[ Jun.2019 ] We spent our summer holiday in Canada this year.
My husband had always wanted to visit this country, because his favourite comic which he had read when he was a child was set in Canada.
We flew from chaotic Heathrow by Air Canada.
It delayed by one hour or so after we sat on our seat on the aeroplane, so in the end we sat there more for than 8 hours.
It just happened that I came across “Canada” in my book I was reading during the flight, though the story was about Auschwitz.
Apparently, Canada was regarded as ‘the rich land far away’ by the inmates, and they called the depository of the possessions of Jewish people ‘Canada’.
We arrived in Toronto in Canada, this ‘rich land far away’ and entered the country smoothly.
We had had to buy the Electric Travel Authorization (eTA) beforehand, but it was very easy to do it online (7 Canadian dollars ≒ £4.35, €4.70, US$5.30).
We went to the information office at the airport to ask how to get to the city centre and they showed us two ways and printed the route maps for us.
We chose the express train (12.75 C$) which took about 25 minutes to get to Union Station in the city centre.
The bus is much cheaper, but apparently it would take as long as one hour.
We arrived at the quite good looking Union Station by the full train.
From here, we could have taken the metro and the third station would be the nearest one to our hotel, but to get down to the metro platform, we had to use the staircase and we had our heavy luggage, so we decided to take a taxi.
The taxi cost 10 C$ including the tip to our hotel called Chelsea Hotel.
I will write about it later, but you cannot avoid this awkward tip system in Canada.
The Chelsea Hotel was an old giant hotel which reminded us of the one in Boston in the US.
The lobby was crowded and it was more like a shopping centre rather than a hotel.
The size of the room was not too bad, but the interior was boring.
And the window was dirty.
We walked around the neighbourhood and went into a steak chain restaurant called Reds.
They had a special offer of 15% off for the guests of Chelsea.
Both my husband and I chose the sirloin steak, but they served the thick meat without any fat like fillet, which was good.
And we had the Canadian wine for the first time in our life.
We did not know that Canada is a wine producing country.
Apparently, the latitude of Toronto is about the same as Florence in Italy.
I had thought Canada is in the far north, so I had thought that we flew northwards from London, but in fact it was opposite.
So it is understandable that they produce good wines.
The one we had here was made in Niagara and tasted nice and firm.
By the way, the vegetables they served with the meat were cooked al dente.
Within the garnish, there were some peas in pods, which I used to eat but not recently, which made me feel nostalgic.
