Canada: Don't panic!

Woo, I've survived another week. It's been an interesting one and for the first time in a few weeks I've been in more than 2 cities over the week. Here's what's been going on.

The museum overload continues

Following a week where I pretty much went to a different museum every day, I went to a few more, beginning with the National Gallery of Canada. There, I started with the very small section of comtemporary Inuit art, given that the main Aboriginal art area was closed for refurbishment or something.

Some of these bone carvings are amazing. I mean, look at this.

Little bit in love with these things. Out of the rest of the gallery, I think the most amazing part was the reconstructed interior of the Rideau Street Convent Chapel. The gallery on the whole was pretty quiet, but I got this little gem to myself for at least 10 minutes. So peaceful.

From the National Gallery and intent on making the most of my museum pass, I headed just round the corner to the Royal Canadian Mint and took a little guided tour round the factory. They only make investment and collectable coins here - the main mint operation is based out in Winnipeg (maybe I'll see if I can visit that one in a week or so). Huge rolls of gold and silver were spotted - the silver rolls were worth about $20 million if I recall correctly or was that the gold? I should have made a note.

Unfortunately no photos allowed, presumeably for secutiry reasons. I also managed to really show up my Englishness when the guide got onto talking about which way round the monarch faces on coins - i.e when we get a new monarch, they face the opposite direction to their predecessor. Everyone's there going "oh, yeah, right, interesting" and my brain just goes, "you're missing someone. Why are those two facing the same way? Ohhh..."

At which point the guide goes "have you noticed anything strange about these faces?" and without thinking I pipe up "You're missing an Edward" and immediately go bright red for no apparent reason. Of course they're missing an Edward because Edward VIII abdicated before the Canadians had a chance to mint any coins with him on. But they kept with tradition so George VI is facing the same way as George V because Edward VIII should have been facing the other way.

Rambling over. Mint tour completed, I took a nice long break at the hostel before heading out later in the evening to see the light show at Parliament.

Very cool.

A potted history of Canada in about 30 minutes told through some amazing projections. And commentary, of course.

Lest We Forget

The following morning I took a stroll along the river path on my way to the Canadian War Museum.

Gorgeous weather and some lovely views. The museum also proved to be awesome. It's very in depth, covering the history of Canada's wars all the way from the first evidence of tribal warfare some 5,000 years ago right up to peacekeeping missions today.

The Memorial Hall was also lovely, although it would have been ever better if I hadn't walked in to two girls having a casual natter in it. They clearly weren't pleased that I'd interrupted them and I really wanted to make some comment about it being a memorial hall, y'know, for remembering and not for nattering. I resisted.

I spent the evening having a very long and rambling conversation with my dorm-mates at the hostel, courtesy of the WiFi being down. The WiFi needs to be down more often - people are so much more likely to talk to each other.

No worries - I set it off in the other building too...

I spent my final morning in Ottawa taking a couple of tours of the Parliament buildings. Very interesting, lots of history but I managed to set off the metal detectors in both of them. This is because I was wearing my walking boots which have metal fastenings. I would have worn my canvas shoes, but they were all packed up ready to take the bus to Kingston that afternoon. Bad move.

So, East Block houses some rooms decorated as they would have been in 1872. Lord Dufferin, the then Governor-General's office.

John A. MacDonald, the Prime Minister.

And George-Etienne Cartier, who was in charge of all sorts of important things, but on his untimely death was implicated in a massive bribery scandal to do with the Canadian-Pacific Railroad. As demonstrated by this cute toy train on his desk.

Centre Block is the building currently used by Parliament. More shinies, such as the library which was the only part of the block to survive the 1916 fire which destroyed everything else. I want this library.

And then there's the view from the Peace Tower, built as a later addition after the First World War.

Aaaand, then I had to go and get on a bus again. Uneventful bus journey was followed by a rather more eventful first night in Kingston. See, I booked an AirBnB. It would have been my first AirBnB stay. I hadn't received any communication from the host, which I thought seemed a bit odd, but figured maybe that's just how it worked and she'd meet me there.

I turned up at the address, knocked repeatedly, called the host and still couldn't get in. I also had a quick peek in the mailbox (and, as it later turned out, missed something important). No chance of getting in. Somehow I managed not to panic. Right, says I. What do we do now?

Find a Tim Hortons, says my brain.

Shut up, says the rest of my brain. I am not going to spend the night crying in a 24 hour Tim Hortons. I am a mature and responsible adult and I will find a way round this crappy situation. At which point, wandering towards the downtown area, I spotted a Holiday Inn. Great, I'm going to have to pay a stupid amount of money, but at least I'll have somewhere to sleep, I think.

So I go and ask the guys at the desk if they have anything available. I mention in passing that I'm asking so late at night because my AirBnB has gone tits up. The guys exchange a glance.

How much was your AirBnB? They ask.

Pretty cheap, I reply. To which, much to my surprise, they tell me that yes, they do have rooms available, but that I'd get a better deal round the corner at the Confederation Place Hotel. They even checked the price for me. I nearly cried at that because they could so easily have just charged me the higher price at their own hotel.

So I pootled round the corner to the Confederation and explained my predicament to the chap at the desk. Technically, he explained, they were fully booked for the night but they did have a room available that was for "emergencies". I have no idea what sort of emergencies they had in mind, but it suited my emergency just fine. He even let me check the room before I took it.

Huge room ahoy!

OK, it cost me about 4 times as much as my AirBnB room, but at least I had somewhere to sleep, free WiFi and breakfast was included to boot.

Bobbing along

I made the most of said breakfast the next morning before firing off a few messages to my mysteriously absent AirBnB host and another to a different host who looked to have a room available for my second night in Kingston. Second host got back to me within an hour, despite not normally taking same day bookings.

Achievement get: AIRBNB BOOKED.

I spent the morning enjoying the sunshine and taking a boat trip to the Thousand Islands which sit in the St Lawrence River which runs past Kingston.

Even got a glimpse of Lake Ontario in the distance.

Getting off the boat, I got to spend another hour sitting in the park enjoying some free live music. Celtic punk. Oh yeah.

I then had a late lunch at Morrison's Restaurant. I'm pretty sure this is the place I visisted with my parents the first time I was in Canada and it had amazing milkshakes. The milkshakes are still pretty amazing and so are the chips. Yum.

Proper milkshake. The sort you can stand a spoon in.

Aaaand, then I headed for my replacement AirBnB. Bryan, my host was there when I arrived and very welcoming even though my booking had taken him a bit by surprise. I didn't see him again after he left, but I did have his cat to keep me company.

Very fluffy, very demanding and very much in love with my boot laces. Having arrived so early, I wasn't sure what to do with myself all evening, so I took myself to Tim Hortons for the free WiFi at which point I found that my previously mysterious host from the night before had been in touch and was very apologetic. Looks like an email she normally sends guests to let them know how to get in, hadn't got to me. On top of this, if I'd taken a closer look in the mailbox, I would have found the key to the property and been able to let myself in and probably work out where I was supposed to be sleeping. Fortunately, she agreed to refund me, so all is sorted now. Yay.

All in a small town, Napanee

All this meant I slept very well in my nice private room, a first since I've been away. It even meant I was nearly fully awake when I got on the bus the next morning to head south to Toronto, passing Avril Lavigne's hometown on the way. I have no idea why I remembered that.

Toronto is... big. Very big. But it's also not as hectic as you'd imagine a city this size to be. Unfortunately, despite arriving quite early in the afternoon, I spent the rest of the day sitting in the hostel feeling sorry for myself having come down with a disgusting cold. As I write this, I am onto my fourth packet of tissues in 24 hours. Urgh.

Land of screaming children and sharks

I made up for that wasted afternoon by starting the next day bright and early. Although, I must admit that the early part was rather due to my disrupted sleep - woken up at 2am by the guy in the bunk under me crawling out of bed and throwing up. On the floor. Right next to my bag. Ewwwww.

Anyway, I dragged myself out of the hostel intent on exploring the city. It was pushing 30 degrees, so I decided against wandering around too much and instead tried to find somewhere indoors. I settled on the CN Tower.

Great views, but absolutely rammed with tourists. I did manage to get a photo through the glass floor, diving in for a minute as soon as there was space. I don't remember it being this busy last time...

It still being horribly hot when I stepped out of the tower, I headed next door into the aquarium. This was both awesome - they have sharks.

And cool jellyfish.

And I got to stroke both a very small bamboo shark and a horseshoe crab.

However, it was also rammed with screaming children. Urgh. Looks like everyone had had the same idea as me for avoiding the heat. Yuck.

After the aquarium, I thought it was probably a good idea to book my train tickets and promptly nearly had a heart attack at the cost. I'm so glad I budgetted for this, because I think I would have taken a bus otherwise, however long it took.

Fortunately, I then had a lovely evening chatting with my fellow hostellers about random crap. Hostels are awesome places - how often are you going to get English, American, Swiss, German, Lithuanian and New Zealanders all chatting together?

Pottery and dinos and minerals, oh my

I have spent today in the Royal Ontario Museum. I only meant to spend a few hours there and it turned into nearly 7. The museum is huge and covers a huge range of areas from anthropology and social history through to natural science. It's hard to pick highlights, but Harold was rather concerned that I was going to feed him to the Allosaurus.

Other interesing sections included a small selection of Ainu artefacts. The Ainu are an indigenous people from northern Japan and the Kuril Islands and while I've heard of them before, I don't think I've ever seen anything about them in a museum.

Oh, and I just about resisted the urge to sing Treguna mecoides trecorum satis dee at every single suit of armour I walked past. There were more than I expected.

Also, that particular chap had a pretty cool Mughal period recurve bow. Not that I have an unhealthy interest in medieval warfare or anything. It's just good research for fantasy writing. Like that makes it sound any better...

Basically, I had a great day geeking out about all sorts of things. Plus, I saw some black squirrels in the park on my walk back.

I still have a few more days in Toronto. After that, I'm heading down to Niagara, then Hamilton before embarking on my epic train ride across the country to Vancouver. Would you believe I still have over a month left in Canada?

Maybe I'll squish in a few more museums before then?