Sunday in Toronto, and not an alarm in sight. Having combined early starts with one or both of jet lag and a hangover for the past three mornings it was nice to have nothing on the timetable for the day. Laid around in the hotel room for a while watching rubbish television until I decided to, rather than needed to, leave the room. Bought a Twix for breakfast and wandered up towards the financial district, streets not exactly deserted but far less busy than the previous two days. I mean, it was Sunday.
The sky was threatening to turn blue, or at least have bits of blue. There were occasionally shadows. I headed up to King Street and waited for streetcar 504B. Curious label to be honest, there’s no way there are 504 streetcar routes in this city. I doubt there are 504 bus, subway, streetcar and etc routes combined to warrant this being number 504, let alone version B of it.
A quicker route to my destination would’ve been to get the subway, but there was only about 10 minutes in it and I wasn’t in a hurry. Besides which, the tram didn’t need a change and would enable me to see more of the city than I would from being underground.
Being a North American city it’s largely grid shaped. The tram went along one looooooooooong straight road, past seemingly endless restaurants and bars and supermarkets. As things became more residential the buildings didn’t really get shorter, there appear to be a ton of high rise tower blocks that people live in, not just work. At some point we turned off and went north one block before heading west again; turns out there were roadworks requiring a diversion. Shouldn’t have been surprised by this, about 40% of Toronto seems to be roadworks right now.
As the rear part of the tram, in which I was sat, thinned out a little we entered probably the poorest part of town I’d seen yet. I mean I wasn’t threatened, certainly I’ve spent significant time in parts of London that I’ve felt much more uncomfortable in. But what I didn’t like, here on this now fairly quiet tram, was the bloke who got on screaming DEATH. FUCKING DEATH. DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME. DEATH. It reduced more to a constant mutter than the shouting, like he’d gone from a high heat to a simmer. Whatever had happened to this guy, physically or mentally, something had him in a proper state. I confess, my heart rate became a bit more pronounced and I didn’t look up from my phone - I was playing Threes and had a podcast on quietly anyway - ‘cos I didn’t want to risk making eye contact that he might interpret badly. After 5 or so minutes he got off, having amped up the volume towards the end but to somewhat less scary sentences like “what am I, a fuckin’ goof?”.
Excitement over, there was still another 10 minutes or so on the ride. Rang the bell to get off at what I believed to be the best stop, only to find myself in the middle of a bridge where the trams travel between lanes of busy motorway traffic and the only way out is a subway which, joy, was flooded. Grim. But, I was where I wanted to be: High Park. For apparently, here, in April in Toronto, there be cherry blossoms.
Dunno where though. I entered the park at what I think was the SE corner, and there were wide concrete paths and a massive pond. A large robin - robins on this side the Atlantic are MASSIVE - signs saying not to feed the waterfowl around the big lake, and lots of people most of whom were walking dogs. I wandered into the park, not really that impressed at the start, and certainly didn’t see any cherry trees.
To be honest I was just happy to be outside with relatively decent weather, in nature rather than the city centre. There were plenty of people out and about, and some variety of terrain - yes, very wide concrete paths, but you can nip through a gate in the fence and suddenly you’re in hilly woodland. I climbed and I descended and climbed and descended, managed to accidentally reach the edge of the park a couple of times, and kinda looped back to the crossroads where a pan-piping busker had made taking a picture of the park map impossible first time I walked past.
Oh, it’s a map of the cherry blossoms!
Managed to completely not get my bearings and immediately walk in the wrong direction. Never mind. Ascended another hill, took a guess which way to turn - there are LOADS of paths criss-crossing everywhere - and found … the zoo! Not like a big full on proper zoo, just a few enclosures either side of one of the large paths. I liked the animals, albeit I think the black squirrels I spent a few minutes talking to before the zoo were my favourite.
Back towards the top of yet another hill and … oh! Cherry blossoms! Holy shit there are thousands of people and the sun is coming out and there are a ton of trees showing off cherry blossoms! Amazing!
Well that was much more impressive than I expected. Brilliant! Also in this part of the park there were loads of vans selling hotdogs and stuff, but the queues were so massive for all of them that I couldn’t be bothered getting anything.
Walked downhill past the edge of the blossoms and towards the lake, on the other side of which there was - I think - a sculpture garden. I say “I think” because I never made my way round to it. I tried, but couldn’t find my way. Followed the path round the edge of the lake, over the bridge at the end, and there didn’t seem to be a way to hug the other bank - the signs pointed to a “discovery trail” which at first involved walking up a steep hill past some very well to do houses.
What I discovered, on the discovery trail, is a massive great hill in a suburb called Swansea. Kept expecting there to be a path between two houses down to the lake but nope, I just went up and up and up and up. Eventually gave up following the signs and turned into a small park which had a sign warning of coyote sightings nearby, and the way to stay safe around coyotes is to act big and aggressive and do not turn and run. Oh. Shit.
Well anyway. Through that park, one wrong turn into a flooded boggy bit, swift u-turn, and back towards High Park again and the southwest corner. Didn’t find the sculptures but, marvellously, there was now a very distant view of the CN Tower popping up between the reeds.
Walked along this edge of the lake, with loud robins and starlings for company and views back towards the crowds at the cherry trees. By now I was next to the motorway from which the trams go back towards town, having pretty much completed a circuit of the park. I liked High Park. Well done High Park.
A tram was due in just a couple of minutes, busy enough that I had to stand the whole way back towards town. No shouting, no muttering, a thoroughly unremarkable journey back about, I dunno, 70% of the distance I’d come in the morning. I fancied lunch, and I fancied a visit to “North America’s largest market made of shipping containers” - behold, Stackt.
I’d checked that it was open on a Sunday and indeed it was… but not every business. In particular, very few food places and I didn’t fancy anything from the ones that were open. Oh well. At least there’s a brewery and a beer garden with, yep, views of the CN Tower.
There was, however, a brewery. Yay! So I had a “Celtic Moon” stout, from the Blue Moon brewery. And then I set off walking again, heading to the waterfront near Billy Bishop airport that was just a few blocks away.
The sun had gone in, but at least it wasn’t hailing nor even particularly windy. I knew there was along waterfront trail along the lake and my intention was to walk east, back towards the city centre and my hotel, stopping for food in the first place that stood out to me. But also to just enjoy the waterfront. Look, there’s boats.
And there’s planes. Told you I was near the airport. Stood around to watch a few landing which was kinda sorta fun. It’s such a small airport that jets can’t land there, only prop planes, so it’s never annoyingly loud.
Oh, look, it’s the bloody CN Tower again. Why is this building, which used to be the tallest in the world and still is the tallest in the western hemisphere, so damn visible from so many places? Especially when you’re stood really quite close to it ‘n stuff.
There was a brewpub right there on the front, but it didn’t appeal. Further round a pub that had looked online like it might be a good visit, but in person was distinctly unappealing. Found the ferry terminal for boats to the islands and briefly considered taking a trip - getting a ferry was totally on my list before I arrived - but by now it was, I dunno, 3pm or so, and still all I’d eaten was a Twix. Definitely needed to bite the bullet and go into somewhere for some proper food, even a venue that didn’t really appeal and oh wait there’s Great Lakes Brewpub.
Sat down, was handed a menu but had already decided to drink their session stout and finally, FINALLY, more than 48 hours after landing in Canada, got me some damn poutine. Poutine!
For them that don’t know, poutine is chips and cheese and gravy. Sounds awesome, is awesome. Loved it.
With something like 25,000 steps in my legs I was done with spending much more time on my feet. So, sod it, I’ll have a tasting flight next. And then another beer.
And then, for fucks sake, I really wanted to leave but two guys had been seated on the table adjacent to me and I was really enjoying listening in to their conversation about how, for various reasons, frontend engineers are terrible and non-cloud-native engineers are terrible and old engineers are terrible and young engineers are terrible. Basically everyone is terrible except, it seems, people their age with exactly their level of experience and technology preferences. I mean not everything they said was nonsense, but by ‘eck a lot of it was.
I’m sure I was frequently loudly wrong at their age too, though I like to think I’ve mostly felt impostor enough to think I’m terrible, and everyone else is there to be learnt from.
Anyway. Left the pub later and drunker than expected, setting off back through the city towards Union Station in order to do reconnaissance for the morning. En route to Union there was, of course, a decent view of the CN Tower. With blue sky behind it!
I did, predictably, have a 6am start in front of me ‘cos there was a train to catch - and Union is a BIG station with loads of platforms and I wanted to make sure I knew where to go, as it would be rush hour on Monday when next I was there. I do love a massively overdone North American railway station. Made me feel a bit, like, “do I help that lady with the pram or do I keep watch for gangsters?”, all Untouchables-style. (I saw no ladies with prams nor gangsters, to my knowledge)
All the way through Union, which is longer even than it looks from the outside ‘cos it has a big extension leading towards the, err, CN Tower. No pic this time! And once I emerged onto the street I thought, right, head back to the hotel. And then fell into Beertown Toronto because oh FFHS Darren you idiot.
Sat at the bar, had a stout followed by “the haziest, most opaque IPA you’ve got please” accompanied by a burger. And then another beer. Very briefly fell asleep which I took as my cue to go back to the Novotel, and so I did. This time I had the extra wherewithal to buy 2 whole litres of water, most of which I had before bed, thus minimising the hangover AND ensuring I’d be awake in oh so much time for 6am.