So,
here I am in Canada!
The
journey over last Friday was not nearly as grim as I had expected – I was pretty
good on all the flights and the time actually went quite quickly. The worst part was in Heathrow where I would
actually have missed the connection if they hadn't sent a girl to ‘fast track’
me from one gate to the other. The
connection time was 1 hour 20 mins but with congestion causing delays to both
take-off from Istanbul and landing in Heathrow, we eventually landed about 40
mins late. Then it took another 10 mins
or so for them to open the doors and for everybody in front of me to finish
getting their bags and doddering about – leaving me about 30 mins until
take-off and it clearly said that the gate would be closed 15 mins before
take-off time.
Anyway, with my
fast-track guide I galloped through the airport – through another passport
check, more security scanners, onto a little train and got there with about a
minute and a half to spare. The worst
thing?...they hadn’t sealed the bag of duty free that I had bought in
Istanbul so it was taken off me in Heathrow.
I wasn’t happy.
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| my first ever selfie! |
I
haven’t seen Fran, the friend I have come here to visit, for 9 years and
obviously we have both changed a lot because we managed to walk past each
other! But we did finally meet up and it
is so good to see her and her family. We
have been calling other rogues we used to work with in London too.
She
lives in a small town near Toronto. We
have been out and about a bit, though it is not a particularly touristy
place. The weather has been quite mixed –
glorious autumn days and gray and rainy, getting quite cold yesterday.
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| wolf statue at Crawford Lake |
On
Monday, one of the lovely days, we went to a woodland area with a lake, saw some Iroquois long houses and
hiked through the wood – see pictures.
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| Crawford Lake |
On
Wednesday we went to a gallery that has a lot of Canadian art. There were some great pictures and I learned
about some of their most famous artists.
There was also an art ‘installation’ in the garden which was very modern
and possibly very meaningful but went quite over my head (as Fran said, very ‘Tate
Modern’)
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| Tom Thompson painting |
Yesterday
we went into Toronto to the Royal Ontario Museum. We saw an exhibition about Pompeii and then the Canadian and First Nation
(Indian) rooms. It was a lovely day,
though not without its challenges.
First, we couldn’t find the metro station and drove around for a while
(Fran has – by her own admission – the worst sense of direction in the world
and it’s quite amazing that she ever gets anywhere!), then we couldn’t get in
to the car park because both the machines at the entrance were out of order ;
after driving round for a bit and failing to find anywhere else to park we
returned and found they were now working, paid our 5 dollars to get in and then
couldn’t find a space. Eventually we
gave up and parked in a corner of the car park, praying all day that the car
wouldn’t be towed and got back to find
it was still there – but had a flat battery!
Luckily Fran has jump leads and found a very nice young lady who brought
her car over so we could jump start Fran’s.
After she’d gone, we collapsed in howls of laughter until we were
crying: could anything else really have
happened. Later, when I learned that
yesterday was Friday 13th, it made more sense!
