The Canadian adventure

We came back from Canada on 3rd of January. After a week's sufferance of jet lag we are getting used to our daily life again...

We had wonderful time over there staying at friends' houses, eating good food, having nice chats, seeing beautiful places and relaxing a lot. There is so much to write about..
Before going to Toronto everybody that learned about our trip was saying "You will love it up there". Yes, I did love it, but to tell the truth I was expecting a more modern city, something more like New York or some other big city in USA. What we found was a huge city, widespread, not crowded (maybe it is because people circulate more 'under' the city than on the streets outside?) although the population is over 2,5 millions, with quite mixed architecture.. You pass through streets with two-storey buildings on both sides, then you turn a corner and you are on a street with skyscrapers. There are buildings in British style on the same street with modern style buildings. The whole city is like a construction site. They are building many new condos in the city center and lots and lots of town houses, twin houses and singles outside the center in the suburbs. You see also many new plazas (little shopping centers) being built near the new housing sites outside the city.

When we arrived, we first went to stay at an orthodontist friend of my husband, who is of Italian origin. They have a lovely old house in the city at Rosedale, that they have bought and restored a year ago. On all the streets around their house you see big stylish houses very well taken care of, all with Xmas lights and decorations. It was like being in a fairy-tale city walking on those streets with the beautiful houses under the snow.
We spent Xmas day and Boxing day with our friend's Italian family. The grandmother made the food for Xmas dinner, after the dinner the kids and the rest of the family opened their gifts. It was so nice and cozy. On Xmas morning there were different types of special Xmas cakes and cookies on the table. After a long and late breakfast, we first went for a walk in the neighborhood, and then our friend took us for a drive in the city. We saw the University of Toronto campus, Chinatown (which was in its usual hustle since the Chinese do not celebrate Xmas, all the shops were open), little Italy (which, our friend says, is not how it was before, now becoming more and more a mixed neighborhood), the center business district of Toronto (mostly Bay street, kind of the 'Wall street' of the city), Casa Loma (a little Spanish castle on a hill in the city; pity that it was closed and we couldn't see inside; we did take some photos outside though), Forest Hill (one of the most prominent areas of Toronto where our friend has his practice by the way). Our tour ended at a Starbuck's cafe at Forest Hill sipping warm cider and coffee.

On Boxing day we did the mistake of going downtown for shopping. All the shops had the 'Boxing day sales' signs and we just couldn't stop ourselves, but it was a big mistake! We went to Eaton center, the largest shopping mall in eastern Canada. It was so crowded that we couldn't move, literally! The funny thing was, about 90% of the people in the crowd were Chinese. You heard more Chinese than any other language. The mall was so big, and so crowded that after a few hours we got fed up and went back home to our friends. We took the subway, got off at the right stop and walked the rest of the way home without getting lost in the dark. Good for us ;-)

The next day after a lazy morning we went downtown and visited the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), the biggest Museum of Canada, and the fifth biggest in northern America. Unfortunately we had very limited time and saw only the natural history galleries and the newly opened James and Louise Temerty Galleries of the Age of Dinosaurs and Gallery of the Age of Mammals, where it is possible to observe many examples of dinosaur and mammal skeletons, birds and reptiles as well as marine animals from the Jurassic to Cretaceous period. This museum deserves definitely another visit.
In the afternoon we said goodbye to our hosts and passed over to the house of some other orthodontist friend of my husband who lives in Richmond Hill. This friend and her family are of Persian origin. Needless to say, we ate lots of great Persian food during our stay in their beautiful house ;-)

On Friday, the 28th of December we went downtown again, this time to visit the CN Tower. CN Tower was the world's tallest building until September 12, 2007 when it was surpassed in height by the (still under construction) Burj Dubai. Because of my phobias I did not have the courage to go up, and preferred to stay downstairs with my friend and my sister (whom I saw for the first time in three years during our stay in Toronto). We were not very lucky with the weather that day, my husband said that it was not possible to see anything on the top of the tower. Hence, I didn't lose anything by remaining downstairs ;-)

Before going home that evening we drove to a house in Thornhill, the Lindsay house, to watch the Lindsay light show. Do click the link and watch the video, it is worth to be seen live though. This family prepares a light show every Xmas since 2000. At fixed hours you can tune in to a frequency on the radio, and watch the light show listening to the music on your car radio. Our friends said that there are queues of cars all around the neighborhood waiting in line to watch the show in the evenings during the holidays.

For the weekend we drove down to Niagara Falls. On our way we paid a short visit to Oakville and I had the chance of meeting Fulya and her lovely daughter. At Niagara Falls our friends had reserved rooms at a hotel facing directly the falls and we had magnificent view. Pity that the weather was not very well, quite cloudy and dark. After a delicious dinner and a drive around town admiring the Xmas lighting we returned to our rooms to watch the fireworks at 21.00. Later me and my husband paid a short visit to a big casino just to see how people were throwing away their money. I feel bad when I enter a casino, seeing all those miserable people attached to a machine pressing button after button, watching the silly lights and figures on the screens, hoping to hear the jingle of money running down the machine, or, as it was in the casino that we visited, the siren and a red light flushing over the machine to announce a winner. Just a quick walk among the crowds of slot machines, roulette tables and a strange gathering of people from all layers of the society we got out in the cold. It was nicer to walk in the freezing night than being inside that casino.
The next day after a good breakfast at our hotel we checked out and went to a nearby town called Niagara-on-the-lake (NOTL). NOTL is a charming historical town whereas Niagara Falls (as can be seen in the pictures above) is a town which seems to be created to earn money from the tourists visiting the falls. At Niagara Falls I got the feeling of being in a huge open-air studio with grand hotels, casinos, attraction sites, movie theaters etc. However, NOTL is very charming with its stylish well-kept houses, horse carriages, parks and little shops. It is supposed to be the loveliest town in Canada. The town is full of B&Bs, and most of the population is composed of old people in retirement (who are turning their houses into B&Bs). NOTL is a major viticultural region of Canada. If you get the chance, you should visit one of the many wineries nearby and taste the world famous ice wine, lip-licking-delicious! :-)
We enjoyed a half-an-hour long horse carriage ride together with our friends and listened to the carriage rider's stories about the town while we admired the beauty around us. The town is supposedly more crowded and lively when there is the Shaw Festival, the only festival of theater that specializes on the works of Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries and plays about his era, but it was very beautiful under the snow as well.

Our last days passed leisurely around Richmond Hill, going around shopping or sitting at home sipping our tea, everyone with his/her laptop benefiting from the speedy wi-fi network that our friends had in their home (we are nerds, don't forget, we travel everywhere with our laptops!).

On new year's eve our hosts held a party and we got the chance to meet their relatives and friends. They were all very educated beautiful people, the kids were all well-mannered.. We had lots to eat and cheered to a new year together.

Our Canadian adventure was a very successful one. We are lucky to have such good friends that welcomed us to their homes and spent their holidays with us. We hope to have them as our guests, too, one day. And we will definitely go back to Canada; this time with our kids and in the summer, so that we can also enjoy the Canadian summer, go and visit the Toronto islands, maybe drive up to Ottawa, or down to New York, and give our kids the chance to speak some English.
If you ask me what I liked the most in Canada, I would name two things:
1- the squirrels that are everywhere (the one above was in NOTL, next to our horse carriage, looking for food, not afraid of humans at all!);
2- and the fact that everybody around me was speaking English. Coming from Italy, it felt like paradise in Canada :-)