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I left Edmonton on the Wednesday night and spent until Saturday morning on a train that kept breaking down because the mechanical stuff kept freezing in the weather. FML FML FML. Further to my train diabtribe, I made the mistake of being friendly to an older guy in the Edmonton train station. For the duration of the trip he could not work out why I wasn't eating on the train (I bought my own vegetarian approved food) and kept talking to me while I was (quite obviously) asleep. If I was asleep he just kept talking until I woke up and responded. It was quite litreally the longest time of my life and I wanted to throw myself into the engine by the end of it. I was SO glad to be off it!
I walked from the station to the Toronto hostel which was in a pretty awesome location, right in the centre of downtown but on a quieter street. By the way whoever christened Adelaide as the city of churches has obviously never been to Toronto. There's cathedral's literally everywhere!
The first day in Toronto I went up the CN tower which is that giant pointy thing in the picture up the top. It was the tallest building in the world until it was recently surpassed by the Burj Al-Arab towers in Dubai, however at 437 metres it feels plenty tall enough from the top. At the top of the tower, part of the floor is made of four inch glass so you can stand on it and look straight down and the city which is pretty trippy and kind of terrifying for the first two seconds. Apparently it can hold the wight of 14 hippos though (how they tested that, I'd love to know) so you're perfectly safe. That didn't stop some full grown German men from freaking out about it however!
That night I went down Yonge street, which is the shopping district and checked out the stores and the atmosphere. They have this place called Dundas Square which kind of looks like Times Square and they had fireworks go off at certain points in the night, so that was cool. I also bought boots to replace the ones I accidently left in Vancouver! They kind of hurt my feet though which is unfortunate, they'll need to be broken in quickly though because in Ottawa (where I am right now) the snow is wet and slush like and it's mocking me to fall over on it.
On my second day in Toronto I took a day trip to Niagara Falls , Ontario. I ended up on the bus with 3 Aussie girls about my age which was fantastic because there were very few people in the Seattle and Edmonton hostels and only Grandpa Jo on the bus, so I hadn't really spoken to anyone for about a week and half. The falls were pretty awesome, the Canadian side are the Horsehoe falls and the american side are the Bridal falls, both sides were very powerful, but the Canadian tour guide seemed to favour the Horseshoe falls and got a kick out of telling us how the American hydroelectric station wasn't built properly and thus collapsed into the river at one stage. They rebuilt with apparently enough concrete to go around the world three times or something. We then went to Niagara on the Lake which is a town of about 15,000 and one of the oldest in Canada. It was formed two years after the US Declaration of Independence was signed and they have kept all the original buildings so it's very quaint and Stars Hollow like. After that we went to a winery that makes Ice Wine. I don't actually think you can buy it in Australia. Or we definitely don't produce it because you need 3 days of temperatures below -4 but above -20 before you can harvest the grapes by hand and crush them to extract the very, very sweet juice that has fermented. It takes the same amount of grapes that would make about 30 bottles of table wine to make Ice Wine because of the shriveled state of the grazpes when they are harvested, and the end result is a very sweet and syrupy wine with an almost honey like texture. It's definitely a dessert wine but it was very interesting to try!
I'm signing off here because this computer it awful. I'll write about Ottawa later!
I'd also like to leave with a parting thought. Why is it that there is always at least one creepy old person in a youth hostel?
- comments
Joanne It's because Grandpa Joe alerted all his senior citizen friends. They're onto you.
Madi Love your train story. reminds me of my weirdo from venice to vienna. at least it will make a good story (or in this case ... blog) later on. rub a dry cake of soap along the inside of your new shoes. works a treat.