A good night's sleep was had, to be sure, the blinds on the huge windows in this hotel room are quite effective. DW was up and about before me, which is unusual, but I realised why when Emma and Charlie arrived in our room at about eight-thirty, which was obviously far too early.
We despatched the young 'uns to Tim Hortons to get some breakfast while I set to with my ablutions, but they were back quickly, Charlie desperate to get to the Old Spaghetti Factory restaurant. That it wasn't open until lunch time made no difference. The thing was that Charlie had seen a video of one of his YouTube people, Catie Claessens, filming a piece from within the restaurant, and he was very keen to go as a result. Catie isn't an "influencer", but an actor who does educational videos for pre-schoolers, and she's quite talented; Charlie likes her.
The Museum of Illusions was also on the list of things to do, and as we were so early we decided to go there first. Both the Spaghetti place, and the museum, were in a part of town known Old Toronto, and its so old that it's devoid of streetcar and subway lines. We could have walked the whole way, it wasn't too far, but we opted to go down to the lake first, then jump on a streetcar for a short run to Union Station, before walking the last few blocks. The lake was nice, and we watched an aircraft land at Billy Bishop airport, about which I was far more excited than anyone else.
The streetcar ride was short, but fun as it dipped below street level and took some seriously sharp turns to get to Union. Union station is Toronto's main transit hub and is built on many levels. Up stairs, down stairs, through barriers and under signs, I guess it's OK if you know where you're going, but very confusing when you don't. DW went to go through a barrier only to find that it wasn't a barrier at all, just a fixed panel, such was the confusion. But we emerged into the busy-ness that is Front Street, eventually, and were rewarded with a great view of the imposing station building.
We set of on foot towards the museum, amid Toronto's choking traffic. Like most North American cities, Toronto is arranged on a grid, so at every block there were traffic lights and a wait to cross the street, and the traffic was just never ending. Most of my city experience recently has been in London, and while it's busy there, you don't seem to be constantly crossing major thoroughfares all the time. Mind you, Toronto doesn't have a congestion charge, and public transit is basic in comparison to London, so that may be a park of the issue. There are parking garages everywhere, too, so vehicular traffic is positively encouraged, which seems a bit behind the curve in these energy conscious days. Nothing is going to change soon, though, because the current Provincial administration is wedded to private car use above all else.
We dropped the kids at the museum and made our way across the road to St Lawrence Market, a huge brick-built edifice that houses an indoor market. We hadn't even arrived at the front door when Emma called to say that the museum couldn't offer them a ticket until 1140, so she and Charlie joined us in our exploration of the market.
What can you say about St Lawrence Market? It's full of vendors selling (mostly) food, some prepared and ready to eat, some not, and representing just about every country's cuisine you could think of. It smelled divine, too, which had me salivating from the minute we entered. The kids settled on some fresh fruit and veggie juice, and we sat in the basement area soaking up the atmosphere, watching the world moving around us. If you ever doubted that Toronto is a multi-cultural city, St Lawrence Market will put you right. When the kids went off to the museum, DW and I toured around. We might have bought lunch there, the choice was mind-boggling, but the Old Spaghetti Factory beckoned.
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| Picture: Google StreetView 2023 |
The restaurant was a short walk from the market and we arrived a little after noon. This restaurant is stuffed full of stained glass, fairground parafernalia, posters for improbable circus acts, and the like. It's a big place, but we were shepherded to the rear of the place and seated with all the other patrons, and next to a noisy group. I understand why restaurants do that, but it's frustrating to be shoe-horned into one corner when you're facing a sea of empty tables. We did ascertain from watching Catie's video on DW's phone that Charlie was sat in the exact seat that Catie had occupied, so he was mightily chuffed about that.
The food was OK, not exceptional, and in my opinion was too expensive. That said, downtown Toronto prices for anything are through the roof, so maybe it wasn't so bad given the location. The service was very good, so good in fact that the server knew instantly that the pasta noodles in the restaurant, their staple dish, were not suitable for vegan, which kind of put a damper on things. The gluten-free pasta was the substitute, but in these days of better food understanding, restaurant franchises like this surely should work to make their basic dish appealing to a wider audience; it's not hard to leave the egg out of pasta, after all. You'll guess that I was a wee bit underwhelmed by the Old Spaghetti Factory, but at least Charlie enjoyed it.
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| Picture: Google StreetView 2021 |
Then we made our way slowly back to the hotel, by way of Union Station and the Streetcars. In the middle of the day the streetcar service is a little sparse and we ended up waiting on a busy platform for the best part of twenty minutes, which wasn't great considering we could have used either of the two lines that platform served. That is a great failing of Toronto's transit in that it's built for commuters and pays little heed to people moving around during the day who haven't driven into the city. Walking back up from the harbour area, you have to go under the Gardiner Expressway, which is a multiple lane highway running high above the ground on crumbling concrete supports. There's a busy road beneath it, too, so it's noisy and smelly under there and a pain in the bum crossing the area.
Back at the hotel, we crashed out for an hour or so, then did our grandparent duty by looking after Charlie while Emma prepped for her Dave concert later in the evening. I should point out that I have no idea who Dave is, except that he's an English rapper and very popular with young people.
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| Picture: Google StreetView 2012 |
We all accompanied Emma on the streetcar out to Exhibition Place and the concert venue. The tram was busy with other young types heading to the concert, thus proving my point about Dave being popular. I was pleased that we went on the streetcar, we could have taken the GO train, but I quite enjoyed it rattling along up to Exhibition Loop. There were many, many, more young types outside the venue, quite a few dressed in football shirts, Dave himself being a bit of a footy fan. While were there we saw the ongoing expansion work at the BMO Field, home of Toronto FC, and host to a game or two in the upcoming World Cup. I have to say that some of the high-rise seating looked more than a little rickety, so it's just as well that I decided to boycott all FIFA events this year, not that I could have afforded a ticket anyway
Having safely dropped Emma off, DW, Charlie, and I made our way to the GO station for a short ride on the GO Transit system. Exhibition Station is being rebuilt and there was a distinct lack of signage or information screens, but we found our way to the correct platform and a train heading west. Even at 1930hrs, it was busy on the train with people heading home from work, but we found a seat and Charlie sat mesmerised as the train slid out of the station. We were only going to Mimico, the next stop, but managed to get into conversation with a young woman who was heading home from work, which was nice. In London, it would have been stony silence.
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| Photo credit: Unknown |
At Mimico, we alighted from the train, went to the station proper so Charlie could have a toilet break, and I fell into conversation with a GO employee who was telling us that it might be crazy in Toronto because the Raptors (Basketball) were playing at home. The conversation quickly moved onto the BMO Field, FIFA, and the man's dislike of all things related to the World Cup. He was of Greek extraction (he offered that information, I didn't ask), so knew a bit about footy, but his Greek volubility certainly came to the fore and I had a job getting away from him.
We were going to head back into Union Station on the next eastbound train, and didn't have to wait too long for it to arrive, despite the fact that the GO app was showing the train as running 20 minutes late. Of course this train wasn't busy at all, so we sat upstairs on the top deck and watched Toronto approach as we moved smoothly eastwards. I thought the service was going to terminate at Union, but no, it was going on to Oshawa under the guise of the Lakeshore East line. I only mention that because there was a stack of people waiting to get on when we arrived at the station and I could work out why.
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| Photo: Toronto.com |
At Union, at 2030hrs, it was still really busy, and as we made our way to the food court for a snack, we were dodging lots of fast moving people. Half of the food court's outlets were closed, but there was still a crush down there, especially around the old standards, Tim Hortons and McDonalds. A grease-burger and stick fries later, we were walking the "Skywalk" back to the hotel. The name Skywalk is a wee bit grand, as all it is is a (mostly) covered walkway from the Station to the CN Tower. Not that we weren't grateful of course, as it had escalators to gain height, and no roads to cross.
Back in the hotel, DW prepped Charlie for bed and had him lie first on the big couch in our room, then on the bed. He did eventually crash out and slept without a pause for the next couple of hours. Meanwhile, I was called into action, to drive over to the concert venue to pick Emma up. It wasn't very late, maybe 2230hrs, which I was grateful for. DW called down to the front desk to have someone bring our car around, and ten minutes later I was launching myself into some seriously stupid downtown traffic, given the late hour. It was mayhem around the concert venue of course, but apart from a little misunderstanding about the rendezvous point, the Dave-struck child was in the car and we were heading back to the hotel. Quite what so many people were doing driving at 2300hrs in Toronto on a Thursday evening I shall never know.
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| Photo: Driving.ca |
Charlie was roused, carried back to his room by his tired but happy mother, and we were finally left to turn in ourselves. A long day, for sure, but everything we planned came to pass, even if it wasn't in the original order. Oh, and I had 18,500 steps on my fitness app. Can't be bad.
