Toronto

Happy August! Jon and I was able to sleep in today. So our day began at 12:30pm. We walked through Chinatown and purchased some buns for lunch. Then we walked to Dundas square which is Toronto’s version of time square except less busy. They had jumbotrons with ads on the buildings. There was also Eaton Centre. We walked along Yonge street where there were many stores. Then we walked to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Afterwards, we walked to the CN tower and took pictures from the outside. Admission was $22.99 which is expensive. In Chicago, the Willis (Sears) Tower was $15 or so. We didn’t think it was worth it. We also saw the Rogers Centre and Air Canada Place.

We walked through the Entertainment District where there are theatres. We then walked back to Dundas Square to meet up with our high school friends, Peter and Will. In the square, we saw break dancers and drummers. We also saw a chalk artist who drew pictures with chalk on the sidewalk.

We ate Pho in Chinatown with the boys. It tastes like the Pho I normally eat in Vancouver so it was tasty. Afterwards, we had bubble tea. I ordered watermelon green tea with aloe vera. I wanted something refreshing so that’s why I chose watermelon but it tasted like a jolly rancher. Jon ordered Mango green tea with pearls. He liked it. Peter asked what the difference was between green tea and black tea. I said that black tea is stronger. He didn’t understand what stronger meant. When we was ordering, he asked the waitress what the difference was between green and black tea. She said “black tea is stronger” which was exactly what I said. The restroom at this bubble tea cafe was not located near the back of the cafe but in a different room upstairs. Peter didn’t know where it was so he started heading to the back of the cafe where the kitchen was. As he got back there, the waitress ran to the back to get him and redirect him. It was funny. Peter thought he had to pee in a wok. Ha ha.

We drove Peter to Hamilton where he is staying. Jon and I are heading back to our residence. It’s been fun seeing our friends.

Good night!

Waterloo, Orangeville, Mississauga

Good day everyone! Jon and I have a very nice day with lots of company. This morning, our good friend Chloe made us a wonderful brunch. She made mussels, salmon and squash with brown rice and cranberry cinnamon oatmeal cookies for dessert. It was DEEEELICIOUS! She’s a very good cook. It was very nice seeing her.

After we left Chloe’s, we drove to Orangeville to see Jon’s grandpa’s friend. They have been friends for a while but never managed to meet. He and his wife were very lovely and nice. They gave us more information on the places to see as we head further east. They also showed us their garden/landscaping and let us ride in his Supercharged Avanti. They also gave us a can of maple syrup from Quebec which we’ll bring back for Jon’s grandpa. It was a very nice visit.

From Orangeville, we drove to Mississauga where we saw Jon’s grandma’s nephew. It was interesting because Jon and the nephew have an age gap of at least 25 years yet they are cousins. We also found out that the nephew’s son is the same age as Jon but Jon is his uncle. Actually, the son is older because his birthday is in August and Jon’s is in December. Funny, eh? They were very sweet and welcoming. They brought us to Mandarin, a Chinese/Japanese/Western buffet. It was delicious. They had crab legs, shrimps, salmon sashimi and much more. Everything was very tasty. It was nice for Jon to learn more about his family history from his cousin (grandma’s nephew). The nephew spoke mainly Cantonese so I had to translate for Jon. They gave us a box of Japanese cookies. We would save it for Jon’s grandma but it probably won’t last.

Jon wants to let you know that I’m bad because I ate Chloe’s delicious oatmeal cookie before Chloe’s meal and before the buffet. However, I didn’t know we were going to a buffet!

We’re staying at the University of Toronto Residence. We’ll meet up with some more of our high school friends so we’re pretty excited about that. Good night everyone!

Hamilton, Waterloo

Greetings!

Jon and I drove to Hamilton to see the Dundurn Castle. This castle has 77 rooms and was built in the 1830’s. It used the previous house as a foundation and built over top of it. It also had a room with a large pit where ice was stored, acting like a freezer. They would collect ice from the lake during winter and would surround the ice block with hay and sawdust so that the ice block would last all year. The castle had 2 flushing toilets which were considered high tech back then. The funny thing is that the toilets drained into the river where the local people got their drinking water. In the rooms with a fireplace, there would be a bell that would be rung so that the servants could light the fireplace. The bells had different pitches for the different rooms so that the servants knew which room to light. There were many types of irons, all of which were quite heavy. They had irons that looked like little lamps to iron the ribbons on bonnets and such. There were also samples of green ketchup from green tomatoes. We walked around their vegetable garden and the war museum which they had on site.

We drove around downtown Hamilton to try to find the Farmer’s market but it wasn’t well marked so we never got there. Jon drove to the old Studebaker plant where his 1951 studebaker was built.

Jon has reached his 100th punch buggy. I am trailing behind.

We are in Waterloo. We met up with two of our high school friends, Jeff and Chloe. We’ll be staying at Chloe’s tonight. Jeff cooked us really good food. He made delicious shrimp, soya sauce chicken and pizza. We also went to Marble Slab and got a green tea with blueberries. It was delicious. Chloe wanted ice-cream that’s not sweet but she got dark chocolate ice cream with almond in a dark chocolate and scor waffle cone. She wound up giving it to Jeff. Ha ha. It’s really nice seeing them.

Have a good night!

Niagara Falls

Hello from Niagara Falls!

Jon and I slept in today till 11am. That was much needed. We walked to Niagara Falls. There were 2 falls: one was the Canadian “horseshoe” falls and the other was the American one “Bridal Veil” falls. We went on Maid of the Mist and Journey behind the Falls. Maid of the Mist was very nice. The boat went near the falls so we got a very good view of the horseshoe. The Journey behind the falls sounded better than it actually was. We went down 38m into a tunnel where we saw the falls rushing down. However, you really couldn’t see much. There was an observational deck which allowed us to see the side of the falls. That was nice but it was a disappointment. We walked to the top of the falls and saw where the water rushed down. That was very cool!

Afterwards, we walked to Wendy’s to get a chocolate frosty. Jon has been talking about it for a while so we finally got it. It was okay.

Jon wanted to do the “Laser Maze”. Think of a spy trying to get to the treasure by dodging laser beams. That’s what it is except only 2 minutes and 15 seconds long. It sounds cool but it probably isn’t that good especially since the person who worked there said that laser tag was better. Jon didn’t do it at the end.

We then walked around Clifton Hill which is the main street where tourists go. We had dinner at Pizza Pizza. We ordered a medium Canadian pizza. We learned that in addition to HST (13% tax), Niagara falls has an additional tourist tax of 3% so in total, it’s 16%. Sad. It’s too expensive here.

Jon and I returned from seeing the falls at night. It was lit with different colours. Jon and I thought that there would be fireworks but there wasn’t. Instead, Jon was enjoying his camera. He took really cool pictures. One of them, he told me to hold his cell phone and make words/shapes with it. It turned out pretty good. It’s 11pm right now so we’ll have to shower and go to sleep as soon as possible.

We’ll be seeing two of our high school friends tomorrow in Waterloo!! Have a wonderful night everyone!

London, Brantford

Good day everyone! Jon and I spent 30 minutes trying to find a place to get an oil place. The street that we were on had lots of auto shops but they were all busy. So we drove 2 miles down from our accommodation to find a Jiffy Lube. We were in and out by 20 minutes. We were quite happy with that. We then drove to Tim Horton’s to get 2-12 grain bagels with herb and garlic cheese cream. It was tasty. I haven’t had Tim Horton’s in a while but we did see some in Detroit.

Then we drove to downtown London to see the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. This place honours the people who have made significant contribution to medicine. There was Banting and Best who isolated Insulin. There was also Michael Smith from UBC who created a methodology to isolate and mutate specific genes, also known as “site directed mutagenesis”. Jon would like me to point out that there was a Chinese guy (Dr. Tak Wah Mak) who uncovered the structure of the T cell receptor (T cells are part of your immune system). Jon was pretty grossed out because there were images of the brain cut in half.

After that we drove down to Ivey Park to take pictures of a “waterfall” but it was more like “several big hoses” as Jon describes. We then drove to Canadian Tire to purchase coolant. Jon was finally able to use his stack of Canadian tire money. The Canadian Tire we went to had a gas bar. Jon wished that there was a gas bar in Vancouver so he can get Canadian tire money after filling up. I asked him if he would really fill up his car with CT gas and he said “probably not, I would fill up my mom’s car”. Ha ha.
We then drove to Brantford where we went to Wayne Gretsky Sport Center to see memorabilia from him and other athletes. We then drove to a supermarket to buy apples, bananas and cheese sticks. The cheese sticks were very difficult to eat. Jon said that they were “rubbery” and “full of undeliciousness”.

Afterwards, we drove to Bell Homestead national Historic Site where Alexander Graham Bell conceived the idea of the telephone in 1874. There was also another house called Henderson House where the first Canadian telephone business office was. They had 2 old fashion telephones for us to try. One of them, you had to crank the knob to ring the other phone. It was interesting.

We’ll be staying in Niagara Falls tonight and visiting it tomorrow. Jon spent about 30 minutes in the rain using his bug remover cloth which he bought at Walmart to clean the car. He was soaking by the end of it and smelt funny. Ha ha. I guess I can’t complain as I didn’t help him but I did make dinner (while watching Toddlers and Tiara).

Jon is now swinging his damp shirt at me in a violent circular motion. ARRRRGH! We’ll sleep early tonight for a long day at the falls. Good night everyone!

We’re back in Canada! Jon and I crossed the border from Detroit to Windsor not too long ago. We had to pay 4 USD toll to come home.

Jon and I drove to Dearborn which is about 15 minutes from Detroit to see the Henry Ford Museum. We took the factory tour of the Rouge plant where we saw the construction of the Ford F150 trucks. The Rouge plant is special because it was the first plant to be “vertically integrated”. This means that the plant can process raw material, manufacture car parts and build the car all in one site. The tour consisted of 5 stations.

The first station was a video on the history of Ford. The second station was an artistic video of a Ford F150 being built. The neat thing about this station was that the screens were separated into several panels and surrounded us 360 degrees. Our chairs had the freedom to spin 360 degrees as well. However, as Jon pointed out, they mainly used 3 screens. They also sprayed us as the truck was being spray painted and used a variety of strobe lights to match the video. The third station was on an observation deck. It overlooked the whole plant. The roof of the buildings contains a plant that helps insulate the building, and absorb 60% of rain water.

The fourth station was the tour around the manufacturing plant. We saw the assembly of the windshield, headlights, seatbelt, door, stereo, headliner, and dashboard. We also saw how they put the cab (the front of the pickup truck) and the bed (back of the pickup truck) together. We saw how they tested the truck for performance and where the faulty ones went. It was very interesting. Jon was very pleased with the tour!

The last station was a showroom of the most famous cars built by ford. There were the Model A, Mustang, Thunderbird, and the 1949. We wanted a souvenir but everything was quite expensive. They had really neat utensils (fork, knife, and spoon) but on the other end were wrenches and pliers. There was also a belt made from a seat belt. Since we couldn’t afford anything, we made 2 penny pressed mustangs. We made 2 because the first one didn’t turn out so well.

We then drove around to find a oil change place but to no avail. We’ll get it done tomorrow as we’ve driven over 5000km. We went to Target and bought $60 worth of goodies. I bought a pair of shoes and rainboots because I don’t know where my citrus ones went. They had some cute dresses. However, when I would ask Jon for his opinion, he would say “yeah that would look nice...if you want to clean toilets”. Gosh. Never asking him for his opinion again. Jon bought brown flip flops to deter people from stealing them. Ha ha. We also bought water and 3 packs of parmesan goldfishes, Jon’s favourite.

We are now in London. We’re staying at Knight’s Inn which has a nice flat screen Samsung television. As we were driving here, we were listening to Slash featuring Adam Levine’s “Gotten”. I was singing along until Jon said “This is my favourite song to listen to... with earplugs”. Sigh.
We ate at a local Vietnamese restaurant. I ordered Pho with beef balls and Jon ordered lemon grass chicken on rice. The pho was okay. The soup didn’t taste like much but it tasted better with hoisin sauce. Jon’s dish was quite tasty.

When we returned to our accommodation, I was detagging Jon’s flip flops. As I was doing so, I noticed the words “Women” on them. Ha ha. Jon bought women flip flops. You can’t really tell because they are very generic looking. However, we should have known because this was in the women's section. Jon was saying that there is less space between the end of the flip flop to the back of his heel. Ha ha.

Also, there has been some concern about my one "black sock" in some of our photos. It's an ankle brace to support my ankle. I sprained it a few years ago as I have 2 left feet. so you'll notice that if we're doing lots of walking or hiking, I usually have it on.

Have a good night!

Great Lakes Crossing, Detroit

Hello Everyone! Jon and I are staying in Detroit, Michigan at Extended Stay America. This place has a full sized kitchen with a refrigerator and a freezer, microwave and stove. It’s quite spacious. The person at the front desk also gave us free internet. Normally, we would have to pay $4.99.

Today, we drove from Grand Rapids to Auburn Hills where we shopped at Great Lakes Crossing Outlet Center. Jon bought a wallet and black socks. He still doesn’t have flip flops yet. I bought a navy top which is very cute. We also ate at Auntie Anne’s. In Minneapolis, we received a pretzel stamp card where you buy 6 and get 1 free. We had 3 stamps already so Jon wanted to get another 3 so the can get his free one. We had a pretzel dog, pretzel sticks with cheese dip and an almond pretzel. For our free pretzel, we choose a garlic one. It was not so good.

When we arrived in Detroit, we drove downtown to see the GM plaza, Kobo Convention Hall, and Hart Plaza. We made dinner tonight. Actually, Jon made dinner. He made udon with chicken broth, eggs and bacon. He was going to fry the eggs but we didn’t have oil so it was cooked with the udon. We bought a small tub (1 pint) of cherry cordial ice-cream.

Have a great night everyone!