Corn maze

Calf

A pelican in the wild

Today we went off to the sugar camp, which was quite a long drive away. Up there they have a farm where they tap the maple trees for maple syrup. They also do all you can eat pancakes, which in my case turned out to be three. I tried maple syrup on them, which was alright, but I preferred my pancakes without.

Afterwards we got to find out how they get the sap out of the trees and how they turn it into maple syrup. They have a lot of trees and it takes a lot of work, basically!

Not far away, on the way home, was a corn maze. The exit was the same as the entrance and the idea was to find various puzzles (or CORNundrums). We managed some, but basically did a lot of walking round the same bits and gave up after just over an hour. It was a very big maze and it looked a lot the same, except for some of the patches of mud.

They had a little petting zoo with a couple of goats and a couple of calves in, so we stroked those. But mostly it was just really cold.

Today we went into the city on the ferry, which was surprisingly not that cold standing up on the top. It didn't go very far or very fast. Once there we walked up the hill to the Citadel and arrived just before noon when they fire their new gun. Unsurprisingly, it made me jump, even though we had 30 seconds warning.

After that they changed the sentry with a lot of military pomp and ceremony. We could have gone in, but we wanted lunch by then. Down by the harbour there was a little market where I discovered I could get a soya smoothie, which was very nice, but very cold.

We managed to find the Maritime Museum from there, which had a parrot called Merlin! He did say hello, although not necessarily after we had. We were in the museum over three hours and had to leave because it closed. It was very fascinating with ships, tales of ones that had sunk and the story of the explosion in 1917.

View of Halifax from the ferry

Clock tower

View of Halifax from the Citadel

Halifax Harbour

Boardwalk

Today was a bit more of a relaxed day. In the morning we went to the second hand bookshop, where we both bought quite a few books. In the afternoon we walked round Fisherman's Cove, which used to be a little fishing village. Amazingly, the sun came out today and it was quite warm (well 15 degrees, which was twice the temperature of other days!).

Today all I did was travel. To get to the train station we had to get three buses, but we did get to go over the bridge. But we also had to wait 25 mins for one and the wind made it really cold. The train was quite cool. I had a sleeper carriage to myself with a big, long seat and a toilet to myself too. When I went to dinner the dining carriage looked just like I've seen in pictures. I sat with a bloke from Oregon there, but we didn't talk much because he couldn't understand a word I said!

We changed the clocks about 10pm, so just as it was about time I could justify going to bed, it was actually an hour earlier. I kept thinking I hadn't slept, but I definitely did. I still woke up early, though.

Train compartment

Notre Dame Cathedral

Olympic Stadium

View of Montreal from Mount Royal

We arrived in Montreal late and then my suitcase was second to last to come out. The instructions to get to the hostel said to go to a metro station then said where to go from there. It took me a while of walking round the train station to find the metro. Then I followed directions to said metro station until there weren't any more and I came up somewhere, I don't know where. After more walking around I found the Sheraton and discovered I was four blocks away and after that it was easy.

I got to the hostel and I couldn't check in for another three hours! So I went back out and found the tourist information, had dinner in a pub and then went on a three hour bus tour around the city. It was expensive, but very good and I got to see a lot. And I found a reasonably sized supermarket not too far away so I could buy more snacks. I kept getting lost, though, and I'd not quite worked out where it was properly, so I was really tired after that, so that was it for the day. And it was dinner time anyway.

Another leisurely morning, as I wasn't meeting livii until 11am. It was chucking it down with rain, and continued like that all day, so it was just as well we were in a car, so didn't have to go out in it much.

We went to the Museum of Civilization, which had a really interesting section on the history of Canada. They have Native American Indians here, but they call them Aboriginals instead.

After that was lunch where I had half a chicken and chips and then didn't eat for the rest of the day. We parked just next to a health food shop where I discovered that the company most of my snacks are made by (Glutino) put egg in their bread. But I did find one gluten free bread that I hadn't tried before.

Then we wondered round an Antiquarian book fair. I managed not to buy any books, which I thought was quite impressive. Because all the books in there were in such good condition they were quite expensive.

After that we just lounged around at her house, which was nice and relaxing.

Totem Pole

Ceiling in Museum of Civilization

View of Ottawa

Parliament

House of Commons

Senate

It was actually not raining today. But I wondered why the city was so empty before I remembered that not many people are out and about at 9.30am on a Sunday... Ottawa is definitely smaller than Montreal because Parliament Hill was about ten blocks away and it only took me five minutes to walk it. Whereas in Montreal it took ten minutes to walk five blocks.

The guided tour was really interesting and the grounds were pretty too, with lots of random statues about. Also, there was a little pen with three cats in, who were very cat-like and didn't care about the people looking at them at all. There were also three raccoons who did nothing but eat. I was quite impressed that I guessed they were raccoons.

I managed to get myself on a bus without getting too lost, and made it to Rideau Hall, which is the home of the Governor General, who is the Queen's representative in Canada. The guided tour of that was also interesting, and it was good that both these were free!

By that point I was quite tired, but the bus stopped by a second hand bookshop which turned out to be a lot bigger than it looked. Neither the children's nor the science fiction & fantasy sections had the books on shelves, so you have to go through each of them to see the one behind. They do have them organised by author, but that isn't that helpful when you can't remember the names of any authors and there are a lot of books...

Today I walked down by the canal to go to the Bytown Museum. Somehow I managed to get myself completely lost just getting from the hotel to the main road that goes up to Parliament Hill and I walked the long way round to get there. The museum had sounded interesting, but I worried slightly when the ground floor was all about the canal. And the first floor started off being all about the canal too... But then it went into more general history about Ottawa (formerly called Bytown), which was really interesting. I thought for a bit that it was only a part of the history, but it doesn't have a very long history it turns out...

After that I stopped off at the Rideau Centre shopping centre for a late lunch, as it was warm. Then I managed to get myself lost again, but eventually found the second hand bookshop (where I bought a book and got completely confused with change because they don't have 20c coins), the Zaphod Beeblebrox nightclub, the Brig Pub, the supermarket and the health food shop to buy more nice bread.

Then I went back to the hotel to do my washing, then went just across the road to an Italian to meet livii for dinner.

Interesting sculpture

Rideau Canal

Snow!

Snowdrift seen from the train

Since I wasn't sure I had enough money for two taxis and dinner, I went out in the morning, in the snow, to the Scotiabank. It kept trying to snow, so I put my long mac on too and that helped keep me warm.

There was some fantastic snowy scenery on the journey from Ottawa to Toronto, including some big snow drifts by the side of the track. Much better to see it from a warm train, though.

You could see the CN Tower as the train come into Toronto. Although it was dwarfed by the surrounding buildings. However, I can see them all from my hotel room.

This morning I went in search of the tourist information centre. After walking around the area a lot I eventually found it was actually just a little booth with a person in. So I gave up that idea and got on the subway and went to Casa Loma. I went the long way round to get to it because the map was crap and made it look like it was one block away when it was actually two.

The house is very grand. There was a free audio tour with three tracks and it sounded good, but everytime I tried to listen to any of them I just got bored. All the interesting information was in the rooms, on the map and in the documentary video I watched. So mostly I admired the rooms and took lots of photos, and numbered my map so I would be able to work out which photo was of which room.

I stopped for lunch outside, although it was just a bit too cold to do that. Then I went over to the road to the Spadina Museum, which is another old house. It isn't as grand, but is more interesting because it looks more lived in. Even if most of the rooms have been restored, although to different time periods, which is a bit confusing.

That didn't take long, so I went off to find the Royal Ontario Museum, which is supposed to be good. I'm not quite sure why, though. There was an exhibit on the First Peoples which was quite interesting. As was the one on style on Europe, although that seemed a bit like the two places I'd just been to.

Since I hadn't spent long there, and the Shoe Museum was just down the road and open until late I went in there and found that it was free at 5pm and it was 4.55pm when I turned up. So I waited with the other people until it was free and then went in. It turned out to be quite interesting to start with, although started to get a bit samey towards the end. There were some crazy shoes in there, though, and I discovered my walking boots are the same size as Ilie Nastase's shoes, as I stepped on the print (in light) of them.

After that I attempted to find somewhere to eat dinner, although managed to completely walk past the road I was looking for. In the end I ate at somewhere called the Witches Table and then had a longer subway journey home than I was expecting. And then got completely lost trying to find the hotel and ended up going the long way round which would have been shorter had I got off one stop sooner.

Casa Loma

Casa Loma Hall

Spadina House

CN Tower

Toronto's answer to Times Square

Pay day! I didn't rush to go out and when I did I walked down to another old house turned into a museum. Outside it said it was open, but it wasn't. Or it was some sort of open that involved the doors being locked. So instead I got the subway to the station then had a bit of a wander before going to get a bus tour.

It was supposed to be a double decker, but a minibus turned up instead. It turned out they were alternating them both today - they only run the double decker when the weather's good enough and it was nice out today.

So I ended up going round the two hour loop on the minibus and getting off at the Harbour because there was an Italian there that did gluten free pizza bases. But the menu said they wouldn't change any ingredients in a dish, so I wouldn't be able to take the cheese off. So even if the bases were also free of milk and egg, which I doubt, it would have been no help. But I did have some gluten free pasta instead, which was really nice.

Dinner didn't take long, so I was able to catch the next tour on the double decker, which wasn't cold upstairs at all. Since it was a different tour guide I learnt different things. Afterwards I finally managed to get on a tram, which was very tram-like. Despite being called a streetcar for some strange reason.

When I got up this morning it was still dark. In fact it was still dark when I got to the train station. It got light while I was in the station, but since I was underground it was a bit hard to tell. The train had seats so far apart I couldn't touch the one in front with my feet when I sat back properly on my seat!

I got to Niagara Falls and it was a bit cloudy. We caught the bus to the Falls and then spent time walking up to Table Rock taking lots of photos. Then we got distracted by a gift shop. The Maid of the Mist wasn't running, so instead we went behind the Falls. It was very cool to see them from the other side. And at one part the mist coming off them was so bad it was like very cold rain coming from every direction! Outside, in the mist it was like rain.

After that we walked up to the Skylon Tower and went for lunch in the revolving restaurant. It went round once before we were done, by which time I was feeling quite dizzy. Upstairs from that was the lookout and it actually wasn't too cold outside.

Then we went to a 3D/4D film about how the Falls were created. I was very upset that it wasn't actually 4D, just 3D with moving seats and water thrown at us. And it wasn't really about how it was created either, just a bit of a weird fantasy tale.

The sun had come out all of a sudden, so we had to take some more photos of the Falls in the light and we saw a couple of faint rainbows too. By then we'd exhausted the views and the gift shops and went into town, where all of a sudden it was like Blackpool. If a very Canadian Blackpool.

Canadian Falls

American Falls

Niagara

Sunset from the CN Tower

View from the glass floor

CN Tower at night

The Canadians put the clocks back last night, so instead of waking up at 7am, I woke up at 6am. And the two things we wanted to go to before about 5pm didn't open till 10am and 11am. So we had a relaxed morning and headed off to the science centre, and got there not long after it opened. This involved getting a bus for the first time, but they announced the stops just the same as on the subway and tram, which was very helpful.

The science centre was quite exciting. We started off at the exhibit about sending men to Mars. It was all stuff I knew, but the most exciting thing was a harness you could be strapped in to that took all but 38% of your weight and then you tried to walk. It was really hard, although it didn't help that the things they put on the floor was slippery and I spent half the time on my knees! It was very fun though.

There was also some stuff on space, communications, what is truth, space, and some sporty stuff. We got to try out wheelchair racing (which got really hard on the arms), rowing (which got really hard on the legs) and on a bobsleigh (they actually had a bobsleigh that tilted and in front of it was what you saw going down the run, along with a breeze).

After we had done all that, and had lunch, we went back into town to the World's Biggest Bookshop, with a small detour to the second hand bookshop next door. I ended up with four books, but since they worked out at £6 each and one was a hardback, that's pretty good value.

By the time we got to the CN Tower the sun was setting. The lift went up the outside of the tower and had a glass floor, and it was really interesting to see the lift shaft below us. Inside you could only see to the North and West, but it was a spectacular sunset. One floor down from that you could go outside and there was a really vicious wind coming in one direction. But at least you could see in all directions. There was also a glass floor, which had a really good view of the ground beneath it and I walked all over it.

Then there was just time for dinner (gluten free pasta and sorbet) and the trek out to the hotel at the airport.