Casa Loma, and other stuff.

 

Day two of our road trip, and today's plan was to visit Casa Loma, a grand Edwardian pile on a hill overlooking Toronto. But first the dishwasher needed to be sorted out.

DW called maintenance again, and this time a little fellow (I can say that because he was quite little) turned up with a bag of tools. He pronounced the issue to be with the breaker (fuse), but took quite a while to find the one he needed. He did, though, and DW set the now working thing whirring before we set off for Casa Loma.

We jumped on a Subway train heading north on Line One, and alighted at a station called Dupont, at the bottom of the aforementioned hill. Before we tackled the hill, though, we diverted to Tim Horton's for breakfast, something Timmies is quite good for when you're on a mission. Casa Loma is visible from the streets below, and looked especially nice against the deep blue autumnal sky.

We conquered the hill and while regaining our breath, studied the front of the mansion. It was built between 1911 and 1Bla, so isn't ancient. Rather than bore you with my descriptions, here's a link to Wikipedia, which gives more relevant information than the place's own commercial website; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_Loma

It's forty dollars for us oldies to get in, which is a bit steep in my view, but you can spend quite a while there because it's quite extensive. The house is now owned by a “Leisure" company, which may explain the high entrance fee, but there were no shortage of takers. We stood behind a group of four teenagers while waiting to buy our tickets, and they each bought their own tickets, one by one, which involved a card transaction and some printing of paper. I might have bought all four in one go and taken the money from the others, but this one-by-one thing is quite the norm here, and not just with youngsters. It's a nightmare to be stood behind a line of office workers in Timmies, obviously there as a group, and all buy their one coffee each. What happened to buying rounds?

Back to Casa Loma, the Pellatt family had to give the place up in 1924 for financial reasons, and all of the valuable furniture and paintings were sold, which is why there are large areas inside that are almost devoid of furniture, and that furniture which was on display isn't really from Pellatt's original collection, although some is. Because the house is Edwardian, it doesn't look old in the sense that some National Trust places can look in the UK, and because the house has been restored a few times over, things do look quite fresh. That is apart from any silver ware on display, that all needed a good polish, and anywhere close to the floor, which needed a good clean.

We were given a map, and there is an online information thing you can get on your phone that gave details of the building and the Pellatt family. It could have done with a bit of structure there, though, perhaps a suggested route through the house. The rooms were grand, though, with plenty of items from the Pellatt family on display. There was also a whole floor dedicated to the Queen's Own Canadian Rifles, the Pellatt regiment, and that was very interesting. There was a short video about the house's role in the Second World War in housing Station “M", essentially a manufactory of items for spies and résistance movements in Europe.

I did get to go up in the roof, and inside the two towers, one at each end of the house. It was an odd experience, too, because the house hosts various related activities, including an Escape Room experience, and for October, a “House of Horrors" thing, so the roof spaces and towers were festooned with spooky stuff. The Norman Tower was open at the top and afforded great views Toronto, especially in the fine weather. Sadly there was a group of three young women monopolizing part of the open area, posing for photos of each other and making a big fuss about it. Don't mind me, I'm just old.

We wanted to see the vintage cars in the Stables, and the access to that building was through a long tunnel. The tunnel was dimly lit and decked out with plastic chains, corpses and other “horror" paraphernalia, which was quite effective in the half-light, but it did make the walk seem very long. I didn't have any idea where the stable block was located in relation to the house, but looking at the map later, it was in an entirely different street!

The stables were also decked out with spooky stuff, plastic corpses laid out where once horses stood, and an old carriage made to look like a Hallowe'en hearse. It still smelled faintly of horses, though.

Then it was up into the roof to see an array of waxworks depicting various Hollywood stars, all of whom had been to Casa Loma on film location. There are a surprising number of movies shot, at least in part, in the House on the Hill.

We'd had enough by then, and made our way back along the tunnel, and out to the fresh air. It was lunch time, anyway.

Walking back down the hill, we found our way to Dupont station again, and took the southbound train to St Andrew, in the Downtown core. From there, after dithering about making sure we were on the right side of the street, which is hard to do when you’re in a skyscraper canyon (I had to resort to using the compass on my phone), we boarded a very busy streetcar and headed west towards the Danish Bakery again. I'd opted to use the King Street route rather than Queen Street, to avoid the need to use a bus where the road was dug up. It was actually a very pleasant walk from King to Queen Street, and another vegan lunchtime treat was enjoyed.

When we'd finished and were back on King Street, we boarded the first streetcar that came along and it turned out to be one of the diverted ones from Queen Street, so that was a bonus. Back in the Downtown Core, it was just a short walk to the hotel without using the Subway.

Back at base, and with 11,000 steps under our belts, we both crashed out for an hour or so. That might have been it for the night, except for Nuit Blanche, that twelve hour art extravaganza taking place across Toronto, starting at 7pm.

At just before 8pm, we shuffled into an amazingly packed Nathan Phillips Square, just in time to see the Marching Band that was due every hour, on the hour, for a ten minute parade. It was good, but would have been better had we been able to see anything. Most of the art installations, good though they were, were so thronged with people that we didn't see much at all. We eventually walked over to Bay Street, then through the Eaton Centre to Younge Street, and back around Dundas Street to the hotel, but not before stopping off at a Shoppers Drug Mart store to get something for breakfast. Toronto is a city that tends to shut down at 9pm, even at the weekend, so it was good to see so many people out thanks to Nuit Blanche.

So that was our day. We did stay up to see something on the TV about the Lockerbie air disaster, which is not a good thing to see when you've a transatlantic flight in the offing. Ah well. Tomorrow is Podcast day, but that's not until the evening. The day, I think, will be in Old Toronto and St Lawrence Market, but who knows?