Day 271: Toronto pronto

22/04/2022

After visiting Inveraray Castle yesterday, Monday was shaping up as castle building day. Eloise, the castle architect was progressing well until the inevitable happened and Lachnado stormed through.

One thing that the kids had missed on their adventures last week was the local ducks, we had to make sure they were all okay.

We started walking home when Eloise steered us all to the playground. Taking matters into her own hands, she ensured that Lachnado and Foxie were having fun. This gave Liam time to fire the Mitre at Super Mum, which grabbed Lachlan’s attention.

In the afternoon, we took the plunge. Partly as a belated Super Mum’s Day gift, we were splashing out on an outdoor set and wee Barbie. There was plenty to assemble in the afternoon, Eloise had her tools at the ready.

We took longer than expected to assemble the most painful wee BBQ ever designed and missed “Rangers beat Celtic to reach Scottish Cup final”. It was announced Monday that “people in Scotland are no longer legally required to wear face coverings in crowded indoor places like shops and restaurants, or on public transport”.

On Tuesday, after the kids’ first European holiday and long UK Easter weekend, it was back to early alarms for Liam, back at work, back on a plane and back down to Heathrow Airport.

It was a short layover at Heathrow, the busiest I have ever seen it. It was interesting watching multiple aircraft approach as “Heathrow lands one plane every 45 seconds”. After rushing through the London Rat Race and rendezvousing with Muzza Bizza it was onto a 787 Dreamliner for a long one, next stop Canada, Toronto. It was a 7.5-hour flight over the Atlantic Ocean. We gained 5 hours in transit, effectively 2.5 hours in the bending of time and space.

It was a “sunny day”, we decided we all needed to work on our tan so spent the morning playing in the backyard. Lachlan flourished in the freedom and extra space to practice his strolling. The local pigeon swung by for lunch. Lachlan was quick to make friends and throw food their way.

Tuesday was an exciting day, as it was Eloise’s first dance lesson. It was a drop off session. Super Mum had been prepping her for the past week so she was aware that Super Mum could not stay. Eloise was happy to say “bye Mum”. Eloise’s first dance move was tiptoeing, which she continued to do all day. “Me stretch, me tiptoe, me ducks, me hold hands”. It was the studio’s opening day so Eloise scored a cupcake.

The flight felt longer than expected. We touched down in the land of Justin Bieber and maple syrup just before 14:00 Toronto time/ 21:00 UK time. We collected our car, our ‘wrong way around’ car. In Toronto, they drive on the right-hand side of the road. I have never driven on the wrong side of the road. At least I was somewhat used to looking in the wrong directions from last week. Excited to give it a go, I jumped onto the hot seat, it was only a short drive to our hotel. Driving felt a little unusual, especially left-hand turns, but it was somewhat intuitive. We just had to hope there was no snow and ice on the roads, which always makes it more interesting.

At our hotel, there was snow from Monday’s big fall. Eloise would have been straight out there to build a snowman. We were glad to see that in the wee shop, maple syrup and maple syrup biscuits were on sale. We must be in the right place.

I peeled back the blinds and had a nice view of Toronto. Hang on, that does not look right, it was not Toronto, where on Earth are we? Turns out we were actually staying a short drive out of Toronto, closer to the “sixth-most populous municipality in Canada”, Mississauga. Learning on the fly here.

Around 20:00 Toronto time/ 01:00 Wednesday UK time we were getting hungry. We found a restaurant which stereotypically had plenty of screens showing various Canadian ice hockey and baseball matches. Everything here reminded me of Jared.

Mississauga is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is situated on the shores of Lake Ontario in the Regional Municipality of Peel, bordering Toronto to the east. With a population of 717,961 as of 2021, Mississauga is the sixth-most populous municipality in Canada, third-most in Ontario, and second-most in the Greater Toronto Area after Toronto itself.

Wednesday morning, the kids made the most of the extra space in the bed, practising their jumping. Luckily Jennine was coming over to help slow them down. Eloise showed off her new dance moves, while baking Easter Bunny chocolate biscuits.

Liam woke up at 05:00 Toronto time/ 10:00 UK time, the jetlag was not too bad. Time to call home. It was nice to speak to the family, this will be the longest that I have been away from the children. Eloise was a bundle of energy and Super Mum tried to control Lachnado’s flapping. I now know what it is like being Nali and Grandma Nicholls. After a nice catchup with Eloise, she started yeeting Play-Doh at me, she found it hilarious when she knocked me over.

In the afternoon, Lachnado found the Tupperware drawer, which bought Super Mum some time to make dinner. With Dad away, Eloise was happy to step up and feed Lachlan. Lachlan was impressed and enjoyed receiving the food at a faster pace.

At breakfast I tried a bit of Muzza Bizza’s Canadian made waffle with maple syrup but to be honest, I was struggling to look at it after the Brussels waffles. We were off for a big day!

In the evening we thought we would tackle Toronto. This involved driving into a heavily congested city on the wrong side of the road. The first thing we spotted was the tall CN tower.

As we both only had one available kidney to sell we only made it up to the Main Observation Level, not the SkyPod. The views were spectacular, it was perfect conditions. It suddenly dawned on us, how big the City of Toronto is. One thing was immediately apparent, this is the city of glass.

The CN Tower is a telecommunications tower in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is 553.33 metres (1,815.39 ft) tall and is the tallest free-standing structure (meaning it cannot have wires to keep it standing) in Canada, North America, and the Western Hemisphere… Construction of the concrete tower started on February 6, 1973. In 1975, while it was still being built, it became taller than the Ostankino Tower in Moscow. When it opened to the public on June 26, 1976, it became the tallest free-standing structure on land in the world. It held this record for more than thirty years, until the Burj Khalifa, while it was still being built, became taller on September 12, 2007 .

Dealing with the curveballs on the fly, we made our way through the city. The skyscrapers were beautiful in their own way. We even checked in at Adelaide!

As we made our way around the city at what we thought would be peak hour, we were surprised there were not many people. We walked through some of the largest shopping complexes we had ever seen, but they were closed, where was everyone? The city was enormous, but at 19:00, it felt like we had this place to ourselves. Finding food was not an easy task. We figured out there was also a ‘secret’ underground world, which linked up the city with what looked like incredibly expensive walkways, there were more shops, some people this time, but again not a lot of action.

We were dumbfounded, had we missed some sort of city evacuation alert? What is going on? It felt like we had walked into the set of I Am Legend.

Toronto is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anchor of the Golden Horseshoe, an urban agglomeration of 9,765,188 people (as of 2021) surrounding the western end of Lake Ontario, while the Greater Toronto Area proper had a 2021 population of 6,712,341. Toronto is an international centre of business, finance, arts, and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world.

We eventually found a shopping mall with signs of life. Again, I could hardly look at the chocolate after already consuming this year’s quota.

Confused we walked down to the water’s edge, surely there will be cafes and restaurants there. No, nothing, just more expensive empty closed buildings. The city was interesting, but we were not really sure what was happening? We were not able to find a restaurant that took our fancy, we drove back around Lake Ontario and stopped in for some Thai. We had a million questions for the friendly locals, although we left with more questions than answers.

Thursday morning the kids were up and active early, the craft table was in full swing. Lachlan has started to be interested and copy Eloise, cute to watch. Gymboree was firefighter themed, luckily she is a confident climber now.

With no alarm, I woke up at 05:00 Toronto time/ 10:00 UK time. We have a late flight home. Hoping I can snap back into UK time, it usually takes 2-3 days to hit me. We had some time to explore today which was nice. On the call this morning Eloise was excited to show me her unicorn headphones.

It was raining heavily, that Scottish weather had caught up with us. Rain has never stopped us to date, it has been testing at times. We could not risk damaging Muzza Bizza’s Scottish street cred, so pushed on. On the drive I realised the car actually did a reasonably good job at steering, accelerating and braking itself. Which made it easier on the wrong side of the road, we managed the robocar around Lake Ontario to the border of the United States of America. It was still raining heavily when we arrived, we walked up through the City of Niagra Falls hoping the rain would subdue. It was another ghost town. There was so much infrastructure, the city must be bustling during tourist season, it was eerily quiet again. At least there were plenty of maple syrup stores.

Maple syrup is a syrup usually made from the xylem sap of sugar maple, red maple, or black maple trees, although it can also be made from other maple species… Maple trees are tapped by drilling holes into their trunks and collecting the sap, which is processed by heating to evaporate much of the water, leaving the concentrated syrup. Maple syrup was first made and used by the Indigenous peoples of North America… Virtually all of the world’s maple syrup is produced in Canada and the United States… Maple syrup is graded according to the Canada, United States, or Vermont scales based on its density and translucency. Sucrose is the most prevalent sugar in maple syrup. In Canada, syrups must be made exclusively from maple sap to qualify as maple syrup and must also be at least 66 percent sugar.

We followed our ears to Muzza Bizza’s street which led us down to Niagra Falls, American Falls. We spotted the Rainbow International Bridge. Supposedly with a flash of a passport, you can walk over the Niagra River from Canada into the United States. Sounded like a trap to us.

The Niagara Falls International Rainbow Bridge, commonly known as the Rainbow Bridge, is an arch bridge across the Niagara River gorge. It connects the cities of Niagara Falls, New York, United States (to the east), and Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada (west). The Rainbow Bridge was built near the site of the earlier Honeymoon Bridge, which collapsed on January 27, 1938, due to an ice jam in the river. A joint Canadian and American commission had been considering a new bridge to replace it, and the collapse added urgency to the project… King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, during their visit to Niagara Falls as part of the 1939 royal tour of Canada, dedicated the site of the Rainbow Bridge… Construction began in May 1940. The bridge officially opened on November 1, 1941.

The American Falls is the second-largest of the three waterfalls that together are known as Niagara Falls on the Niagara River along the Canada–U.S. border. Unlike the much larger Horseshoe Falls, of which approximately 90% is in Ontario, Canada and 10% in the U.S. state of New York, the American Falls is entirely within the United States.

We had been told it is much better to view Niagara Falls from the Canadian side and they were spot on about that. As we walked past the American Falls you could hear the roar from the Niagra Falls, Horseshoe Falls, “also known as Canadian Falls”.

The roar from Niagra Falls was unbelievable, you could feel the power. It did not feel natural standing on the viewing deck, one foot away from the water and one meter away from the edge of doom.

Niagara Falls is a group of three waterfalls at the southern end of Niagara Gorge, spanning the border between the province of Ontario in Canada and the state of New York in the United States. The largest of the three is Horseshoe Falls, also known as the Canadian Falls, which straddles the international border of the two countries. The smaller American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls lie within the United States… The combined falls have the highest flow rate of any waterfall in North America that has a vertical drop of more than 50 m (160 ft). During peak daytime tourist hours, more than 168,000 m3 (5.9 million cu ft) of water goes over the crest of the falls every minute. Horseshoe Falls is the most powerful waterfall in North America, as measured by flow rate. Niagara Falls is famed for its beauty and is a valuable source of hydroelectric power. Balancing recreational, commercial, and industrial uses has been a challenge for the stewards of the falls since the 19th century.

As there was not much food in the ghost City of Niagra Falls we made our way past some boomerangs back to the airport. We found the most Canadian store imaginable on the way.

We chucked some axes, why not?

Muzza Bizza wanted to visit a Canadian Costco. We could not believe how many there were. Perhaps three quarter the size of the Adelaide Costco, but they were everywhere.

After we had dealt with the stress of literally being dropped on the other side of the world, it was a nice relaxing flight out at 22:00 Toronto time/ 03:00 UK time. The same day Toronto started to vaccinate animals against COVID-19. There was one final zip up to the sunny land of Knights that say “Ni”.

Friday morning and the sun was still shining. Eloise was quick to request the playground.

In the evening Dad arrived home. It was great to see the family! The kids were excited for their souvenirs.

Eloise showed Dad where the new dinner table is located.

Feeling fine but a wee tired after a big fortnight, Liam thought he would do a lateral flow test as he has had a zillion fleeting contacts recently. Still negative… For now… As “covid cases in Scotland fall by 30,000 in a week”.