Toronto

to get to Ottawa and to Toronto i would have to catch a greyhound bus. you hear so pretty unsavory things about the Greyhound bus service. things like: when prisoners get out of jail, they are given the stuff they came in with and also a one way greyhound ticket outta there (i imagine so the cops don't have to deal with them). also i heard that last year some guy was listening to his iPod a little too loud and the mental guy behind him killed him in cold blood, then when the police came he cut the guys head off. charming. needless to say, my iPod didn't come out of my bag. and i didn't look side ways at people next to me. ok, all those things are true but it really isn't as bad as people make it out to be. i dunno what it is but, whenever people pass on travel advice they always tend to tell the worst case scenario. of course bus stations are always going to have strange people hanging around them, but the bus really wasn't that bad. the only bad thing is having to listen to the music the emo girl was playing in the seat next to me... come to think of it, now i know why the mental guy decapitated the other guy, he must've been an emo.

anyway, before i got to Ottawa i remembered that my old high school friend, Aphra, who lives in Ottawa, had she had sent me an email at the start of my travels, saying that if i came her way to let her know. i thought they we might just catch up for a drink or something, but lucky for me she invited me to stay with her and her boyfriend for a couple days.
it was really good to see Alpha, it had been so long since i saw her last, but the most refreshing part was, she hadn't changed a bit. The reason Aphra is living here, is because she began traveling, just like me, around the world, but only got as far as Banff where she met her, now boyfriend, Gord. Gord's original from Ottawa so that's why they live here. i don't blame her for cashing in her around-the-world ticket, Gord is a really nice guy, i think the feeling is mutual when i say, we got on like a house on fire.

the first couple of days we stayed in a house that they rent that's not far from town so i could do some exploring. then the next couple of days we stayed with Gord's family at there farm which gave me an opportunity to get outside of a city for a while and experience something different. the family house is a beautiful old place, with a giant barn out the back to keep the horses. Gord's parents, Harry and Nancy, were very kind to me, serving up some amazing food - i hadn't eaten that well in a long time!
one day i helped Nancy pick up some horse feed. it was really strange, just the smell of malassis in the air, instantly transported me back to when i was younger. my Auntie and Uncle used to have a farm in Mansfield. when i was younger i used to go up there a fair bit and feed the horses and and 'help out' around the farm. i have such fond memories of those times. riding (and falling off) motor bikes with my dad, going down to the creek, catching frogs and going into town for lunch. it was really nice thinking about those moments i had, i hope i never forget them.

before i got here, people were telling me to avoid Ottawa like the plague. 'it's boring, why would you want to go there?!!' they were all saying. Maybe i had low expectations, but i didn't find it to be that bad. They had a little market area called the Byward market that i liked, it was here that i tried a beaver tail. no, i didn't eat a REAL beaver's tail, it was like a big flat cinnamon donut. apparently its the thing to do while you're in Ottawa. it was good!
i think Ottawa would be a really nice place to visit in the winter. the river that runs though the city freezes over, so you can skate up and down it. there are probably people out there that are thinking, 'so what?', but i think it might be because i'm Australian, rivers don't really freeze much, if at all, in Australia, so the whole concept seems so exciting and foreign to me, apparently they set up stalls on the ice and everything.

Ottawa is the capital of Canada and it actually has a similarity to Australia's capital, Canberra. both cities were built in the middle of two major cities because they couldn't decided which city was going to be the capital. of course with it being the capital, it has a number of government buildings, statues of important dead people and monuments. Parliament hill is generally where they all are, you can picked them from a mile off, Parliament Hill is perched right on a hill, funnily enough, that over looks the water. i heard that there is a limit on how tall you can build buildings here in Ottawa so that that it doesn't overshadow the buildings on Parliament Hill, it might be rubbish, so don't quote me on that.
i don't think the similarities stop at where we have our capitals cities. i've found Canadian's to be very much like Australian's. i think we have a similar sense of humour, and when you think about it we have a similar history ie: being part of the commonwealth. having said that they have Queen Elizabeth on there currency too, but she looks a bit older compared to the ones back home, maybe they gave her a face lift. speaking on money they call there $1 coins 'loonies' because of the picture of the Loon on the back. and they called $2 coins 'toonies' after cartoons... ok, not really. i'm not really sure why they call them that. i'm still a bit confused by the money you would expect that there size would depend on how much its worth, but the 10 cent piece is smaller than the 5 cent piece!?!

if looking at buildings isn't your cup of tea, hopefully art is. i checked out the national gallery and i was surprised at how good it was. They also had and exhibition for the 'Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts' they were all pretty good, except for a couple. but there was one artist that stood out for me. her name was Rita McKeough and her work was pretty nutty. lots of things hooked up to machines to make them work or make things move - it was awesome! i'm a big fan of kinetic sculpture, so this really tickled my fancy. just in the general section they had Andy Warhol's 'Brillo Boxes' and Chuck Close potrait. one thing i really liked there was, one artist had made a dinosaur-like skeleton of out of plastic deck chairs - it was amazing. in the Canadian art section, i also really liked 'Pavane' (see picture below) by an artist from Quebec called Jean Paul Riopelle. the painting was created by smearing the paint which i thought was quite cool.


while we're in the capital i should probably mention of of the most fun things on earth - tax. Canadian's get taxed quite a bit. depending on which bracket your in, you can be taxed up to 50% of your earnings. but it does have a few perks, if you're Canadian you do get free health care, which is always a good thing.


While i was here i had my first Tim Horton's experience. Tim Horton's is a fast food franchise here in Canada, it was started by a Hockey player by the name of, you guess it, Tim Horton. Tim ended up dying in a car accident and his widow ended up selling off his share of the company for next to nix, she's probably kicking her self now, its the biggest, even bigger than McDonald's and Subway, fast food chain in Canada. There menu consists of Bagels, Coffee, Muffins, Doughnuts, and 'Tim Bits' which are dough nut holes as well as a few other things. i had a bagel and some Tim Bits. it was pretty good as far as fast food chains go, actually i was surprised at how cheap it was too.

from Ottawa, i risked life and limb again and caught the Greyhound down to Toronto. actually the bus ride was quite good. i sat next to a girl who had good taste in music, in fact i noticed she was playing the Pearl Jam album, 'Yield'. i was surprised because not many people really rate that album, but its probably one of my favourtie albums of all time. anyway, we chatted about the album, amongst other things, which made the bus trip a lot easier to get though. when i got into Toronto i tracked down my old friends from University days, Elle and Angie, who i was very excited about staying with for a few days. a few years ago, just after we finished uni, they won a big advertising award that allowed them to work at a Leo Burnett office of there choice, 3 years on there still in Toronto working at Leo Burnett, and still loving it by the sounds of things.

the first night i got there, they took me to some advertising shin-dig. but i can't remember any of it - i got so trashed! i've had big nights before, and usually i get flashbacks of things that i did or said, but the next morning i had no recollection of what i did. in some ways it's a shame i can't remember any of it, it sounds like i had the night of my life! Angie and Elle told me that i was dancing with the CEO of some big advertising company and playing air guitar on my knees. sounds like i'll never work in Toronto.

Elle and Angie took me to some of the cool places to hang out. we spent a fair bit of time in and around the kensington market area, which i really liked. full of cool little vintage and recycled clothing stores, somehow angie persuaded me to buy a marching band jacket! there are plenty of cool little bars around that area too, come to think of it, we were pretty much booze hounds the whole time i was there.

while i was in Toronto i did a day trip down to a waterfall, you might have heard of it, its called Niagara falls. before i got there, i had heard that the Canadian side is a lot better than the American side of the falls, and it was very true, the American view is pretty rubbish. apparently the falls used to move something like 6 meters every year. i got took the 'Maid of the Mist' which is a ferry that goes right into the horseshoe falls, it was pretty cool to hear the roar of the water crashing around you, also a bit mental that you can drive a boat in that close to them. its funny, whenever you ask a canadian 'what is it that makes you Canadian?' the first thing they say is 'well, were not american' but i was a little confused, because as we were going through the falls there was plenty of fist punching and 'yeah!! whoo hoo!!' going. very american if you ask me. but who knows, they may have come from the American side.

Niagara itself is a strange place. one minute your seeing an amazing natural wonder, then next your bombarded with Haunted house's, Gift shops, 'Ripley's believe it or not' and 'Guinness World record' stores. i guess its not for everyone, but i kind of enjoyed looking at how incredibly tacky the place was. the drinking age in Canada is 19 years old, which is lower than in America, which is 21. so a lot of American's cross the border so they can drink. because Niagara is right on the border, i imagine it gets a lot of Yanks coming over to whet there whistle. so maybe the stores and attractions are more interesting when your tipsy.

i would say i saw a lot of Toronto, but i'm pretty sure Elle and Angie showed me all the good places. it didn't really matter, truth be told, i just wanted to hang out with them again. it was so good to see them. seeing there apartment and hearing the stories behind the furniture that they had brought or found for it, meeting the friends that they'd made over here, showing me there favourite shops. it really really great to see them so happy and how settled they are here. i've really missed them since they left Melbourne, we used to have some great nights out together, but who knows, one day we might share a city again.

i had a great time in both Ottawa and Toronto, mainly because i've seen some familar faces, which has been really nice. i'm flying to Vancouver next to see some more familiar faces: my sister, my brother in-law, my niece and my nephew. i can't wait to see them!