath the falls. 15 people have been over the falls, the most recent was in 2003 where a 40 year old man went over and survived! And the one before that was a 7 year old boy in a lifejacket!

We went to lunch in a lovely restaurant where we met our favourite person of the day. Jason. He was our waiter and didn’t mind that we came into this kind of fancy restaurant to only eat the soup of the day (which was amazing!), he brought us warm, complimentary loaves of bread, and at the end of our meal, gave us directions to ‘drugs and food’. I love that you can just go up to someone and tell them that you are looking for drugs and food. Nice guy.

So the rest of the day (after getting drugs and food) has been spent in the hostel where we are allowed to stay till midnight, then we will walk to the bus station and hope our bus gets there early for our 12:50 trip, or else we will freeze to death. I figure that by staying inside, we are merely acting like locals. Not looking forward to our bus trip (which is 10 hours and has 3 changes of bus) but I am looking forward to NY. Catchya soon J

Gemma.

Our little snowman

Ice in the harbour

Iced sweet potatoes after the snow

Toronto cleaned up

Sitting on the opposite side of the car!

Adrian and Claire looking like pros with the toboggan

White suburbs

Claire fell off....

So we buried her :)

Naw, pretty

Making snow angels

Dusting off the snow that was thrown at me

Canadian zinc?

Squirrel tracks up a tree

Walking through the woods

Balancing act

In the sports bar

We even had one in our booth!

Niagara Falls

Today we caught the Greyhound bus from Toronto to Niagara Falls. We left at 930am, and arrived at 11am. We the rest of the day wondering down towards the falls themselves; Stopping in at art galleries, antique stores, history museums and dinners.

We visited the Niagara Cassino, as Adrians mum suggested we should. we wondered the floor trying to find something cheap and simple to play. Saw this game called tiles… which appeared to be black jack with dominos. Does anyone know about that??? We settled with pokies that had the hand leaver and a sex and the city pokie. We spent $5 each (cause that was a min) and I finished with a 5 cent voucher, and Gemma got a 45 cent voucher. Keeping them for memories! lol

We walked around the Niagara Falls area which is counted as one of the ‘wonders’ of North America, not the world… we wondered… so I googled it. We stayed around the falls area until dark to see them light up. They were all pretty colours (check out the photos when we get around to putting those up). We gave up on the idea of walking back to the hostel or waiting to a bus, because by this time it was 6pm, dark and FREEZZING! So we got a taxi! Worth every cent.

Claire

Claire and some of the CN Tower

Squirrels!

On the ice skating rink

Snow flakes! We were amazed to find out they actually make these shapes!

All beef hot dog for lunch

Kid all rugged up, he looked like Kenny from south park