Canada: Lions & Tigers & Bears, Oh My!

Hola! I'm currently enjoying a few days of almost-laziness in Hamilton, about an hour from Toronto. I figured I've been on the go almost non-stop since I left the UK nearly 6 weeks ago, so I should probably just slow down for a bit. Hamilton's a fairly quiet place and the hostel I'm in only takes 10 guests, so I have the place almost to myself. Very nice.

Anyway, I should probably get back to updating what I've been up to since last week, shouldn't I? Yeah. That's probably a good idea.

The sparrows are up to something...

Having just said that I haven't really stopped since I left the UK, I must admit that's a little bit of a fib, since I spent most of last Saturday sitting in Queen's Park in Toronto reading. It was a lovely sunny day, much too hot to be doing much walking around, so I took myself and my tablet to the park and spent a few hours reading and people watching. Really peaceful, although I did feel oddly guilty about not doing any exploring. How strange.

Stuff the Panda, Save the Salamander

Fortunately, any annoyance that my travel brain might have had with me for not exploring was made up for on Sunday when I went to the zoo. This first meant I had to negotiate Toronto's public transport system, helped by the friendly man at the subway station who gave me very clear instructions as to which trains and buses to take.

Nearly 2 hours later, having taken a bus that very much felt like it was a "local bus for local people", I arrived at the zoo. What else to say? I spent all day there, somehow managed not to get sunburnt or dehydrated and generally squee'd at all the animals. Like this Panamanian Golden Frog, a species that might be extinct in the wild (but I'm not going to rant about that again...)

I also saw an otter (species not remembered) which I'm pretty sure was exhibiting stress/boredom behaviours. Y'know, swimming around the same circuit again. And again. And again. Much to the delight of the other visitors, much to my concern.

Also a beautiful lion pride. These guys are a white colour morph - they're not albinos, it's just a variant. Like having blonde versus brown hair. Beautiful colour and this guy was just asking to be photographed.

Orangutans are a favourite of mine and my dad's, so just for him, here's the really cruddy photos I managed of the rangy tangles.

I also got the pleasure of seeing one of the keepers doing training with a Sumatran Tiger. The tiger, called Harry, managed to do sit, down and up, but seemed to be having trouble with "open". I wondered if it was a new command he was learning and if the crowd hadn't been so huge, I wanted to ask the keeper about it. Ah well.

Aaaaand, that has helpfully not turned the right way. You might need to watch it sideways...

What else? The zoo's pretty huge and there were so many amazing animals I'm not sure what to include here. Especially since half of the things I find interesting, most people don't. Like that frog up there.

Oh, this grizzly bear trying to eat an apple. Because it made me smile.

The only things I don't have photos of that I think others might have liked are the pandas. I don't expecially like pandas. Yes, they are threatened by habitat destruction, but they're also an evolutionary dead end - seriously, they are bears that exclusively eat a plant that even herbivores would struggle to digest. Toronto Zoo currently has a panda pair and they've recently had cubs. I'm sure they're very cute, but I wasn't willing to spend an hour and half queuing to see an animal that I have such a bad opinion of. There are other animals just as deserving of the amount of money ploughed into panda conservation that don't get it because they're not appealling. Like that frog up there. Again.

Rant over. I think that's quite enough about the zoo now, don't you think? Oh, I should point out that the "stuff the panda, save the salamander" comment is from the brilliant zoologist Lucy Cooke, also known as the Amphibian Avenger and founder of the popular Slothville blog.

I'M ON A BUS! AGAIN!

The next day I had yet another bus trip to look forward to. I'm getting good at these. I'm even getting good at dealing with the irritation when the bus is delayed for an hour. How very dare it? Especially since I spent that hour standing in the yard at the bus terminal in 30 degree heat with a whole load of bus exhausts being grotty around me. Eww.

Anyway, the bus finally arrived and I made it, somewhat later than planned, to Niagara, on the border with the US. According to my notes, I spent a large part of the evening laughing at the angry man who the front desk refused to check in because he had no ID. Evidently, this was an uneventful day. That's the problem with all these buses - I get on the bus thinking I'll do some exploring when I get to my destination. Then I get off the bus and I just want to sit down with a cuppa  and a book and then go to bed. I don't know what they pump into the air con on those things, but they make me sleepy.

It's like Blackpool but more interesting

Lethargy was out of the window the next morning, no matter how much I really wanted to stay in bed. I've been to Niagara before and I know how busy it gets, so I planned on getting into town fairly early before the crowds got too mad. First stop, the classic boat trip into the mists at the base of Horseshoe Falls.

Very quick geography lesson: the Niagara River forms the border between the US and Canada in this area. Horseshoe Falls are on the Canadian side, American Falls are on the US side. Horseshoe Falls are the bigger of the two and the one that all the boats focus on. Because the Canadians obviously have the better falls...

Anyhoo, here is me in my snazzy red mist poncho waiting to get on the boat. I should mention that it was already pushing 30 degrees at this point (about 11am) so those plastic ponchos are like being in a greenhouse.

Fortunately, almost as soon as the boat sets off, you get attacked by spray and mist, so all is good. Here we are in the mist at the base of the falls.

Hard to get a sense of scale on that, so here's one I took from the top later in the day with another of the boats for scale.

And here's American Falls looking stunning.

I spent about an hour after that sitting in the cafe behind the dock, people watching. Most relaxing after spending so long standing in the queue myself. Nicely chilled and rehydrated, I headed a bit further along towards the falls to re-visit another attraction, the "Journey Behind the Falls". Basically, when the town was first building up, someone thought it would be a great idea to dig a tunnel so that you could see the falls from behind. Turned out to be awesome, although the original tunnel now opens out into a viewing deck next to the falls because the river has eroded so far back in the 100+ years since the tunnel was built.

Pretty awesome being able to stand that close to such a huge torrent of water. Anyway, they've dug some more tunnels since then, so you can still go in and see the back of the falls. Not that there's much to see.

Nice wall of white you've got there. The noise is incredible though, and hey, I had to show off the snazzy yellow poncho I got to replace the red one from the boat. I totally have not kept the yellow poncho. Nope. Definitely not...

Having somehow managed not to get too soggy, I made my way back to the surface and further along the river away from the crowds. Found myself a nice peaceful spot to have lunch.

Right next to the first Canadian owned hydro-electric plant on the river. It looks like a stately home. They should open it as a museum or something - I'd love to see inside there.

After the hour or so walk back to the hostel and a leisurely tea, I headed north out of the hostel to see if I could find the whirlpool area of the river. Which I did, but the undergrowth next to the path is so thick it's hard to get a good view. And no, I was not willing to pay nearly $20 to take a ride on the Aero Car which would've given me a great view. Niagara is expensive and I figured I'd already spent enough for the day on the boat and the tunnels.

You can still just about make out the whirlpool in the bottom left. Plus the walk was lovely. Following the walk up to the whirlpool, I grabbed my Gorillapod from the hostel and headed back into town. Both falls are lit up every night and I wanted to see if I could get some good shots. I succeeded.

I'm so proud of that photo. I think it's probably my favourite of the trip so far. Shows what I can do when I actually think about the settings on my camera instead of just pointing and clicking.

Overall, I think I made the most of my one day at Niagara!

Relaxation? What's that?

Good job I did, because the next morning I had to get a horribly early bus to my next destination. I still don't remember why I booked such an early bus. Maybe it was the cheapest? At any rate, I was back on the bus at 7:50am, a bus which was by some stroke of luck running on time despite having come across from the US and therefore presumeably having to stop at the border.

One change of buses (seriously, why did I book this bus? There are direct buses from Niagara to Hamilton...) and about 4 hours later (seriously?!) I arrived in the city of Hamilton, which is between Toronto and Niagara (and thus makes it ridiculous that I had to get a bus back to Toronto to then get another bus to Hamilton...)

It was much too warm in Hamilton and after such a long day in Niagara the day before, I decided I was going to relax. Which meant planning the next steps of my trip and freaking out about accommodation in Yellowstone. Fortunately I also decided to treat myself to some cheap donuts and Coke (I've pretty much just been drinking tea and water since June...). It is ridiculous how much joy I got from that.

My travel brain is guilt tripping me

Having had a look at what there is in Hamilton, I've decided to take my dad's advice and use the couple of days I have here to just chill out for a bit. I couldn't stop entirely though, because for some reason my brain likes to make me feel guilty if I just sit around for a few hours doing nothing travel related. So yesterday I visited Dundurn Castle in the afternoon having spent the morning catching up with random bits of news and finishing a book. And writing most of this post.

Dundurn Castle is, I suspect, one of the oldest surviving buildings in Hamilton. It was completed in 1835 and was, at the time, the largest home in the city. It's not a castle. It's more like a stately home.

Harold had to dive in there and hide the annoying crowd of people in the corner. Anyway, it's certainly trying to be stately. The interiors have been restored to what they would have been like in 1855, which means fancy wallpaper and plush furnishings upstairs.

I was more interested in the downstairs areas and that's totally nothing to do with the free food on offer down there... Definitely not.

So many preserves! And there were nice fresh veggies on offer in the kitchen for dunking. And pickled beetroot (which is one of my favouritest things, oddly). I discovered kohlrabi is actually quite nice. Mm. Hey, I'm on a budget - I'm not going to turn down free food, even if it is just nibbles.

After my guided tour of the house I went to check out the kitchen garden, which is absolutely beautiful but made me really miss my own garden, so I had to run away.

I finished my visit with a quick trip to the Hamilton Military Museum. Fascinating little place and I really wish I'd spent more time there. As it is, I rather rushed round. Ah well.

At least with my urge to explore satisfied for a while, I managed to spend the rest of the day chilling out at the hostel.

I'm on a boat!

Today, on my final full day in Hamilton, I have once again failed to do nothing all day. Instead, I had a lazy morning and then went down to the bay to explore HMCS Haida. Haida's the last surviving Tribal-class destroyer out of the original 27 built. She saw service in the Second World War and then again in Korea.

It cost me less than $4 and you get to see pretty much the entire ship, including the engine room which just had way too many things I wanted to touch...

Fortunately I resisted the urge to work out how to make it go (which clearly wouldn't have worked even if I'd tried...). On my walk home I spotted this excellent sign outside a church.

I agree - it is too warm. I think I'm getting used to it though. It's pushing 30 degrees again in Hamilton today and yet I didn't feel too disgusting after walking around for an hour.

I am also making slow improvement on my social skills - staying in hostels helps, because you're almost guaranteed to end up talking to one of your fellow guests. This is great, because it means I now have even more suggestions of things to see and do on my trip. Hurrah!

I've also been taking part in Camp NaNoWriMo again this month and I've taken these last couple of days as an added bonus to get more writing done. I wanted to see whether I would have the time to take part in the main NaNoWriMo event come November. Well, I've written over 25,000 words so far without even trying too hard, so I'll take that as a yes. Roll on November and yet another attempt to "overachieve" - that is, to write more than the 50,000 word standard goal.

Yes, I have weird life goals. I don't care.

Anyway, on Saturday I'll be boarding a train bound for Winnipeg. I'll arrive there on Monday, spend a few days recovering and exploring, before re-boarding the train to Edmonton. After another few days there, I'll get back on the train for a final time to take me to Vancouver.

That makes it sound like my Canadian adventure is coming to an end. No worries - I've got until the end of August yet! 

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?