Katrin & Jojo

September 30, 2008

After a nice breakfast we left our room in Toronto and took the 401 West (again), and switched to Route 8 at Kitchener. We took the 86 north and the exit at St. Jacobs. Although dubbed the german capital of Canada, from the road it wasn’t really visible. We didn’t visit St. Jacbos directly but intended to came back later. First we wanted to secure ourselves a room for the night, which we did, and now we’re in the “Olde Heidelberg Motel” in Heidelberg, Ontario ;) (they even have a town called “Breslau”, and seeing as there once was a “Berlin” here it’s kinda funny ;). After we got the room, we got back in the car and returned to St. Jacobs. On the main street we looked at all the stores (which weren’t that many) and took the tour of a small, but very well done (and free) Mennonite museum, which (in film and writing) explains the heritage of the Mennonite faith (and the status quo of Mennonites and Amish). The other part of St. Jacobs (with the market and the factory outlet “mall”) is 3km away, so we drove there. It was a little bit disappointing since the mall didn’t really have that many stores and bad ones at that. Anyway, , we bought some groceries and then went back to our hotel. Not quite hungry yet we decided to take a walk around town (chances are always good to see Mennonites on their horse-drawn black carriages, and we did a few times). After that we had schnitzel with sauerkraut, fries and the local brew (brewed at the Olde Heidelberg, you can see the machinery in the entrance).
Tomorrow it’s Niagara Falls, so expect nice photos again ;)

September 29, 2008

Toronto was what filled the whole day, obviously. We drove the 10 miles into town and parked right in the centre, which for two people is still cheaper than using public transportation (and I’d guess much less stressful). We emerged from the subterrain parking deck and saw the city at light we had only briefly looked at yesterday night. First we took the University Ave north, until we hit the (guess what) University of Toronto (“The U of T”). At least that’s what we thought when we tried to get into the big old building that looked like it was the universities administrative or main building. Only when we saw the armed guards in front of it when began to question our initial guess. It turned out that the building we saw was in fact the Legaslative Assembly of Ontario, where, lucky for us, the house was in session. We were told to take the side-entrance, where we had to surrender basically everything we carried, then took the elevator up, were security-screened and then led into the gallery where we sat down to observe the House. The bill they were discussing was, coincidentally, about the Ontario health system, specifically about the very urgent need for more doctors, which led to proposals (from the opposition) about relaxing immigration policies concerning the fact that qualified immigrants cannot easily work in their field of expertise when they arrive, but have to drive taxis instead, as one member of the House put it. After some time we left, but still it was very interesting and not at all boring (but I guess it can be if you had to sit there day in day out ;).

After missing it at the first try, we walked around the campus of the U-of-T and continued on Bloor St until it intersected with Yonge. There we took a right, heading straight for the harbor, and getting a better look at the stores and skyscrapers (and Dundas Square). We paid a visit to Eaton Centre before we arrived at Front St. Our guide pointed out the Flatiron building (shaped like a wedge, much like the Chrysler-building) but we didn’t find it a first until we discovered that it was completely covered into construction rigs (so no photos for you guys). Frustrated we went straight to the CN Tower, but didn’t go up, partly because of our fear of heights, partly because of the hefty price-tag (an elevator-ride is seldom worth $16 in my oppinion). We looked at the Quay and the musical garden (dreamt up by noone else than Yo-Yo Ma himself ;) before we started noticing our feet again and decided to head home.
Tomorrow we’ll probably pay a visit to the german capital of Ontario, Kitchener/Waterloo, and St. Jacobs.

September 28, 2008

The last two days weren’t really that exciting, which is why I’m only designating one post for them.
On Saturday we left our little cabin, had breakfast at the harbor and then went on to Rockport. There we took a 1-hour boat-cruise around the Thousand Islands (yes, that’s were the salad-dressing got its name) which let’s you see some of the expensive houses put there by millionaires on both sides of the border. Getting the material there certainly is one big challenge, and I can’t begin to think about how they manage to get electricity and water supply to these houses. Unfortunately the boat was packed with asian tourist. Now, I don’t mind asians, they’re friendly and small, so they don’t block your view. But I can’t understand why they have to take a picture about every 20 seconds, and not just a picture of the beautiful castle, but nooo, it always has to have grandma in front of the original motive, occupying about 90% of the image frame…
Anyway, we drove until Kingston (along a very scenic shore-drive) where we visited the marine museum (and the icebreaker Alexander Henry).

On sunday we left for Toronto, again along the shore. Prince Edward County was especially beautiful, and worth a trip. We even had to take a ferry at Glenora, which is free and just takes about 5 minutes to get to the other shore. But even in the 10 minutes we waited some nice canadian people walked up to our car and we had chat. We picknicked in Cobourg and then took the highway into Toronto. After securing a room for the night we drove downtown and right through Dundas Square, which is as close as it gets to Times Square in NY (Toronto is often used for filming scenes which are set in the big apple, which didn’t surprise us). We walked around town for about 2 hours and watched the sun go down and the bright TV-screens and ads light up, which was really amazing. What we immediately noticed is how clean Toronto is, even in corners where you wouldn’t think so. Satisfied we returned to our (also clean and nice) motel, to embark into the city tomorrow morning.

September 26, 2008

Today we left Montreal southbound, along Lake Ontario. We stopped at Upper Canada Village, which is a must-see if you’re in that region and also one of the best examples (I know of) of how American/Canadian museums differ from those known in Europe. The village is an accumulation of houses that you find in the 19th century along the banks of the St Lauren’s river. Because of numerous dams and canals which had to be built in order to generate electricy and provide safe passage for vessels which had to conquer some pretty scary looking rapids before that, a lot of small villages and settlements were flooded. So the government relocated about 6000 people and also managed to put some of their houses and churches on flatbed trucks. A few of the particularly pretty ones were driven to the site where the Upper Canada Village is today (and a few of them were reconstructed). This process started in the 1950s and is still continuing today.
The village is a living museum, that means that you can’t only walk through the streets and look into all of the fully furnished houses, but also that there are actors employed which wear the era’s clothes and go about their daily business. For example there is a broom-maker who makes all the village’s brooms, there is a blacksmith and a saw-mill where all the wood needed for the village is cut into the right shape. Of course these people don’t talk exactly the way it was back then or pretend that we’re not actually living in 2008, but it’s still nice enough to see them around town and visiting one another.
After a very nice day there we drove one for a few miles and managed to get a nice cabin where we’ll spend the night.

September 25, 2008

Having seen enough of downtown Montreal yesterday, we visited the Olympic Park today. As we had planned, we didn’t spend any money on public transportation or parking and instead walked there. Now, this took us about 1 1/2 hours (the way back was 2 hours), so you can see how we managed to spend most of our day ;).
Anyway, upon arriving we bought tickets to the Biodome, an indoor-zoo simulating 4 different climatic habitats (tropical jungle, laurentian forest, St. Lawrence Marine and the arctic). The cool thing is that you walk from one ecosystem into the next one and are right in the middle of the jungle and the animals for example. Check out the photos below to see a lot of cute animals (the puffins, which are Katrin’s new favorite animals, seemed to be having a lot of fun swimming against the artificial current).
After the Biodome we did not go up the Olympic tower (again, since we thought of it as being much to expensive for one elevator ride). We also didn’t pay the hefty entrance fee to see the botanical gardens (we knew we would get enough walking anyway). So we headed south until we hit the river and then made our way back to the old port (7km). Arriving at about 3:30 we picked one of the first restaurants we saw where we had a pretty expensive salad (good thing we saved on the means of getting there). At least we had one huge motherload of ice afterwards. Our feet even more exhausted we returned to the hotel, where I just measured today’s walking distance at about 15km.
Tomorrow we’ll be leaving for Ottawa, where I hope distances aren’t quite as big ;)