We left Apt 18 at about 2:50 on Friday afternoon in very spur of the moment fashion. We gave Hippo some instructions for while we were away (which, one can imagine, is a primary time for the cat to play) and made sure that whatever giant cream party she had everyone behaved safely, no jumping onto the counters intoxicated or taking shots of half-and-half all night. Regardless, we made three stops, at the bank, gas station, and Harvey's. The first two seem fairly self explanatory, but the third deserves at least a second of extra attention. In some respects it is just a regular burger joint, its a similar menu, though the fries are admittedly high quality real-potato style. There are two weird things that deserve explanation. First, you order your burger, they cook it, and then they bring it over to this little area at the end of the counter, that looks a good deal like the Subway fixins area, and they add the fixins, however you want. Its pretty awesome, I do admit, to get some decent control over the quantity of mustard, tomatoes, onions etc. even though the Canadians apparently put pickle relish and hot peppers on their cheeseburgers. The second weird thing I didn't try, though I may just be saving it for a second go-round. Its an interesting but poorly named Quebecois dish called poutine. There isn't a good picture of Harvey's specific poutine, though I can tell you that it costs like 1.50 to upgrade your regular fries to poutine. Technically thats a buck-fitty Canadian, so the poutine is at least 10% off virtually all the time. Here's a decent shot:
After our adventurous bacon cheeseburgers we managed to get through Toronto friday rush-hour traffic and into our hotel room, the heart of downtown, just up the street from the Hockey hall of fame, by 5:30. There was less than 2 hours of driving involved over all, its like the trip from the Southern burbs to St. Cloud, if you've ever made that drive. Anyway, our room at the Courtyard Marriot was hella cheap, thanks to the internet-savvy of one Ms. Kate Marie B-2tha-K. I rolled the car to the weirdly accented Canadian valet and after a quick look at our free wireless internet to determine exactly where we were going (by the way, if you type www.google.com into a computer when you are connected to Canadian internet, it will take you to www.google.ca, how fucked up is that) we were out the door. I have commented, prolly more than a couple times, that I have never been a fan of mass tranist, but since we were being experimental and I hate driving in big cities, I decided that we would roll the Toronto subway system.
In reality I don't think I've been on a subway for near a decade, I'm just not in cities that have them most of the time. The little time I have spent in Chicago tends to be at Katie's aunt's house, we had no time for the Metro in D.C., and I hate Boston enough when I don't have to listen to Red Sox Nation rubes in a contained space. Regardless, if Katie had been trying to convince me that I would like mass-transit if I ever used an efficient system (and she was) this trip was brilliance to the nuts degree. Seriously, if it wasn't for the fact that I was working with American currency, there would have been no problems at all. The joint was clean, it was fast, it was comfortable, and not outlandishly expensive. I have now been convinced, pretty much entirely by this
that we should move to Canada. I suppose the lack of policy debate and the fact that she would have to go to Canadian law school would mean that Katie is not entirely interested, though you've gotta love the health care and both the academic and personal freedom. If you care to look closely enough at the map, our hotel is located exactly one block from the College St. station on the Yonge line. There's a decent looking apartment building right behind the hotel, I think they have vacancies. I don't know that this makes the dreaded mega cities anymore palatable, but it can't hurt.
Besides, you know, dreaming up and executing the whole thing, Katie's biggest accomplishment for the weekend was finding the Toronto citypass deal, which allowed us to go to alot of area attractions for very litte cash. Stop one: the Art Gallery of Ontario. Alot of the joint was under construction, but we got into the special exhibit, a very impressive display of colorfield art called The Shape of Color. I don't know a tremendous amount about this movement, but thanks to Chip, the Macalester art department, and a course that combined cursory readings of critical theory with alot of Robert Rauschenberg slides, I have at least a cursory understanding of the major 20th century movements. I like this kind of art, even if I don't know the exhibitors involved, but this exhibition did not suffer from such a dilemma. Sol Lewitt, Ellsworth Kelly, and Mark Rothko were all familiar to me. The canvases tend to be huge and are characterized by some incredibly bright and vibrant colors, its the aspect of modernism that Katie enjoys. We couldn't take pictures, jobviously, but there is thankfully a web version of my favorite from the collection:
called Gun Club. Its essentially a rug, made of hand-dyed fabric spread out across a 20x20 or so area of the floor. Really cool overall, it has a very crystalline structure to it that I enjoyed. This old Canadian lady who was volunteering at the AGO talked to me about it for like 5 minutes, which was awkward though friendly.
After the art, we decided to enjoy the early evening air and take a walk down to the CN Tower. While there was no question that I wanted to check this place out, since its the most recognizable aspect of Torono, even on the epic Canadian Idol, I am always kinda wary of things this excessively touristy. We got there about 9-ish and were already pretty exhausted from the walk. We took a leisurely 45 second elevator ride to the top, which out of the windows is really pretty sweet to watch. I have been up in monuments like this, well, like the Arch in St. Louis and the Washington Monument basically, and the thing that tends to unify them is the horrific elevators. They tend to be tiny and claustrophobic, this was not at all the case in Toronto, where it was about the size of a medium-small freight elevator with glass doors and windows and a friendly Canadian tour guide who explained the length of the ride, the brief history of a tall tower, and so on. The observation deck was pretty freaking awesome. Its an incredible view in a very comfortable area, not to mention that Katie really liked it. Here are some pictures from CN:
The first is towards the West from the observation deck. The second was the view from the table at the bar we sat at. Thats right, there is a bar and grille, featuring some plasma TVs (showing the Blue Jays this night) and somewhat reasonably priced drinks 1100 odd feet in the air. Its a wicked cool place to watch the night rise After a good dose of Stoli we took the extra-journey included in our CityPass to the skypod, which is ridiculously high, another couple hundred yards I believe. Here's a little abstract work I did up there:
While I really enjoyed getting to see shit this high up, Katie was a bit frightened and stayed towards the inner wall. She didn't let it ruin her cuteness or attitude. See, for example, here:
To give a bit of perspective of exactly how ricockulously high this was, here are pictures from directly above the SkyDome:
and this one, of approximately the same East/North-East view of before, I know its blurry, but its way high up:
After we took an elevator filled with a bunch of Avril-style Canadian teenage punks down for a minute or two, we hit the glass floor level. Its exactly what it sounds like, and let me tell you that as a really fat guy, its fucking hard to trust that the glass which is below you is not gonna break. Especially when it creaks. Anyway, we didn't take a picture there, since Katie wouldn't come within 10 yards of it, but we did step outside for a quick final pic before our 45 second trip down with a group of (I kid you not) Scottish punks that we traded the Avrils for. So this is Katie on the outdoor observation deck:
.We took the subway back to College street and walked a couple blocks looking for food and ultimately selecting this Canadian pizza joint, where we had these calzone-like things. They were pretty good, as was the Canadian coke with real sugar.
I had planned to do this whole trip in one post, but since this one has taken like a week and a million inches of space, I think I will split it up. Hippo is excited to go home tomorrow, so we will see you all from the land of 10K Lakes. Nothing like a 16 hour trip, two people, a persian cat, and a Mazda baby.
Peace,
MB-K
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