Weekend in Toronto

This past weekend (CSW mod break) we decided to head up to Toronto for a few days on a family vacation. It was fun-- first time visiting the city for all three of us.

We took a Sat morning flight from Boston to Toronto on a newish airline (at least new to me): "Westjet". Flight went smoothly although it was a prop plane-- they are always a bit noisy. 

Toronto has a nice new train service from the airport to downtown (Union Station), we we went that route, then took a cab from Union Station to our hotel (Grand Hotel, 225 Jarvis). 

Nice weather, cool but not punishingly so. For lunch we walked down to the St Lawrence Market, a big indoor food market. Produce, fruit, meat, cheese, bread, all sorts of things, plus a number of restaurants and places you can get take-out. 

The classic Toronto sandwich is apparently something called a "pea meal bacon sandwich", which looked interesting, but we decided to go for different options instead: I ordered a ridiculously healthy-looking vegan salad, Amy had a nice big egpplant + pepper sandwich (she gave me half of it, and just the half was plenty) and our offspring picked out a crepe of some sort. 

After that we decided we would head up to see the Bata Shoe Museum, so we hopped on the subway and headed up the northern part of the University of Toronto area (Bloor St).  

The museum was smallish but quirky and interesting for the most part -- it was a weird mix of "celebrity" shoes (something worn by Michael Jackson, or something like that) and peculiar shoes from history, mostly the 12th through 19th century. I came away feeling very glad hat I never had to wear 18th century footwear, most of those shoes seemed like torture devices of one sort or another.

Some photos:

What's this? A pair of ruby slippers?

These scary-looking clogs are apparently used in chestnut harvesting? Not quite sure how this works.

Horse-related?

We decided to walk home -- after only a couple of blocks we came upon a big football field where a large mob of ultimate frisbee players were working out, getting ready for a game. Turned out to be the Toronto Rush, a pro team. The younger generation was thrilled and wanted to stay to watch; after a brief period of negotiation, we arranged to let her stay and watch the game while we headed back to the hotel. We were a bit nervous (there were were, leaving our kid alone in a strange city in a foreign country, yeeks) but eventually reason prevailed and we parted company. The walk back to the hotel took a bit longer than we had thought (it was more like 40-45 mins).

Seen on the walk home -- didn't know this outfit was still a thing...

A Monty Python themed British pub no less:

After we had had a chance to relax and have a cup of tea, I texted our daughter to tell say "Leave the game by 5:30 so that you can make it to our dinner reservation on time". This worked for the most part (got lost once on the way back, leading to a lengthy text message exchange to get everyone re-oriented and headed in the correct direction), finally straggling in around 6:10.

We cabbed it over to Momofuku Daisho for dinner-- it was a nice meal. Momofuku turns out to be more of a pod of cluster of related eateries than a single restaurant. There is a noodle bar on the ground floor, then a lounge + "milk bar" on the second floor, and then up on the third floor is the slightly swankier sit down place. The third floor dining area is really a lovely space -- it's a sort of rectangular box that sticks partly our from the buildings, glass walls, tons of light, with superb views up and down University Ave. 

Interesting sculpture outside (Chinese, very contemporary):

We had "crispy chicken" sliders (waitress talked us into it), two salads, a side dish of broccoli, a rice ball dish, and two mains. The salads were probably the most interesting part of the meal: the first one was slices of fresh apple coated with a sort of fine puree of kimchi, then surrounded by dressed arugula, pistachios, and a few thin crispy slices of bacon -- awesome combination of flavors. The second one was quarters of baby romaine with a tart, flavorful dressing of some sort (hint of blue cheese) accompanied by pieces of jalapeno tempura. Yum. The rice ball dish was very hard to describe; it was little chunks/bricks of rice that had been toasted or fried on the outside (so that they were chewy/crunchy) then mixed together with some sort of pepper/tofu sauce, very weird but good. The mains were lettuce wraps -- one grilled chicken and one grilled mackerel, along with sauces and other things to put into the package and wrap up. 

All in all, it was an excellent meal, I would definitely go back for more.

We were a bit tired after that but decided that we still had some energy left, so we walked our way all the way back to the hotel (another half hour). Whew, long day!

It was good to veg in front of the tube/screen for a while in the evening. I found a good soccer game on the tube (Premier League, West Ham vs West Brom) while everyone else figured out something that they wanted to watch as well.

Sunday:

This morning Amy got up around 6:45 to hit the gym; the rest of us lolled in bed until 7 (bliss) and then went to sample the hotel breakfast. I worked out the gym after that, and we eventually got organized and headed off to the other side of town for our walking tour, which was in one of the city's Chinatown areas, also the neighborhood called "Kensington". 

Weather was... in a word... crummy. Misting rain, cold, not really much to like, but we had our rain jackets and we soldiered on. We met up with our group at the Art Gallery of Toronto, a huge building with an immense glass + steel facade (apparently designed by Frank Gehry). We had a smallish group (12 people), one from Dubai, two from Toronto, four from Australia, two from San Francisco, and then our family. Our tour guide was a young man, a cheerful and fairly entertaining guy (lots of slightly sarcastic jokes). 

We walked west from the museum, then northwest into Kensington, while listening to various stories about the city with a big focus on immigration-- people coming from all over (China, eastern Europe, Italy, Portugal, you name it). Our guide did a nice job pointing out interesting murals, street art, and bits of graffiti (the latter seems very high-quality here in Toronto). Kensington has a very hippy/artsy feel to it; we stopped in at a number of small shops + cafes along the way. 

Lots of cool murals in Chinatown:

Houses in Kensington:

On one street we walked by a series of marijuana "dispensaries" with pseudo-official looking signage. It turns out that marijuana is in fact still quite illegal, but the government has basically decided not to prosecute anyone at the moment, since people are anticipating that the law will be changed to make it legal before long. Hmm.

Grafiti in Kensington neighborhood:

On sale at Jimmy's Coffee Shop:

More cool murals:

This guy on the left (the lovesick robot) apparently makes appearances on a number of walls around town:

We were pretty cold and tired by the time the tour finished up (it was more than two hours), but we did get a recommendation for a good Chinese restaurant from or guide, so we opted to eat at Rol San on Spandina. Good choice, nearly everything was excellent. We had two plates of sautéed pea sprouts with garlic (a family favorite), some pan fried dumplings, a couple of packets of sticky rice, and a scallion pancake.   I also could not resist stopping to get a grilled pork banh mi from one of the local vietnamese places, so we definitely had a sizable lunch.

From there we walked (yet again) south to King Street to visit the MEC (camping/outdoor cooperative place, the Canadian equivalent of REI). The younger generation shopped (successfully) for hiking boots, and the older generation shopped (unsuccessfully) for shorts and hiking shirts. 

Police guy on a bike-- that was interesting to see:

After that we were really exhausted; Amy said she didn't want to walk another step, so we took the drastic step of ordering an Uber ride back to the hotel. In a somewhat ironic turn, the Uber ride for three was actually a bit cheaper than paying for the subway, even with the surge pricing extras due to the rain and the weekend. Who knew.

After relaxing for a bit at the hotel, we got ourselves organized and headed out to take the tram + subway off to the CN tower, where we had made dinner reservations at the "360" restaurant (a revolving deal that sits partway up the tower). We got most of the way there and then finally got cold feet when the guy at the entrance down below told us that there was "zero visibility" up top -- we called to cancel and then headed back north into the city to find place to eat. We settled on a sort of weird upstairs/downstairs place called "It's Not Fred / The Red Tomato", which was comfy and had decent food. 

Somewhere up there is a revolving restaurant:

At 7ish we headed over to the Second City theater on Mercer and then took in the comedy show there after that. It was really good -- best comedy I had seen in a long time. It was short sketches, but rehearsed (not improv), with a teeny bit is singing thrown in. They did a very funny Justin Trudeau sketch (featuring a tall actor wearing a sort of mop of hair and dancing seductively while the press & pols swooned), a very funny scene in which two female film directors are pitching their ideas to Hollywood producers, even a short sketch featuring a mock Syrian refugee (very funny in spite of the nature of the material).  We definitely enjoyed it, I think I would try to go back the next time I am in Toronto.

Second City theater:

Before the show:

Monday:

Overcast this morning but not raining-- after a 7:30 breakfast Amy and I headed to the gym to work out for a bit, then we spent time trying to get our day organized. We didn't plan a lot of activities ahead of time, since we weren't sure what the weather would be like or whether we'd be carrying our luggage. After a fair amount of googling we decided that we'd try to visit the Textile Museum in the morning, then have lunch at a cafe in the Gardiner Museum called "A La Carte". This left us with a fair amount of time to relax at the hotel, but we couldn't find too much else to do given the weather.

Here is a shot of the Toronto subway on the inside. It's a lovely subway, nice and new. The cars are all connected together, so if you stand in the middle you can look all the way down to the end. Made me want to grab a skateboard and zoom my way down to the end...

Funny sign seen on the walk to the museum:

Lunch at the Gardiner was good -- very civilized, tasty food, and a nice quiet space in which to have a conversation.

After that we headed back to the hotel, got packed up, and spend the rest of the day contending with cabs, trains, planes, and cars to make our way home. Our flight was a bit delayed, but we did eventually make it.

A fun trip!

Biking on Le Petit Train Du Nord

Amy and kids and I headed up to Canada this past week for a bike trip-- I'm now getting around to putting up a blog post for the trip. Photos below are about half from my camera and half from Pete and Rosana's.

As usual, this is a trip that Amy conceived of and organized; not sure exactly how she heard about the place, but there is a converted rail line called "Le Petit Train Du Nord" up in Quebec that is an ideal route for biking. It starts about 45 mins drive north of Montreal, then runs northwest up into the Laurentian hills, finishing up in the town of Mont Laurier.

Along for the ride this time were Pete and Rosana, their daughter Blue, Amy + myself and our two kids, and our niece Cate, for a total of eight.  We drove up on Sunday Aug 12 to Canada, with everyone meeting up at a Best Western motel in Saint Jerome in the evening. Saint Jerome isn't actually the southernmost point on the trail, but it's a popular starting point, since the parts south of that are basically running through the Montreal suburbs (not exactly wilderness).

Here we are on the way up: the setup with the rack looks ridiculous, but we did manage to cram on all five bikes. The rack sticks way out from the back of the car, and every time you look back it seems as though it is about to fall off, but it seemed to do the job anyhow.

Had dinner together at an Italian place in Saint Jerome, then it was off to bed to get some rest for the first day of the tour.

Day 1, Mon: up at 6:45am to pack the bikes onto the cars, get organized, and had a quick bite to eat. After a bit of a scramble to get everything squared away, we drove over to the center of town and located the "depot" where the bike trail runs through. The town has set up a convenient (and very large) dirt parking lot right near the trail, so we parked our cars ($6 CN per day) and schlepped our gear over to the waiting vans. The shuttles were smallish, maybe 20 seats, each hauling a huge bike multi-level bike trailer. We delivered our bags to the guy manning the luggage transfer service (basically a minivan); this turned out to be one of the nicer aspects of the trip: having your bag magically disappear from one hotel and then reappear at the next hotel along your way. Not cheap, but a wonderful service. The vans and racks:

The ride up to Mont Laurier starts out on highway 15, a major interstate type highway, then after about 45 mins, the highway finishes up and you get onto route 117, which is a good deal smaller. For the first leg up to Mont Tremblant the van was about half empty, so we were able to spread out a bit. Kids and I played a couple of games of hearts (one of the bounciest card games I have ever experienced-- the shocks on the bus were almost nonexistent). At Mont Tremblant we stopped and took on more passengers; after that the bus was pretty much full, so no more card games.  The van dumped us out in the parking lot of an IGA grocery store (kind of weird). We ran in and bought some bread + cheese + sausage for lunch, which turned out to be a wise decision, since there weren't any other lunch options to speak of on the first leg). The drop-off scene:

First section of the bike trail was great-- asphalt, good condition, with long sections running close to various lakes and ponds. The first two-thirds or so of the ride was a very slight uphill, then the last third slightly downhill. We rode a total of 55 kilometers (our longest ride, but not by much). The trees along the ride were very New Englandy-- mostly smaller/younger (the big stuff presumably having been cut a while ago), but very familiar varieties: white pine, white + yellow birch, spruce, maple, ash, and other more scrubby stuff. No oak that I could see (the only one I spotted was in someone's front yard).

This shot is a typical view of an entrance gate to the trail: wooden gate and "welcome!" sign:

On the trail:

Not too many flowers, but enough to make things cheerful:

 Not sure what this one was:

View of the lakes on the first morning:

The paved part of the trail -- nice and smooth:

More riding photos:

Unbeknownst to Cate, there is a longstanding Quebecois tradition of yodeling at bike rest stops:

Whew, yodeling complete.

Beware of the dad...

More riding photos:

We eventually finished up our ride at the first B&B with plenty of time for a swim / shower and some relaxation.  The owner, Guy, was a very nice older guy; he got us settled in. Not the largest place I have ever stayed in; there were only about five rooms: we took four, and then there was another couple (from England I think) staying in the last one. The house has nice high ceilings, which gives it an open / airy feel. After getting unpacked, the kids went for a swim (along with Pete and me) while the women opted to hang out at the house. The swimming was actually pretty decent; a 5-10 min walk through the woods to a large pond. Nice water, nobody else in sight that we could see (although there were some houses and boat docks visible).

After an hour of so of relaxing and reading (and more volleyball for the kids) we had a dinner out on the porch (very nice weather-- ideal for outdoor dining). Lots of food: carrot/parsnip soup, turnovers/dumplings with ground lamb, then a main course of game hen and root vegetables, and finally a sort of chocolate bread pudding thing for dessert.

Food!

There seems to be a weird thing going on in Quebec with odd-colored carrots-- we had purple and yellow carrots served with this dinner, then we saw the strange multi-colored beasties later on again in one of the small grocery stores. Odd.

Day 2, Tue: woke up to the sound of raindrops hitting the porch roof-- not a downpour, but definitely the wet stuff. We had a nice big breakfast (I think Pete and I were the only ones to finish everything), then got organized and struck out on the trail. It was wet but not actually raining when we set out, which was nice. We played "tag" with the other couple who had stayed at the B+B (they periodically accused us of "following" them).

Half way through the morning ride we noticed a "pick your own" blueberry place, so Pete and Rosana and I stopped for a pint (they were very tasty-- incredibly ripe).

Later on the kids spied a bakery, so they jumped at the opportunity to grab various pastries and cinnamon rolls. The bakery was across the trail from shelter of sorts that looked out over a marsh that the town had set up as a sort of bird sanctuary. There were pictures on the wall and descriptions of various bird species (this included descriptions of the bird sounds/calls in French, which were hilarious for some reason). While we were finishing our snacks, however, the clouds opened up and it began to rain in earnest. We waited for about 10 minutes for it to let up-- eventually most of the gang opted to put on rain jackets and continue, while Amy and I chickened out and stayed under our shelter for another 15 minutes (it did eventually let up a little).

Stopped for a break, playing "Mad Libs":

Bridge over the Riviere Rouge:

Lots of train-related stuff along the trail:

We stopped for lunch in the town of Labelle; we picked a restaurant (Cafe La Gare) that was right on the path. The meal was something of a mixed bag-- the food was quite good, but they were very short-staffed that day for some reason, so it took 45 minutes for them to get it all prepared and delivered. Rosana was the bravest of the gang; she ordered a plate of "poutine", the local Quebecois specialty (french fries with gravy and cheese curds). It's a dish that looks sort of scary but it actually tastes pretty good.

At that point the track turned from pavement to dirt; the surface was better than I thought it would be, however (not too many muddy patches or potholes, mostly pretty smooth). For our post-lunch ride we settled into what turned out to be our "default" riding configuration: kids screaming ahead (out of sight within 5 minutes), Amy and I riding sort of in the middle, then Pete and Rosana bringing up the rear.

We eventually arrived at our second bed-and-breakfast, "L'Achillée Millefeuille":

This place was slightly kookier than the last, but nice in its own sort of hippy + agro + green way. Collection of cabins / buildings set in among big pig pine trees with lots of gardens, plantings, flowers, and herbs of all sorts. The entrance was right off the bike path; when you pull in, you have to pick up a little walkie-talkie gadget to contact the owner so that he can unlock the gate and let you in. This proved to be a somewhat tricky operation (lots of buzzing and clicking from the device, then we finally heard a squawk after about 3-4 mins and the voice of Claude, one of the owners, who told us he would be over to let us in shortly). Also introduced to us were the two dogs that roam the place, "Tofu" (large) and "Soleil" (small). There were also assorted chickens and a large + very friendly black cat, whose name escapes me at the moment.

After getting settled the kids and I got directions from Claude and the headed down a short path that took us to the Riviere Rouge, which was only a couple of hundred yards off to the west. Kind of a weird swim: the water was very low (hip high at the deepest point), but the river bottom was covered in nice sand throughout, so it was easy to walk around and explore. We had seen the river at various points on our ride that afternoon and had wondered why they named it "Red", but when you swim it finally becomes clear-- the sand at the bottom is flecked with little bits of red stone, giving it a reddish tinge. After getting cleaned up we had a series of ping-pong matches, then a short volleyball game. For dinner we split up into two groups: Pete + Rosana + Blue opted to stay and eat at the inn, while the rest of us caught a ride from Monique (Claude's wife, the other owner) into the village of Mont Tremblant, where we ate at a restaurant there. It turns out that there are actually two "Mont Tremblant" villages-- one for the locals and one for the ski tourists (we went to the "locals" on this time). After that we had a few card games before everyone ran out of steam and hit the sack.

Day 3: in the morning we did our best to get Claude to make some coffee for the early risers, but he was having none of that: "Sorry, no coffee until 8:30" (seems very French somehow). We even sent in some kids to see if he would take pity on poor hungry/thirsty children, but no luck. When it did finally arrive, however, the breakfast was wonderful -- eggs from the inn's chickens cooked with herbs from the garden, local cheeses, french toast, yummy yoghurt with berries, blueberries with some sort of lemon cream, and various other tasty dishes.  Amy and I watched our kids go through two large plates of eggs and french toast (normally not big breakfast eaters).

After settling up with Claude and Monique, we hit the trail (it had been foggy when we woke up, but eventually cleared up). Slight uphill for the morning ride; we stopped for lunch at a small town called Saint-Faustin-Lac-Carre' where Claude had given us a recommendation for lunch (a sort of local gourmet store / deli place that made us sandwiches). Very tasty, although we wound up having a lot of leftovers, since the sandwiches were quite large.

Monarch caterpillar:

Kind of a cool shot-- the wood (burned and rotting) is from some ancient version of the bridge, then there is the stone support for the rail bridge, and then finally up on top you have the wooden planks put on for the bike riders:

Frog-hunting:

Photo of the younger folks from MA on the bridge:

Here's a representative shot of the unpaved portion of the trail:

No idea what this was, but we found it by the trail near what was probably an old mill:

After lunch the kids zoomed off at an even more ferocious pace than usual-- we didn't see them at all until the end of the ride. We did some climbing for the second part of the ride (very slight grade, but definitely an uphill). The "crest" point of the trail was sort of odd in that it ran right between two enormous gravel pits (very industrial), then after that past a huge sawmill (very active, lots of lumber trucks). The trees on the trucks being brought to the mill all looked like pine/spruce, and oddly small size-wise (although I suppose this makes sense given that a lot of Canadian timber is the "soft" stuff).

We eventually rolled into the town of Val David and caught up with the kids, who were (predictably) sitting out in front of the hotel playing cards. The hotel was called the "PremaShanti" and although it had a vaguely Indian decor thing going on in a few places, it was mainly just a regular hotel. Great location right on the shore of a nice lake/pond, with nice views, a sandy beach, excellent swimming and kayaking. We had a nice swim and entertained ourselves with watery pursuits for the rest of the afternoon, then had a lengthy session lolling around reading and chatting out on the patio next to the water.

Pete always seems to travel with boatloads of computer processing power; this trip was no exception (he had laptop, ipad, and iphone). Cate, Blue, and Rosana also had smartphones, so part of the routine of showing up a new place was to ask for the WiFi password (this also applied to restaurants too, surprisingly).

The dinner at Premashanti was good although they definitely took their time actually bringing things to the table. Amy had arranged for a cake to celebrate Cate's birthday; the waitstaff brought it out with suitable fanfare and we all sang "Happy Birthday", but the waiter snatched the cake away and it must have been 15 minutes before they actually came back with slices for us to eat (weird).

Day 4: we managed to convince the hotel to give us breakfast at 8am (they had proposed 9am, which seemed a little too late). We had a nice meal, sitting in the dining hall next to a table with a half dozen middle-aged ladies from Ontario, who were also going along the same route that we were. We eventually got packed up, settled our bill, and were on our way again.

Getting ready to head out after staying at Premashanti-- I believe that the photographer made a request for "Usain Bolt":

The nice thing about going "north to south" on L.P.T.D.N. is that you get a wonderful stretch of downhill riding on the last day-- it seemed like the first 15 kilometers went by in a breeze, with very little pedaling. Lots of nice views of the lakes south of Mont Tremblant and of the Riviere Nord off on the right of the trail. Eventually the trail flattened out and we had to work a bit in order to keep up a good pace; it was hot and a little dusty. We eventually rolled into Saint Jerome again around 1pm. We decided to forgo an official lunch as such, and instead put together several weird combinations of french fries, ice cream, and assorted trail mixes to keep us going. Our bags turned up around 1:30, then we went through the usual struggles to get everything packed. Pete and Rosana had to hit the road more or less right away after the bags turned up, since they needed to be back at home the next day for school-related stuff, so we said our goodbyes and hit the road.

Packing the bikes back onto the rack, a grueling exercise usually requiring a certain amount of grumbling and cussing:

The drive back was lengthy-- getting through Montreal always seems to be a struggle, even at times that seemingly should not have a lot of traffic. We enjoyed  listening to a book on tape, "The Wee Free Men" by Terry Pratchett, which is actually a lot of fun to hear read aloud, since the guy doing the reading did a good job with the Scottish accents.

All in all, it was a good trip: wonderful scenery, good exercise, no mechanical or other bike-related disasters (hurray!).