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Published: September 24th 2010
Saturday, July 10th Toronto Blue Jays versus the Boston Red Sox. That's two of the heavyweights of the game we've seen now, both times against Canada's only representatives in the Major League. The Blue Jays are nothing special, but boast good records against the Yanks and Red Sox this year. Last night as we met Mitch for a tasty little dinner in Toronto's restaurant/bar district the Blue Jays were 8-0 down within 4 innings. That might explain a half empty Rogers Centre.
Baseball's a funny thing in that respect. With a game a day more or less over the summer months and America's complete coverage of every angle that you could possibly want, including inside the players' trousers as they made that diving catch to the left, there's little reason to regularly fork out the 10 bucks a ticket. Definitely better as a novelty. You couldn't imagine such a stayaway attitude from football fans but if your team was never completely immune from uprooting to the other side of the country (just ask Montreal Expos or Brooklyn Dodgers fans) then your stance might change.
The Canadian version of the game is the same as the American one in that
it's watched with a can of beer so expensive you shouldn't walk around at night with it. I traded the i-pod for one. Hot dogs have equally little good meat and similar proportions of animal anus. More mustard please. The key difference between here and the Yankees is the level of commercialism - a few clubs shops nowhere close to the American scale. There's also less to keep the crowd from tearing apart the chairs and blaming attention deficit. The organ still drones away but no "guess which star this baby photo is" and suchlike. Hotties with t-shirts though.
In the absence of enforced corporate entertainment the crowd made their own. A stag weekend party did so by hassling first baseman Lyle Overbay. All friendly of course. The heat was becoming dangerously unbearable up in the gods, it was funny to watch the crowd displace itself from behind home to the covered part where the hotel is. A ban exists on leaving the curtains open in this hotel after a cameraman caught a couple going at it. When a game was on! Animals! Everyone knows sport first, sex second. In our presence a fat kid ate a pretzel, 2
hot dogs (foot long) and refused to share his ice cream with his sister. Maybe she'll return the favour when you need an organ you little sod.
If they can put parents in prison for their kids bunking school, they can for letting them be so fat. Official. I've ruled on it.
For posterity the legendary Blue Jays won 9-5. Good times.
Sunday, July 11th It's the World Cup final, there really is little else we can do today. We found an English bar (the Football Factory) after a Sunday brunch in a French place where the waittress had to play the character of up-her-own-arse beyatch. High cheekbone type. For an Englishman watching such a game can be frustrating in a place such as here since Canadians have more chance of understanding the instructions to building a time machine written in a language known only by an indigenous Amazon tribe than they do football. They took whistles to the bar! Seriously. They cheered cards. One man in an Arsenal shirt told me how much he liked Tottenham. That's wrong on so many levels we couldn't count them. Oh well, the price of travel is a hefty one.
Hayley at the CN Tower
The ground below her just lights upSpain world champions. About b*st*rd time.
Monday, July 12th I'm going to the zoo, the zoo, the zoo. Would you like to come too, too, too? Toronto Zoo is big, not necessarily famous and well worth a visit especially when you buy a citypass to get discount on the main attractions. The only problem is on the outskirts of town to get there requires Ranulph Fienes' assistance and he is not cheap. The train was pleasant enough and uneventful. The bus took forever, stuck in traffic at every intersection. It took us through the Toronto ghetto where all the shops are called 'Taj Mahal Foods' and the 'Jeyasari Centre'. The homes are all 20 storey buildings too.
Interesting phone call to keep us entertained on our long journey. The lady was not speaking quietly so it's okay that we heard. Apparently just back from the doctors she had been told she had diabetes, which had come as a bit of a shock. I wondered if it had come as a shock that she was taking up two seats on the bus too, like "who is this next to me invading my space, I oughta give them a
piece of my mind. Holy cr*p! It's me. When did that happen?" She continued her phonecall with an intent to hit the treadmill, but "not today because I'm tired from taking the bus". Fingers crossed she lives on the ground floor or she'll be sleeping outside tonight.
FACT - Canadians are not less obese than Americans. They have healthcare though, so the tubbies get a free shopmobility. What a gyp!
The zoo was good and filled up a day quite nicely. With polar bears, tigers, snow leopards and grizzly bears all our animal needs were met comfortably. A ridiculous man made us take a survey about the zoo whilst we ate lunch even though we hadn't walked around yet. Aside from that not much else to report. On the way home I saw a shop called Willy's Jerk.
Tuesday, July 13th Our short and sweet trip to Toronto is nearly at an end and we haven't been up the CN Tower yet. Time to remedy that. The huge building is dominant of the Toronto skyline which is not so unexpected since the skyrises are not nearly as imposing as NY...yet. It's higher than the Empire State and
less busy. Good start. However, the lift is made of glass which is a little unsettling. It shakes like Muhammed Ali too. Since Toronto has less to see than New York it stands to reason that the viewing platform is not as impressive. It still has beauty though, in the form of Lake Ontario, which New York can scarcely claim concrete jungle that it is. Alright enough of the comparisons. This blog shorter than our trip was. Not a day's worth of tourisming.
Therefore we took the ferry over to the island on Lake Ontario with its huge park and even a beach. There's a small nudist place, sorry "clothing optional" (that means you can go in full gear and have a sneaky peak), which we avoided for fear of seeing sold old boobies - we've all seen the Budweiser advert. Es la ley. The weather was nice. That's it.
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