After seeing the South Park movie this summer, I thought after 9 years I was overdue a visit to Terrence & Phillip Land. Actually, the Canadians weren’t offended by the movie, it seems. My 1pm flight from LGA to Toronto is 55 minutes; sit left to see Niagara Falls; no city view from airplane as airport is too far away. Pilot said it was my imagination but all the landings in Canada this weekend seemed harder and faster than I am used to in the US. Taxi to center city is $25 USD (all figures in this article are US) and about 20-25 minutes. Clip out the Tax Refund mailer from the Air Canada in-flight magazine and save your boarding passes (if you don’t fly Air Canada you can get these mailers everywhere in Canada). You can get 7% from the 15% sales tax back on goods you buy in the country as well as from your hotel bill. Stayed at Royal York Hotel, the Grand Dame of Toronto from the Canadian Pacific chain, on its Business Floor. A good value at $150 a night with taxes, full concierge service (my excellent concierge was “Alain”), breakfast and all the mineral water I could carry for 3 days of walking around from the lounge. Interesting touch: the night maid puts a bottle of water next to your bed. I have inserted onto Ivan’s Packing List a 10 ounce (330 ml) size bottle of drinking water that fits in your jacket or pants pocket and is good to walk around and ride the airplane with. Evian comes in this size.
Started my visit with a 4:30 subway ride to Eaton Center, soon to be renamed since the big department store Eaton has gone bankrupt. Toronto has a huge underground shopping district linking most of central downtown. Subway consists of 2 lines, one north/south and one east/west. The north/south line runs a U-shaped route a few blocks apart so you actually have a sense of parallel north/south lines. Subway is $1.30 a ride or $4.50 for an all-day pass. The Royal York is at the bottom of the U right across from Union (railroad) station and in center city; the whole downtown that you will care about is roughly 8 blocks by 6 blocks. Near Eaton Center are the new and old city halls, which are very pretty. Canada has beautiful flowers and gardens. Took an early evening drive with a hired car for an hour ($35) to get oriented. By then it was about sunset. Dinner at the hotel’s gourmet room — the Arcadia — food was reasonable and presentation/taste excellent. Night-time walk around town; walk past nightclubs, theater district, kids partying in front of City-TV studios with windows onto the street; the Skydome is lit up purple at night and the CN Tower is a presence always. An interesting building to see at night near the City TV building: Chapters Bookstore with the Paramount Imax theater on top. Toronto architecture is interesting both by day and night. No real parks in downtown but there are many open areas and it is not a threatening environment in which to walk though there is street panhandling and squeegee-washing of cars and these are new phenomenons there. Fault of this 70 year old hotel is that rooms are quiet from the outside but not from people yapping in the hallways and slamming doors. Take a room on the end of the hallway away from the foot traffic and noisy guests who can’t keep their voices down at 1am or kids who get up in the morning and start fighting.
Saturday — Late start. Newspapers here are meaty on Saturdays, more so than Sundays and people here seem to like content in their newspapers. Then about 4 hours of walking around including a visit to the Royal Ontario Museum (history and science but not art), worth an hour. Lunch at the Kennedy dining room atop the museum is on the recommended list but I have it on good word that it is pretentious and tasteless. I didn’t get a chance to visit the Bata Shoe Museum which is supposed to be an interesting history of shoes. Walk through Toronto University and its fields and buildings where many wedding parties were taking photos simultaneously; Trinity College has a beautiful building in the old English style; Ontario Parliament building (tons of Japanese tourists outside taking pictures of each other and the building — a sight funnier than all the stereotypes you ever had in your head). The walk from the hotel to the Museum and through the university and parliament takes about 45 minutes each way, more if you meander. On the metro it’s about 7 minutes to Museum Station.
Headed over to the Ashkenaz Festival, a weeklong festival of Yiddish, Klezmer and Eastern European Jewish culture that is held every 2 years in Toronto and is the world’s largest of its type. Imagine a country fair where everything is in Yiddish and English and the food is all kosher and/or vegetarian. Several tents and bandshells with music, storytelling, singing, dancing, crafts, theater, etc. all day and into the night with cabarets, dance parties, etc. At least several thousand were there; half of them not Jewish. Yiddish itself is not a religious language but a folk language; the music being composed is more new-age and bears less and less relationship to its traditional roots and it is definitely a fad. But there were young and old, many Israelis, some Asians, WASPS, etc. Nothing offensive or rowdy and happy time for all; I just wonder what all the black security guards were thinking of this whole scene; it must have been out of Mars for them. Saturday late afternoon programming was without microphones and featured storytelling, song-singing and a post-sabbath Havdalah Service with candles and singing. A bit too spiritual and New-Age for my taste. Later that evening there was a midnight klezmer version of a Selichot service, held annually the week before the Jewish New Year. I broke up the evening with a visit to Yorkville (upscale part of town with nightlife and shopping near the Museum) with a local Canadian.
Sunday — Noontime start with a visit to Casa Loma via the subway to Dupont Station; 10 minute ride then 10 minute walk. Casa Loma is a castle built old-English style at turn of the century by a rich man who soon after went bankrupt. Rooms are interesting and a walk to the top gives a good city view. Jane Austin house and estate is next door but I passed it in favor of a taxi ride through fashionable residential areas of Toronto such as Rosedale and a neighborhood near Lawrence Avenue that adjoins a big park. Anyway, there are many stone houses with old charm as well as interesting new ones. Taxied to the Harbourfront Centre, where the Festival was taking place, in time for the end of the street parade and all the knishes and shwarma I could manage for lunch. Then off at around 3pm to the Canadian National Exhibition, the national fair, in time for the Snowbirds air show team. Various exhibitions and a midway and your run of the mill fair. Taxi to the Skydome Hotel where from the lobby you can see the inside of the stadium. This is next door to the CN Tower but it was very busy at 6pm on a Sunday so I came back Monday morning before 9am when it was fast although the best light upon the city is late afternoon; the Tower is an 8 minute walk from the Royal York hotel. Even in the morning, allow an hour to get up and down. CN Tower is a bit pricey and if you go, pay the extra $3 and also go up to the second tower which is 300 feet higher than the first tower. The best view of the city in the morning is either from the Toronto Islands (reached by ferry from the Westin hotel) or the top of the Westin Hotel (with its revolving restaurant) near the Harbourfront Centre along Lake Ontario. The Movenpik restaurant chain has several locations in Toronto but unlike American chains they are all different from each other; the one in the BCE Center, a few minutes from the Royal York, is structured like a market (marche movenpik — french for market) and it is a lot of fun. You go from station to station and they make the food in front of you; it is very fresh and tasty and they stamp your ticket so you can come and go; when you are finished pigging out, you pay at the exit. There are about 20 stations serving everything you can think of. You can also take out what you want. It is open almost 24 hours and there is often a line to get in.
ATM’s aplenty here without service charges for withdrawals. Taxis, supermarkets, pharmacies, clothing are priced reasonably but not cheap. Petrol is higher here. The 15% sales tax and overall higher prices on many items wipes out much of the arbitrage of the cheaper canadian dollar; hotels and restaurants are about the only real values. A Canadian is poorer than an American; salary is lower; cost of living is higher generally and taxes are oppressive (ie: no home mortgage interest deduction and tax rates are higher). I’m not sure that a Canadian wouldn’t benefit by paying less taxes and paying separately for health insurance. The only true beneficiaries are those at the lowest brackets. Toronto is clean, walkable, gridded — looks and feels like Chicago except for the lack of a big park running parallel to the city and the feeling of the lakeshore like you have in Chicago. Everything is in English; it is user-friendly, things work and it is a place you can keep busy for 2 days. Shuttles run from Toronto to Ottawa and Montreal just about every hour; it is a quick ride to the airport and easy to get to the plane. Less than 100 steps from curb to gate for the shuttle. The Bombardier CL-65 is a 50 seater Canadian-built plane which is comfortable as long as there is no turbulence. It is a 40 minute flight to Ottawa and I arrived in rain.
OTTAWA — I am here for about 6 hours which is 2 more than is necessary to see everything. My colleague is aide to the defence minister who got called out of country so he ran off on a military transport to Israel that weekend leaving me to explore the city for myself. It is a quiet capital city with a few buildings and some streets and a rather pleasant feel with a canal (that freezes over in winter) running parallel to a good portion of the main road along the city limits leading to center city from the airport road. The taxi ride is 15 minutes from center city to the airport and roughly $15. I started by driving around to see some of the sights such as the Mint, War Museum, Prime Minister and Governor House (which I wouldn’t be visiting later). Buffet Lunch at the Grand Dame hotel Chateau Laurier; best views of the impressive Parliament building are from rooms on the hotel’s 6th floor or the staircase windows. Short walk to Parliament and rode the elevator to the top of the clock tower for some nice views. Continue walking through the park adjoining the hotel to the National Art Gallery to see the Canadian art collection, both new and old. There was also some native Indian art which I found somewhat simplish although the contemporary Indian art is on the same level as the rest of the Canadian art meaning the new generations of indigenous people have made great strides; Internet is probably a great equalizer. Walk ten minutes across the bridge to Hull, Quebec to see the Museum of Civilization. It is very impressive with a magnificent life-size Canadian History exhibit; Canadians tend to be rather innovative with their museums. Taxied back to Byward Market, a pedestrian area close to the hotel where I picked up sandwiches and pastries for the 1 hour flight to Newark again on the 50-seater. Remember to get rid of your Canadian dollars before going through passport control and US customs pre-clearance.
Sprint PCS works in Toronto and Ottawa but it is on roam. Before I left USA, 5 different customer service agents at Sprint gave me 5 different answers as to whether or not or how the phone would work in Canada. They all initially thought the concept of international services involved making an international phone call from the USA. They couldn’t fathom the idea of my taking the phone outside the USA.
