Hello everyone, we arrived in New York safely yesterday afternoon after a very short flight from Toronto. We were on a tiny plane and by the time we had taken off and taken our belts off it seemed like it was time to land! We are staying in the spare room of an apartment we found through a website called www.airbnb.com (No its not for swingers!). They rent out their spare room on a short term let and its cheaper than a hotel. Our room is small but it has a tv and we have the use of a bathroom so we are fine with it. And they provide a healthy breakfast for us each morning (Yoghurt and Granola). Yesterday afternoon we took a walk down Broadway (10 minutes from the apartment) and into Times Square. ... read more

So, the day after Niagara Falls, Rach and I made our way to Niagara-On-The-Lake, a small town around 30 minutes from the falls themselves. The town is where the river Niagara meets Lake Ontario and was a proudly loyalist town during the civil war. When we arrived, we realised that there wasn't really that much to do and it was very touristy, with lots of little shops (and expensive shops). The tourists all seemed to be of a more senior age and there seemed to be little for young hip travellers like us to do!!! :-) We took a walk down to the Lake itself which was very tranquil and unfortunately due to the fact it was cloudy we couldn't see Toronto on the far shore of the lake, which apparently is very clear on a ... read more

When I was 5, I lived in Canada for a couple of years and became a big fan of Ice Hockey, so I was very excited to be visiting the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. Rachel wasnt quite as excited as me understandably!! The Hall of Fame was basically a collection of a lot of hockey memorabilia, shirts, trophies, equipment etc etc, all worn by famous players in famous matches. I was particularly happy to see alot of stuff about Wayne Gretzky (the greatest hockey player ever) who was in his prime and playing for my local team, the Edmondton Oilers, when we lived in Canada. We watched a short film about the history of the Stanley Cup (the biggest prize in hockey bar the Olympic gold medal) which helped Rach understand the game a ... read more

Part Two of tonight's blog marathon! Saturday 29th May On Saturday, with the sun shining and the thermometer pushing 30 degrees centigrade, Rachel, Darina and myself headed for a lovely brunch at a cool restaurant called Fire on the East Side, where we stuffed ourselves with delicious food. We took a metro and streetcar (tram) to East Toronto and the shores of Lake Ontario. The neighbourhood is called The Beaches and was full of little shops, beautiful beach houses and bars with patios built for a day like Saturday. We walked along the beach and through the leafy side streets until brunch wore off and we needed to refuel. So we stopped at first, a sweet shop, which turned out to be more than that. It had its very own little corner of Britain inside, particularly ... read more

On Thursday night, we took a walk down Church Street, which is the gay neighbourhood in Toronto. The neighbourhood was nice with some cool litttle houses tucked away down the side streets. It looked strange with these little houses right next to some giant skyscrapers. We had dinner at a restaurant called Fuzion on Church Street and it was their Martini and tapas night. We had a few different types of tapas and a couple of cocktails each but the piece de resistance were the Caesar Oyster shooters they had on the tapas menu. They were mini Bloody Caesars with an oyster and topped with celery foam. We had to have second helpings of those as they were so delicious. The Martinis (Rachel and I thought Martini's were drinks containing Martini and hence we werent too ... read more