Honeymoon Diaries #4 – Toronto
April 20 (Saturday)
Our trip took us on a detour from Pittsburgh to Chicago before coming to Toronto (we saved $300, couldn’t say the same for the environment). That made this leg of the trip the “Great Lakes” tour as we flew pass Lake Michigan, Lake Eerie and Lake Ontario.
It was bright and sunny, kinda sad for not being able to trade this day for the rainy Spring Carnival day yesterday at Pittsburgh (missed the buggy, hardly any mobots are weather proof). That said, watching cloud meadows on a small plane made me a kid again, and all those orange juices on the plane helped recover much of the lost vitamin C grounds.
When the cloud broke, the Great Lakes presented itself in its great majestic aura. Waters were choppy due to strong winds but at a distance it looked calm. Boats swam like puny anchovies, hardly visible to the naked eye.
The lakes are such contrast to the never ending farmlands of the American northeast. They seem untouched by the scratches of yachts and unfazed by the moving wind, beaming all the sunlight back to the sky in a kind of humble glory.
One cannot see what lies underneath the surface. Its glittering surface (perhaps more so than the oceans, since the ozone layer is thinner here) hides the dark secrets it holds and silences the deep mysteries it keeps. It shows ultimate strength by being calm and aloof to the difficult terrains it covers.
It is further humbled by being known as a lake. No, not a sea, certainly not an ocean, just a pretty lake like the one in your neighbourhood park. At its seemed, life surrounds it knowing there’s more underneath, and yet they protect it from harm, sharing its destiny as one of the largest of its kind in the world.
In not so bubbly language, they looked really really big from above. It’s hard to not admit that they were almost a sea.
Getting from Toronto Pearson International Airport to 三姑’s place where we would be staying was quite tricky at first. Temperatures were low, instructions from Google Maps did not specify which of the 4 bus companies it was referring to, and there weren’t many helpful advise from the people around the airport. So before we embarked on possibly the longest bus / subway ride + walking the freezing journey from the closest subway station to 三姑’s place, I decided to introduce Dear to Tim Hortons. It was an instant hit!
Advise for Torontonians: next time people ask you how to get from Airport to North York say GO BUS (or the Green Bus), not “go take the bus”. Because the machines to obtain tickets for the Toronto Transit Commission (or the Red Bus) were more obvious and there were no visible Go Bus ticket sales counter, we ended up on a slow moving local bus that crawled to one end of the subway, transferred to the subway, made a huge U turn through town, switched train 3 times, to reach our destination. But it was all worth it when 三姑 and cousin Nick was home to receive us, and we had a fabulous place to stay for the next 3 days, having some of the best home cooked food as well as Indian restaurant food.
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April 21 (Sunday)
Peng and Daryl lives downtown just next to the Rogers Centre where Daryl works for Blue Jays, Canada’s most prestigious baseball team. Peng drove her Jeep all the way north to fetch us over, and made us brunch (yummy ham!) and also bought us tickets to the Blue Jays game vs New York Yankees. We also spent time with their beautiful daughter Anna, totally accommodating to us strangers in the house, and the old dog Dodo who’s ever so graceful.
Apparently Rogers (Canada’s challenger telco to Bell Canada) bought the SkyDome over at only $25 million, shortly after my previous trip to Toronto in 2003. Today the place is swimming with people, with really awesome screens and audio technology that added much perspective to the rather technical game of baseball I couldn’t understand after repeated explanations (mainly because I can’t find the point maximizing function). Nevertheless, it wasn’t hard joining the crowd to support the home team and to boo and snigger at ex-Jays playing for the Yankees.
Little Anna got her own Blue Jays jersey and every game has been family time – naturally, since the couple met working in Blue Jays itself. Promising that we would return for another meal after Niagara the next day, we left the game after a few innings to do some exploration and picture moments with CN Tower and the Harbor Front, before trotting to Chinatown to hunt for one of the better Vietnamese Pho shop there that Peng remember it as 火车头. It turned out to be superb, and we ate too much.
We managed to meet up with Boon Thye and Pik Ying for dinner somewhere far north. Both looked settled and content, one being a passionate father who’s embracing freezing Toronto with grace but still yearning to continue his vocal lessons, while the other enjoying single-hood doing sports and helping the sports injured with physiotherapy. They made me think of the many classmates that left Malaysia to settle down somewhere else, bringing with them their hopes, cultures, and for some, their families with them.
Is migrating trendy, a consequence of some national policy, or a cultural habit in us migratory lot?
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April 22 (Monday)
Avoiding all crowds, we planned our Monday as Niagara day, joining a little tour group of 10 people on a small bus, with a crazy Italian tour guide wheezing us to several locations in the Niagara region, to ultimately end up at the Falls. Like dad often say, it’s one of the world’s “must see” places, and I can now say going there for the third time did not diminish my spirit, expectation or the reward of being inches away from massive amounts of moving water.
Our tour guide pointed out that Toronto was undergoing a condo-rush, with a total of 128 condos being built in parallel. Although there’s no way for us to verify the accuracy, the density of just the condos under construction facing Lake Ontario was maddening. In fact, it wasn’t just Toronto, as we would end up concluding – North America seems to be recovering from the property downturn, and fresh money is moving in to the market to snatch up properties quickly and swiftly, often driven by people who actually have cash on hand instead of the debt-driven low end market.
The condos contrasted with the nice mansions in the Niagara-on-the-lake region, with huge mansions going at just over $2 million, and some nice cozy bungalows at $600k, cheaper than the hole in the wall in Singapore that some of us have to fork out.
Niagara was supposedly famous for its ice wine, but the sweetness was a bit too overwhelming that we gave it a pass after a wine tasting session at a local winery (anyway the place was set up like a tourist trap). Some of the tour members also forked out $120 to get a 10 min helicopter ride around the Niagara Falls, which we also skipped to protect our wallets.
But for the first time, I didn’t skip the Maid Of The Mist, and it was a blast – a blast of water all around! Dear and I got wet mostly below the knees where the useless 3-cents worth of plastic raincoat kept flying up and up. 100,000 cubic feet per second of water gushing at you is no small matter. It was max elation, the kind of unexplained happiness that’s being poured onto you like you’re a puny insect in a cup. To top this up, there was no queue, no crowd, and no waiting in this off season that we were traveling in.
Niagara Falls, once known to many as the Honeymoon Capital Of The World, is also said to be scientifically so, as the falling waters generate negative ions, creating natural endorphins making people fall in love and serve as a aphrodisiac. True?
I guess my only regret was that I didn’t buy Dear a pair of sunglasses earlier, as it would be great view not to have to squint the eyes to see. I had carelessly forgotten how strong the sunlight can be in North America, having worn transition lenses for the past decade.
We also caught a double rainbow after having lunch, when the sun moved to the right angle.
Tipping the tour guide while we finally got off, I was sort of glad we didn’t choose to pay $5 for the casino bus, which was the way I took last time, and having to spend precious time in the casino. Furthermore, we got him to send us directly to Peng for dinner, for Dear to spend more time with her long separated friend.
The next day, we bid farewell to 三姑 after having the wonderful breakfast she made for us, and headed straight to the airport (this time via the correct GO BUS) to fly over to Alberta. It was a pity that we did not manage to touch base with 大姑 who also lives in Toronto but was busy with business. I admired my wife for her persistence in inviting all her relatives to travel back to KL coming November for Zach’s wedding, because it had been many years since the extended family, residing all over the world, came together for a gathering, certainly not during our wedding last year.
I silently hoped that she would succeed in her endeavor.
