One goose, two geese; one moose, two.... meese?

When I decided to go to Toronto, it was this really sort of horrendous decision because I kind of really wanted to do Montreal – Ottawa – Toronto or vice versa but all the flights I was looking at were disgustingly expensive and I was running out of time and even after I was able to cut the hypothetical Missouri from my trip, I wasn’t really with enough time. Finally I found an okay priced return from Boston – Toronto and so the decision was made to break Boston into two bits – I’d wanted five nights there initially because I knew I wanted a day in Cambridge and I’d really wanted a day to go to Providence but that didn’t end up happening. ANYWAY. I also knew that I wanted to be in the United State for July 4th and so I wound up booking flights on the 29th and leaving on the 3rd, and was informed that I’d inadvertently booked to be in Canada for Canada Day. Which was a cool experience, something that I can ‘say I did’ but that actually kind of wind up being a pain because it was a day where a lot of things were shut and then even though I didn’t get completely drunk (just very very very very very tipsy) I was bit blech the next day.


I’m telling this all out of order. Let’s go back. So I had four nights in Toronto. I arrived sort of late afternoon after a relatively uneventful flight with Air Canada from Boston. The most amusing thing is that I got to the airport pretty early and I was informed by the lady at the Air Canada desk that there’s like, nothing in their little departure area so don’t go in yet. She said that I’d be able to go into the ‘main’ area but just have to go through security twice. I didn’t bother, just stuck around in the check in area using the free wi-fi (thanks Logan Airport!) and when I got into the departure area I realised just how serious she was. Air Canada has this little section with just three gates and their own security bag thingy and there’s one ‘cafe’ which is a loose term. There’s a fridge against the wall, a bunch of shelves with sandwiches/cookies/muffins, a coffee maker and a girl wearing black wandering around the terminal and she looks up and sees you there and comes over to do the payment.


I’d booked a shuttle to get from the Airport to Toronto – my God shuttles make life just so freaking easy. You get on the bus at the airport, you relax, and if you’re not dropped off right at your hostel it’s pretty nearby. (about two blocks in this instance). There is public transport going to the airport, but it’s something like two buses and a trolley and it takes up to four hours depending on what connections you get. So I splurged and booked a shuttle, it was the hostels recommended method of getting there anyway. Found the hostel, was on a first floor room (sweeeet. Lugging suitcases up and down stairs in these buildings without elevators gets so, so, so old very quickly) and scored a bottom bunk. Sweeeeeet again.


I didn’t do a lot on my first night in Toronto. I got directions to the grocery store, had a wander around in the immediate area, got Subway for dinner (Canadian Subway is no different to American Subway from what I saw; other than that they didn’t have an ‘American cheese’ option, it was just cheddar) and went back to the hostel and had a pretty early night.


The next day was a highlight of the trip. July 30th if I was at home would’ve been Eclipse Day but Eclipse was pushed back a couple of days so that I could go to Niagara Falls. This was pretty much my sole purpose for coming to Toronto. I didn’t go staking out Hairspray filming places once, didn’t really care to, didn’t even know about Canada Day – I’d just researched into Niagara Falls and just like how I was able to do a tour from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon, Toronto is the logical jumping off point for tours to Niagara. The drive was pleasant, squished in like sardines but that’s fine. The tour guide chickie went around doing payments for the tour and for the Maid of the Mist, which is the boat that goes in the river and right into the falls. If you bought your ticket for it through her you got a couple of dollars off. It was timed pretty much absolutely perfectly – the bus pulled up and she took all of us who had bought MotM tickets straight down to the ferry thing, got our tickets, we powered through the whole entry area, got our ponchos and as we were power walking they were calling out that there were two minutes until departure.


The Maid of the Mist was the highlight of the whole day; I actually got off and contemplated buying another ticket to go on again. You get given this blue poncho which you need. To explain how much you need it, and just how close you are and how much you’re getting sprayed; as you’re at the wettest point only people with those like, disposable waterproof cameras have them out. The advantage to the fear of camera damage is that you actually were able to ENJOY IT instead of feeling like you needed to be taking a thousand photographs. That moment in time as I was standing with the Niagara Falls raining on my head... it was a very surreal moment in time. It’s hard to really define that feeling. I was kinda like a little kid, running around to different sides of the boat to get different views and snapping shots when I wasn’t in fear of my camera getting wrecked.


From the sheer stunning beauty of Niagara Falls is the world’s second tackiest town – only Las Vegas is tackier. But having such tackiness right beside the Falls... it’s a thing of sadness to me. I get that Niagara has become like this tourist attraction and that people go there and stay there and there’s only so much time you can spend looking at the Falls and so these companies are capitalising upon tourist trade. But like... a Wax Museum and Dracula’s Haunted Mansion and some other haunted thingy and video game arcades and a zillion souvenir places and fast food joints and ice cream parlours and a Hershey World and... the list goes on. All bright and gaudy with colourful signs designed to entice youth to demand their parents spend money.


We had about two and a half hours of time at Niagara Falls; after which point we took a bit of a scenic/informational drive along Niagara Parkway and headed toward a town called Niagara on the Lake which was super cute and way less tacky. I wound up walking along and chatting with an English girl who’d been sitting behind me on the tour bus – I never actually got her name, she’s one of those people who I lament that we hadn’t been staying at the same hostel and had the opportunity to hang out more because we were really quite similar in terms of multiple trips abroad, not so much into the getting drunk in every city in the world, changed degrees and recently graduated. Niagara on the Lake was about a 45 minute stop, and the next stop on the tour was at a winery where we did some wine tasting so that the dumb tourists would go in, buy wine, the winery makes money and then a certain percentage of commission goes to the tour company. See, I know exactly how this works. This particular winery actually is part owned by Dan Aykroyd (they labelled him as being from Ghostbusters and Blues Brothers and I was like, ooh from My Girl!) they stock his particular brand of wine but I didn’t taste it, sorry Dan, they gave us a sample of his red and I stuck just to trying the white wine samples.


We got back around, hrm, 8pm? At which point I went on a mad dash out to find an open liquor store because I knew they’d all be closed the next day for Canada Day. The big liquor store is LCBO (erm... Liquor something something Ontario) and it was open til 9pm and when I arrived it was absolute chaos. It was amusing, exactly like how it would be at home before a public holiday.


Canada Day itself; well, I allowed a little time of exploring/touristing in the morning and early afternoon and headed to the Eaton Centre which is like, a big massive mall where most stores were actually open – I guess it’s like Surfers Paradise at home where things are open like, all the time, even Christmas. Just outside the Eaton Centre was like a plaza/square/whatever and there was some multi cultural Canada Day concert on and I scored a free crappy paper Canadian Flag and a little pin. :) I waved my flag around happily all the way back to the hostel. There were a few people out in the garden already drinking but I stuck indoors. I went out to see what was happening at about 2:30 (the BBBQ was designated to start at 3pm) and there was no one out there at all. So I went back to my netbook having already opened my little bottle of vodka and was productive with my writing. One of the girls from my dorm room came to chat and said people were now outside so we headed out and seriously, there were more people there than I realised were staying at the hostel – turns out this hostel takes up pretty much the entire block and I had no idea, I just thought it was our building. Plus they’d invited some hostel ‘alumni’ who are in the area. Scored a big juicy burger (freeee being the important thing) for linner (it was probably 5pm by the time I got mine) and had fun chatting with some people. We wound up arranging a group of people who wanted to go toward the water for the fireworks. I went out for a wander with Anita (the girl who’d originally talked to me) on her quest for cake and by the time we got back to the hostel there was pretty much time to get changed and then meet up with these people who wanted to go to the fireworks. I didn’t even know where they were so I was just following the crowd and all I know is that we wound up sort of along the harbourside where the fireworks were being let off a little ways away but you could still see them.


Next day was... yeah. Kind of like Philly except Philly I’d been a lot more drunk and more hungover. I think Toronto was this mixture of just being TIRED in a general sense plus a bit of the day after drinking a bit. It was a slow start to the morning and I missed out on the breakfast (which, I just realised I hadn’t mentioned, was pancakes & maple syrup. They didn’t provide any toast or cereal, just pancakes) so went out and got myself fed and looked around but I was honestly just exhausted. There was a movie theatre around the corner from my hostel and it seemed like fate – time to go see Eclipse :) I got back to the hostel after seeing it in the IMAX theatre and spazzed with Kelly about it on Fan Forum and then I decided that since it was my last day in Toronto I should do SOMETHING of importance and so I decided to fork out the cash and go to CN Tower.


CN Tower, according to the website, is the world’s tallest building. I’m told that there’s now a building in Dubai that is taller however CN Tower are in denial and haven’t updated their marketing materials. Quite honestly I hadn’t heard of it before going to Toronto. Seriously, I hadn’t. My guide book (the one I lost) didn’t have a Toronto section, it was a USA book, and most of what I know about tourist attractions was derived from that book. Maybe I’m just severely uneducated. I know that Q1 in my home city WAS the world’s tallest residential building until the 01 in... erm... somewhere... overtook it. When I arrived at CN Tower they claimed it to be an hour queue, I honestly don’t know if it was, I didn’t look at the time very purposefully. The ‘claim to fame’ for CN Tower other than the height itself is this glass floor thing they have. It’s only in one tiny section but there’s this part where you’re standing literally on glass floor and you can see the ground beneath it. I thought it was a bit overrated and I much much preferred the main observation deck (although I’d love if they cleaned the windows) and also the outdoor observation deck – that feeling of having the wind whipping around is so surreal, it reminded me a lot of the Eiffel Tower. The elevator ride going up and down also is half cool/half scary because the elevator is on the outside of the building and there’s glass floor and a window so you can see out and ‘down into the elevator shaft’ (like, the operator tells you to look down like an elevator shaft is something every tourist wants to see.) I don’t know, I guess I just don’t like spending money on these sorts of tacky tourist experiences. The view was super pretty though, especially on the side where you could see Lake Ontario and the harbour and LO is one of the Great Lakes so that’s pretty cool.


I feel like I really didn’t see much in Toronto. There was a lot of wandering around which is often my MO when I’m touristing; I know that to the outside person reading my blog or whatever it’s like ‘so what did you DO’ and I very genuinely just enjoy going out and walking around in the streets looking around. I like looking at foreign chains and looking at the prices of things and seeing how ‘the regular people live’ and experiencing the culture on that level. I feel like you learn more about people that way. I like going into Starbucks in different cities and seeing what the customer service is like. A caramel frappuccino tastes the same everywhere but people treat you differently everywhere.


Anyway yes... so that brings me to the end of my time in Toronto... until next time...