CA: The One with the Return

It’s always a surreal experience returning to places I’ve already lived. My visa is up in just over four months, meaning I find my mind evermore frequently turning to thoughts of home. What will it be like? Will it have changed? Will I have changed? The last one seems very likely.

This week I returned to Toronto, my home for six months when I first arrived in Canada. If I’m honest, the city has not changed in the past year. It feels much the same. The only difference that’s really bothered me is that my local cafe/coffee house (called ‘Rick’s Cafe’) has closed down. That was a sad blow.

Apart from that, it is the same. Oh, apart from the heat.

I was never in the city during summer. I managed to escape that hell, fleeing to the far west of Canada in June. This year, though, Toronto is stuck with a heat wave that’s left everyone a little singed. Mid to high thirties everyday with humidity at its peak. Another reason  I don’t like big cities.

The main reason (there are two, actually) is that Toronto is a good stopover point before I head further out east. We gave ourselves a week here (meaning me and Sam, my roommate and now travel buddy from Vancouver), which I honestly thought would be too long, that I’d run out of things to do very quickly. I was very wrong.

Most of my time was spent either showing Sam round the city, or catching up with old friends (which there were more of than I realised). On our second day, we did escape the confines of the city and drive out, along with some of Sam’s friends he met in New Zealand (Chloe and Conrad, Rugby Sevens picture), to Niagara-on-the-lake.

Now, I have been before. I went on a bus tour to the famous Falls with a few hours in Niagara-on-the-lake included. It was a very different visit this time.

We rented an AirBnB, one of the nicest I’ve stayed in. It was a full house, fit to house the group of six that we were.

Only one night there, but the day was jam-packed with activities. Niagara-on-the-lake came first (I’m getting very fed up of typing that name), where we spent a few hours before departing on several wine tours.

I think there were five in total? All very nice, and all fairly priced. One took us down into their cellars where we were allowed to study the many barrels stacked together. That was pretty cool.

As you can guess, there was plenty of wine drunk during the tours. And more bought afterwards to take back to the house.

Not to mention being surrounded by vinyards…

The following day we left the AirBnB and headed to the dreaded Niagara Falls. Now, going back to my time in Niagara, all those years ago (meaning about a year and a half) it was the last day that the boat tour out to the falls was open. This, mixed with the pretty cold weather, meant that it was all but deserted. It was wonderful.

This time, however, in the height of summer, was prime tourist season. It very quickly became apparent that we would not be doing the boat tour.

All that red on the boat? That’s all the tourists.

 

The Falls themselves were as spectacular as ever, terrifying in their power. The amount of people swarming around them for pictures? Not so much.

I think, if it was my first time visiting, like everyone else I was with, I would’ve been more impressed and inclined to go on the ‘Behind the Falls’ tour most of them did. Sam and I, after due consideration, decided it would be a more beneficial if we went to a pub in the tacky town and watch the football instead. It was quite a good lunch/afternoon if I’m honest.

 

Okay, the other highlight, and the other main reason we went to Toronto, was that it was Sam’s birthday on July 4^th.

Because I am a kind and gracious friend (and also because Sam is an alcoholic), I organised three brewery tours around the city. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a common theme of a lot of alcohol being consumed in Toronto. This day was by far the worst of the two.

Our drinking started at midday, when we arrived at the first brewery (Amsterdam Brewhouse). This was the quietest of our three tours. Just me and Sam and a friendly brewer, who talked us through their process of making beer before letting us try two of their most popular beers.

Then, naturally, we were convinced (though it didn’t really take much) to try a few more at the bar. So two beers down before even one o’clock.

The second brewery (Steamworks) was the big big tour we did. We had a great start. I asked the bartender if there was anything special we could do for my friend’s birthday and he gave me a badge, and two free beers. Dangerous.

The tour itself involved three more free beers, I think? As well as a tour around their (very large) brewery, of course. It’s interesting to see how the smaller breweries work differently to the big ones.

The third and final brewery (Mill Street) was in the between the two in size, but is also older than both. Actually located in the Distillery District itself, we had a nice time walking about the area before having a tour of their brewery and trying four, maybe five of their beers. We then also bought more beers for that night because, of course, we had also organised to go on a pub crawl.

I won’t go into great detail about the pub crawl. We hit four different places and, safe to say, we were fairly drunk. I did manage to get Sam to sing, though, with a live musician. That was a fun birthday for him.

 

The next day, we recovered, before venturing out to see my all time favourite place in Toronto: Casa Loma.

We didn’t go inside, nor did we spend a long time out in the heat. But I didn’t think a post about Toronto would be complete without the confession that I’ve been, once again, to the castle-above-Toronto.

 

As I write this post (not at the point that I post it, though), I am on a train to my next destination. Hopefully somewhere slightly more exciting than the past few.

 

Stay tuned!

 

 

 

CA: The One with the Visit

So, I lied about when I’d post this. I do, however, have a perfectly plausible reason.

My second illness since arriving in Canada has stricken me with a chesty, burning cough, a throbbing headache, and a constant shiver. Who knows how I survived work the past two days. I was freezing, despite wearing a thermal top underneath my work top.

Today, I do feel better, but my cough still lingers, and I get a painful headache if I turn my head too quickly.

But enough about my personal wellbeing. You want to hear what I’ve been doing since my last post. I am pleased to say that I’ve done plenty, so there is also plenty to talk about.

Thursday dawned with Gemma arriving. For those of you who don’t know who Gemma is, she is a friend from back in England, who’s been studying in Quebec the past couple of months. So it seemed silly if she didn’t come and visit me, as we are in the same country.

Our Thursday started with a trip to Bacon Nation, which, I’m sure, you guys have guessed revolves around bacon. It was a great start to the day. I’m struggling to remember what I exactly had, but I do know it was smothered in bacon and maple syrup. That, and we had a bacon cheesecake for dessert. I can’t say it really tasted like bacon, but it still tasted good!

The afternoon involved a trip to Casa Loma. Definitely a highlight of Gemma’s visit.

Casa Loma (Spanish for Hill House, I have just found out) is essentially a castle. It was constructed from 1911 to 1914, which is about the only bit of information I retained from our trip there (I also had to check this on Wikipedia before posting, just in case). There’s a lot of history behind the house/castle/thing.

But the most exciting thing about Casa Loma is the amount of films that have been filmed there (you can tell history isn’t my thing). The halls feature in the X-Men films as Xavier’s School, Scott Pilgrim also has a scene filmed outside Casa Loma. It was Hogwarts briefly, for the 7^th and last film. Hemlock Grove was filmed there for a bit, and the Mortal Instruments as well. Finally, the TV film re-imagining of the Rocky Horror Picture Show was filmed there.

As you can see, it has a vibrant and diverse amount of films to boast. We must’ve spent several hours wandering around the mansion. I mean, it’s big. Very big. Funnily enough, the owner went bankrupt and was forced to move to his country estate. Because everyone has a country estate to move to when they run out of money. There were even false wall panels that led to secret passageways! Though, they’re not very secret anymore as it is a museum and there are signs pointing to the secret passageways… Still, I found it very exciting.

I don’t really remember what else we did on Thursday. We walked (a lot), something I seem to do a lot of in Toronto. It still has not started snowing, so, for now, the walking is quite nice. It is meant to snow tomorrow so we’ll have to see how much snow there is. Might be time for me to start using public transport!

And then we have Friday. Where we did the most touristy thing possible to do around Toronto. Niagara Falls. Which still confuses me, as it’s pronounced Niagra. Like Viagra (is that inappropriate to say?).

Anyway, yes Niagara Falls. We booked a tour that picked us up at 8:30 (I didn’t have a choice, okay?) and ended up getting back to the hostel at about seven in the evening. So a long day.

I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t convinced by the tour, particularly the price we paid. For one thing, the trip on the boat wasn’t included, so we had to pay an extra $20 on top of what we already paid for the tour. It would’ve definitely been cheaper and probably not much different just to catch a bus to Niagara by ourselves and do the boat tour there.

I mean, the tour included a lot of information about Niagara and surrounding area. But I was asleep for most of that. Some old man had checked into my room and took the bed right above mine. And is snoring was the most majestic thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I don’t even know how to describe it. All I know is that I had two nights of next to no sleep and have now changed rooms. Where I’m sleeping like a baby. Usually at about eight because I’m ill and need my beauty sleep.

Back to Niagara. The tour also included a stop-off in Niagara by the Lake, a small, touristy village, where we were told Prince William and Kate Middleton had their honeymoon and tried some ice-cream that instantly became famous. I forget the name. Never rely on me for information. My memory is like a sieve.

There was also a wine tasting, but a very quick, un-sophisticated one. It involved trying three wines (a chardonnay, a rose (imagine the accent is there), and an iced wine) in very quick succession, in the space of about five minutes. They didn’t even clean out the wine glasses for us between wines! The iced wine was quite nice, though. Again, I’ve forgotten the name (sorry, Uncle Mark).

Going back to Niagara once more, let’s talk about the actual Falls and the boat trip. It was quite fun. I mean, we got soaked in our very fetching ponchos (I’m afraid I do not have any pictures of the poncho), but the Falls are impressive. Apparently, in the winter, they turn the Falls down. They were still pretty strong, so I’d be amazed to see them in summer. A benefit about going in the winter, however, is the lack of people around Niagara. In the summer, it’s heaving. As in you have to physically jostle people out of your way. When we went, there were people, but moving around was so easy. It made taking pictures so much easier.

There’s also a really tacky resort town in Niagara that I can only compare to Blackpool Pleasure Beach. It’s very tacky. There’s a ferris wheel, haunted houses, wax museums (where they look nothing like the people), novelty toy stores. Think of anything tacky you can find at a resort town and Niagara probably has it.

 

I sadly had to work on Saturday, so I can’t say there’s very much to tell you about that day. And then Gemma left on Sunday. We went for brunch at Auntie’s and Uncle’s – an amazing all-day brunch place where the queues can be up to an hour wait (we got there before the rush) – then she left and I have no idea what I did for the rest of the day. My brain is very hazy at the moment. I blame being ill.

But yes, I can’t see anything exciting happening over the next few weeks. We should be moving into a flat on Saturday for over Christmas, but there’s a small chance that’s about fall through. Hopefully not, as having my own space is very appealing right now (particularly when ill).

I will keep you posted!