You take the NY grid, you take one of London's poshest neighborhoods Holland Park. You mix it all together and throw in some extra trees. Then you model the sport's franchises on the QPR model (i.e. no matter how much money you throw at it, they will always be shit), give everyone a bike, replace the local yobs by raccoons, surround the whole thing by a bunch of lakes and you have Toronto. The perfect place to live.
After a completely forgettable World Cup final, we did what every sane Dutch person should have done, we got ourselves on the first flight to Toronto, Canada, where they barely noticed a “World Cup Series of Soccer” had just taken place in SA.
In Toronto we were welcomed by Emma’s Canadian relatives or the Canadian Fockers as I like to call them: Sheldon, Maureen, Sarah 1, Sarah 2, Uncle Hym and Auntie Becky (unfortunately Eitan had to give it a miss as he was at camp). Despite the fact that Sheldon insisted on dragging me through the Canadian “mountains” for some early morning jogging (clearly not realising that Dutch people “don’t do hills”), these are some of the nicest people you will ever meet.
In Toronto, Emma couldn’t help but spending hours and hours in the Mountain Equipment Coop, buying all kinds of crap for our imminent South American backpacking adventure (oral re-hydration salts anyone?). Judging by the amount of time and money we spent there, one would suspect that we are moving to Bolivia for good. Also on our list was the CN Tower, Toronto’s version of the Eiffel Tower. With 552 meters this is – according to the Guinness World Records – the World’s Tallest Tower. Main attraction is a glass floor up at 342 meters, which believe it or not, can withstand the weight of 14 large hippos, or 1 RJ. It also allows you to look straight down into the stadium of one of Toronto’s underperforming sports franchises: the Toronto Blue Jays.
Friday 16 July 2010 – Sunday 18 July 2010: Cottage at Manitouwabing lake
Sheldon and Maureen came up with the perfect birthday present: they took us up to their amazing cottage two hours north of Toronto near the village Parry Sound (for the NHL fanatics among us, one of Canada’s most famous hockey players Bobby Orr was born in Parry Sound).
Monday 19 July 2010 – Tuesday 20 July 2010: Niagara Falls
Having survived some of the worst torrential rains ever when driving our rented VW Jetta back from Manitouwabing lake to Toronto on Sunday night (while listening to Moose FM on the radio, not kidding), we went in search of some more water: Niagara Falls (Havasupai tribe eat your heart out!).
Main attraction is the “Maid in the Myst” boat-trip that will get you as close as possible to the Niagara Falls. The best C$15.00 we ever spent for a shower (also given the fact we received a C$30.00 ticket for parking the car “left to curb, facing wrong way” in Niagara-on-the-Lake). Of course we also managed to squeeze in some wine-tasting at Jackson-Triggs, enjoying some “ice-wine” while playing our newly acquired Cribbage board game in the sun.
Probably the only people who always wondered what happens with the dough from the hole in the donut are Homer Simpson and myself, but I have now found out the secret. Some Canadian bloke called Tim Horton started selling these “Timbits” to the general public at giveaway prices (20 Timbits for C$2.99 is great value for all those calories). Timbits together with “double doubles” (coffee with 2 extra sugars and 2 extra milks) and “triple triples” (coffee with 3 extra sugars and 3 extra milks) made this guy’s family multi-millionaires as they sold their 1,000 Canadian stores to Wendy’s for U$400 million in 1995. So with Maureen no longer around to talk some sense into me, I managed to buy a full box of 20 Timbits at Lester B. Pearson Airport. They were finished before our take-off back to London.
Our verdict: We are moving to Canada after our sabbatical.
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