Vancouver, Toronto & Niagara Falls: On a train there was a Canadian, an American, a beautiful woman, and a very ugly woman...

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... As they went under a tunnel, the American was smacked in the face. The ugly woman thought to herself, 'That American must have touched that beautiful woman, and she smacked him...' The beautiful woman thought to herself, 'Obviously the American touched the ugly woman thinking it was me, and she hit him...' The Canadian thought, 'I can't wait to go through another tunnel, so I can smack this stupid American again...'

Anyhow, I wasn’t sure what to expect from Canada, but if pushed for an answer I would have probably said a clean environment populated by smarter but less friendly Americans and polar bears.

Something I didn’t expect was to be stranded upon arrival in Vancouver because we couldn’t use our visa card to take money out. It seems Canada has yet to jump on the visa bandwagon - the ATMs at the train station just wouldn’t accept it. It doesn’t matter we thought, we’ll just use the credit card. But wait, don’t they charge you loads of money to withdrawal cash? Fine, how about my current account? Found the card, put it in the machine, selected ‘English’ as my preferred language. And then something really strange happened. My hand hovered over the keypad, waiting for a command from my brain to tell my fingers the four digits that make up my PIN number, but nothing came. I hadn’t used my card since leaving the UK in November and had forgotten it. Not a good time to find that out!

It worked out fine in the end: we used the credit card to buy tickets on the metro to downtown and then tracked down an international bank that did take visa. Strange though that the first time we had encountered a problem getting currency took place in arguably the most developed. (Any arguments of course coming from the Americans). Stranger still that visa is the current sponsor for the City of Vancouver tourism…

The first chunk of money we withdrew went to the St Clair Hostel, our home for the next 3 nights. I get the impression that backpacking is much more popular in Canada than it is in the USA. The very fact there were hostels is testament to that. Our place was cheap (£25 per night for a double room with shared bathroom) but the bed was about as comfortable as an outdoor patio. It was also the first place we’d stayed in since arriving in North America without air conditioning. Until then we’d been spoilt by affordable USA hotel chains with beds the size of a London flat and TVs not much smaller. Talk about coming back down to Earth with a bump.

Vancouver itself has been ranked recently as the best place to live the world (the committee presumably wasn’t staying at the St Clair hostel) and it’s clear to see why. We even met a guy who had moved from Rome to live in Vancouver. It’s clean and well organised with plenty of things to see and do - a perfect city you might think. That is unless you go to a comedy show. There you realise that there’s big rivalry between the Canadians and French-Canadians, a growing homeless problem and unrest about the upcoming Winter Olympics being held in Vancouver in 2010. Why buy the paper, eh?

We only spent two days in Vancouver. On the first we went to an area south of the city called Granville Island which has a market and waterfront which was pretty nice. My favourite part was meeting a dog called Gemma who seemed to take a keen interest in me. The cynics among you will insist she was only after my lemon meringue pie but we made a bond and I won’t let anyone tell me otherwise…

That evening we went to the comedy gig I mentioned earlier. There were about 10 stand ups in total, most of them amateurs (it’s called “crash and burn”). Only one of them was really bad though. This woman just kept talking about wearing nappies. Even her group of friends brought along for support struggled to laugh. Talks regarding a possible role in an upcoming Jim Carey film are ongoing.

On the second day we visited Stanley Park, 1,000 acres of walking tracks, recreational space, lakes, a zoo, miniature train, cafes and totem poles. The park is only about a 45 minute walk from the downtown too. I wanted to hire inline skates - there were loads of people on them - but Dave rightly pointed out that we’d only fall over and make fools of ourselves. Now I suspect being voted #1 in the world means Vancouver has an excellent healthcare system, but presenting the city hospital with two broken bodies to reassemble didn’t seem strictly necessary.

Of course we couldn’t hire bicycles either because Dave might ram it into the nearest tree (he loves talking about that day, maybe ask him about it the next time you see him) so instead we merely walked around the park. If you’re going to Vancouver anytime soon do make sure you visit the gardens as they’re really something. It was disappointing to learn that I now am of an age to appreciate gardens. But I console myself with the fact that I neither knew the names of any of them nor had the desire to talk to them. I did need to sit down to rest my legs though so I assume it’s only a matter of time.


It’s a little embarrassing really but I think the best part of Vancouver was the 4 hours spent far above it, in a plane on the way to Toronto. Dave and I don’t tend to rest all that much when we’re at a destination - there tends to always be something to see or something to do. So it was that a morning of enforced sitting, spent watching movies and being fed and watered, was amazing. I landed in Toronto feeling like I’d spend the last few hours not in an airborne metal tube but an expensive day spa. In truth it was a combination of two - an expensive airborne metal tube.

We had five days in Toronto. It might seem a little out of proportion to spend only 2 days in Vancouver and then 5 in Toronto but the Fringe Festival was into it’s last weekend, and after our experience of a fringe festival in New Zealand that opened our eyes to a world of leaf-blowing pandas, we couldn’t resist. We bought a pass that gave us access to 7 plays - we just had to choose which ones.

For our benefit more than yours (I’ll need something to read in-between learning Latin plant names in a couple of months) we went for:

Michael in Primetime
Maybe
Dracula in a Time of Climate Change
Killing Kevin Spacey
Sara Hennessey Town
Baggage: A Non-Musical Romp Through One Catholic Gay Man’s Dating History (With Breasts for the Straight Men)
Like Father, Like Son. Sorry…

They were all pretty good and it was 90 Canadian dollars (£45) well spent.

Tired out from two full days of “fringing” (can you believe people call it that without feeling even a tinge of shame?) it would have been nice to retire back to a centrally located hotel. Maybe a 4 star. With a smiling doorman that wears a bowler hat and asks how your day has been as he opens the door for you. Instead we stayed in the “Comfy Guest House & Suite”. Let me tell you that any hotel that needs to include the word “comfy” in its name is not “comfy” at all. Unless “comfy” in Canadian has a different meaning to that which it does in English. If anyone has access to such a dictionary then please let me know whether the definition in Canadian is indeed given as ‘a converted house with long stay tenants, including a small mouse occupying the kitchen, that requires use of another bedrooms en-suite’. If it is, I’ll eat that bowler hat.

The only other notable thing we did while in Toronto (and I’m excluding the visit the ‘musical gardens’ as they weren’t musical - not one harp-shaped hedge in sight) was to take the train to Niagara Falls. It seems fitting that the last cascade we would see on our trip would be the most celebrated - waterfalls seeming to be the only consistent feature of our tour from start to finish. Needless to say the falls are incredible. The town that has sprung up around Niagara is, at least on the Canadian side, very nice too. Albeit a bit tacky with souvenir shops, haunted houses and dunkin’ donuts on every street corner.

We much preferred Vancouver to Toronto. This was likely in part due to a city workers strike that was heading into it’s fourth week when we arrived. No city workers means no waste disposal… Each and every litter bin was overflowing with nearly a months worth of garbage. Not helped by hot sunny weather, the whole city smelt nasty. So before you book your flights to Canada check the status of the bin men. They matter more than you’d think!

Also make sure you include somewhere to spot polar bears as I can now officially confirm that there aren’t any in Vancouver or Toronto. Or Niagara Falls.

Finally, just in case any of you were wondering, they didn’t kill Kevin Spacey.

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Comments

[Nick]

Niagra
Must say I agree the town surrounding Niagra falls is pretty tacky - it reminded me of Blackpool. Did you visit the museum about people who went over the falls in barrels? You get to hear great stories, like the one guy who survived it, but then died after slipping on an orange peel - or the other who thought it'd be a good idea to tie himself to weight in the bottom to act as a ballast... the only problem being it was a bit to heavy and it ripped him in half :s. Also, what did you make of the lights they shine on the falls at night? They use various coloured lights on them, which I think is also really tacky - it's only on the rare occaisions they use plain white light it really works. Did you go up the CN Tower? They have a section of clear flooring where you can look all the way down - I couldn't bring myself to stand on it!