Kates Journal

Today I spent nearly all of the day on the Toronto Islands. My god it’s so pretty there. Do I keep saying it’s pretty? Well it is pretty. So, let’s start with the morning… I ran a bit late this morning and so made a fairly quick trip to get to the train… which just to demonstrate that my opinion of toronto’s public transport was somewhat biased toward the positive side was late… It’s still CLEAN though :-)

Anyway, having got into Toronto I headed down to the waterfront with my Second Cup pumpkin spice latte (how could I miss that on the menu?!). Before heading down and missing the Ferry out to the islands. It was such a gorgeous day though, I couldn’t miss the chance to go out onto the islands today; so I wandered off, bought some post cards and then headed back catching the next ferry a mere hour later… And headed out to the islands. To be honest I had little idea what to expect – and was stunned by what was there.

It is just *gorgeous*. Completely separate from Toronto and completely different. It is beautiful… So I walked…and walked…and walked. I did the whole of the island from Ward’s Island ferry to Hanlan’s Point Ferry, and then back on the other side of the island. Along the way I took… photos. Yes, of course. Sorry. There’s quite a few…

The other weirder thing that happened, as I was taking a photo of the spit of land from the boardwalk I met a guy from Toronto Island’s Fire Dept – who invited me into the fire dept on my way *back* from my loop of the island. So I headed off, down the island. It was about the point I passed the oh-so-closed refreshment place which I think is at Avenue of the Islands that I started to regret not eating lunch or bringing anything to drink. The water-fountains are off this time of year too… But pretty quickly I was back to looking at the scenery and had forgotten my hunger. Eventually I made it back to the fire-station, but sadly blokie bloke was busy with work – so I chatted to one of the other firemen (‘he said there was some strange English girl who was going to drop in’) for a bit before deciding I should probably head toward the ferry… not least because my feet were *killing* me.

So I made it back to the ferry and headed back across the water to Toronto, arriving at the station to find something which can probably be described as moderate chaos; there was a signal failure at Mimico (sound familiar?!) but fortunately, although the train before mine hadn’t left even when mine did; mine still left on time. Raaar. And now I’m knackered, and my knees hurt.

It’s rare for me to like a new car – rarer still for me to even consider the possibility of me owning one; but the EV-1 was a real change. I looked at it and I liked it – it was different, quirky, and clean. And they crushed them all… well, not *quite* all, but this is why GM won’t get any of my money.

EV1 photoset on Flickr

Yesterday (which didn’t get a post due to the fact I fell asleep at Jason and Yuka’s and then fell asleep again on the train – I blame this on my body’s continued desire to wake me at stupid-o-clock and on the (relatively) vast quantity of Alcohol and good food consumed) I headed into Toronto again (are we all seeing the pattern?) with Rochelle, meeting up with Jason in the city for the Markets and West End tour.

And some excellent sandwiches.

And a shiny shiny kitchen shop. Read the rest of this entry »

So, yesterday we did a tour of Mississagua & Streetsville; I’m not sure what to say about that – see I’m lousy writing about having a good time. Good at prolonged whining, or telling you about what I’ve repaired on my car, sucky at describing places. I’d make one heck of a lousy travel writer.

Yeah, so we headed on the bus-tour of Mississauga and Streetsville; it’s interesting both how similar and how different to the UK the suburbia is. And indeed, how terrifyingly similar some of it is, and how shockingly different other bits are. The use of brick in the GTA seems to accentuate the similarities; but also means that there’s these subtle differences; like someone being in a parallel universe; so you get housing that looks very similar to that in the UK, but just *slightly* different. It’s just not quite the way you’d expect. It’s interesting; at least to me. But then I’m weird like that.

We also landed up at the Square One mall; malls, oddly are not the same the world over; but this one looked a lot like Cribbs in Bristol, which *was* odd.

Anyway, it was a fairly relaxed day, but shockingly tiring. That and my body still refuses to acknowledge that I’m not going to work in the morning and so persists in waking me up at 6 and going “ohmygodyou’regoingtobelate” followed by “oh, no, sorry, holiday. Um, we’re awake now, have you considered how you’ll decorate the bathroom enough”. Silly brain / body. Anyway, yeah, se we kicked back in the evening with Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (Mitchell (wacka-wacka-wacka-wacka)). Which was… well… it was Mystery Science Theatre; need I say more? Yeah, so we had that and Chinese. Well, everyone else had chinese, I had a A Mountain Of Food. Note to self: portions bigger, even than the portions I’d got used to in the UK. Order less. So that was my chilled out and relaxed holiday-day.

I’ve spent this morning in battle with vodaphone – my phone is *meant* to work over here. And it does, I can receive incoming calls, send and receive texts… only one Teensy Tinsy hitch. I can’t make outgoing calls, and I can’t top up my phone. I’ve run out of credit (messaging is a trifle more expensive when you’re roaming) and all my phone will do is say in a nice polite voice ‘Your service provider has not authorised us to provide service’. It says ‘ROGERS’ on it, in place of Vodaphone. But that’s all I can do. Which is, as they say, less than useful.

So I tried to register online to do top-ups, and it seems to be stuffed there too; ‘cos it tells me my phone is already registered for online services, but if I try to use them it says it’s not. Bah. So, yeah, hopefully they’ll get back to me…

Today, iirc, is Kensington Market / West End of Toronto day. So if you live here, wave to the cheerful canadiophile brit who’s wandering around going ‘ooooh. Shiny. Clean. Mmmm.’

And so clean. Seriously. Everyone said Canada’s gorgeous; and quite a few people mentioned the cleanliness of it, but being here, it’s freaky-clean. It’s so nice. I just don’t see the little clumps of rubbish, the bags collected under the trees. It’s just so much cleaner than the UK.

And the trains – they’re clean too, and have two decks…. And it’s pretty. Lots of The Pretty.

So yesterday Rochelle gave me a tour of the East End of Toronto (I’m terrible at this sort of post, incidentally) – so rather than do a ‘this is where we went’ you can go look at my pictures which, obviously, wouldn’t be complete without some abandoned toronto shots. Eventually we headed over to meet up with some of Rochelle’s friends who proceeded to cook a really gorgeous dinner; in an apartment with views out over Toronto’s skyline; where I had a shockingly civilised meal and was astounded to discover another fan of Elastica. Of all places, it was a bit weird listening to music from my past – especially since I’ve only just got back into Elastica having randomly burned a CD of it to bring with me. And, yeah. Mmm. Canada keeps doing that to me, being oddly familiar.

And exceedingly pretty.

And yeah, it’s all good so far :-)