Vancouver meets Toronto

This weekend, I crossed off an item on my Toronto Bucket List:

Go cycling on Toronto Island

D and I have talked about doing this since July, but due to our busy schedules, we just haven’t been able to sync up a time. It was certainly much later in the season than I had envisioned, but it worked out really well and we had the most wonderful time. I’d even call it a perfect autumn day.

We lucked out with beautiful weather on Sunday. Sunny, blue skies, with just a tinge of winter chill in the air. We started the day off with a yummy breakfast of cinnamon raisin toast and bananas with vanilla yogurt.

Read more

Every time I’m asked for my phone number, I have to bite back the “604” that threatens to escape my mouth.

F predicted it would take 2 months to start feeling homesick. I don’t know what it was that did it. Maybe because I started to get sick, and whenever one is sick, one typically craves home - that feeling of comfort, familiarity, and being taken care of. I don’t know. In any case, the homesickness hit and it hit hard.  

So how did I try to remedy it? By listening to a lot of music from home: 

• Hey Ocean!
• Dan Mangan
• Said the Whale
• Maria in the Shower
• The New Pornographers
• Mother Mother

And by creating a Vancouver Mix on my iTunes. Probably not the most productive way to deal with it, but it was comforting.  

It also helped to re-connect with a couple of a colleague and a friend from home. I met up for lunch with A, who was a project manager at my old office. Though we didn’t work that closely together, we were familiar enough with each other that she suggested meeting up when I arrived in Toronto. A is originally from Britain and she has the most delightful British accent - I could just sit and listen to her talk for hours.

She had just moved to Toronto in January of this year, so she had some great “settling” in stories to share. She had quite a horrendous time getting settled in Toronto due to complications with her husband’s job and securing a nanny. So imagine her surprise and jealousy, when I told her about how easy it had been for me to get settled - the living arrangement with F and finding D so quickly ;-) 

We talked about how funny it was to always be comparing things in Toronto to Vancouver. For example, we ate at Thai Express and I likened it to the Noodle Box from back home. She mentioned that she, her husband, and their two children went to Toronto Island over the weekend, and she said it was the first time she came to appreciate Toronto for Toronto, without comparing it anything from Vancouver. Which made me really excited to go. D and I really need to coordinate our schedules - our plan is to take our bikes over on the ferry and ride around, and the cold weather is fast approaching. 

Then I met up with S, who’s originally from Mississauga and was visiting her folks for a few weeks. We met up at Dundas Square and wandered over to Eaton’s Centre to pick out a pair of sunglasses. Then we just hung out on one of the benches in the mall and caught up. We had a really great conversation about life, school, and relationships. It felt so great to spend time with someone from home, particularly since S lives with C, one of my very best friends from UBC and whom I miss dearly. 

Homesickness. Yeah, it sucks, but thankfully it’s also fairly manageable. :-)

Work Time-Out

After a busy and slightly strange morning of sales calls and meetings, and major technical issues with testing the new pages for our website, I was feeling pretty drained. Unmotivated. A bit of a failure at life.

And apparently it was fairly obvious during my EOD chat with C. He enthusiastically encouraged (read: just shy of commanded) me to get off my laptop, stop thinking about work for the day, and go for a run/bike ride to clear my head. I struggled with it for a while because there’s just so. much. work. to. be. done. 

But what can I say? I follow direction well. Plus, it is a bit sad that I spent all that money shipping my bike from Vancouver only to have it gather cobwebs in the foyer for the last 6 weeks. So I hopped on my trusty seed and set forth for the Lower Don Valley Trail, which I had seen several times during my runs around the neighbourhood.

It’s one of the main bike paths in Toronto, which runs along the Don Valley River. It’s quite nice because it almost feels like nature. That is, if you just stare at the trees on the embankment and ignore the the random men drinking beers on logs and the graffitied fence and railway track on the other side of the path. (Well, it’s no Vancouver seawall.)

It was nice to just be biking in the city, and even nicer to get over my phobia of biking in a city that doesn’t have the same level of bike protection (e.g. bike lanes and bike dedicated streets) as Vancouver. Not to mention having to “share” (I use the term very loosely) the road with streetcars and regular cars!

It felt good to be moving, getting some fresh air, and exploring a new part of the city. Birds were chirping. The sun was setting. All was good with the world. Then there was a detour, and I ended up near the Don Valley Parkway (DVP, or Don Valley Parking Lot as the locals call it) on a sketchy side street. That was less nice.

I cycled through Corktown for a bit, and then somehow managed to get on the part of Bayview that merges onto the DVP (a highway!). Despite my panic, I somehow managed to turn myself around, and ended up in Cabbagetown. Which meant breathing in lots of delicious pollution and trying not to get killed by streetcars. 

I found Dundas as soon as I could after that and beelined for home. Which, unfortunately, meant a long, gradual uphill on Logan. Luckily my gams held up and I arrived home relatively unscathed.

The moral of the story (if there is one): sometimes, it’s really important to step away from work for a while and get yourself sorted out. Just make sure you don’t nearly bike onto a highway and kill yourself.

6 weeks in. Here’s what I’ve learned so far in my transition from Vancouverite to Torontonian:

• Never call the underground rail the “metro.” You will be mocked. It’s the “subway” or “TTC” - that’s it. We have a “skytrain,” what the heck do I know?
• Toronto gets gridlocked traffic like nothing I’ve ever seen in Vancouver. When late for a meeting, don’t hop into a taxi cab. You’ll end up paying $20 and only moving 5 blocks. 
• Blocks downtown are huge, at least on King St. It took me 20 minutes to walk from 100 block to 400 block, thinking it would only take 5-10. 
• The subway is great because it’s immune to traffic, but you have no cell reception down there - which can be problematic when meeting up with people on the other side. 
• You don’t need long sleeves at night in the summer. As a Vancouverite, I’m conditioned to bring a cardigan or light jacket everywhere. Not so in Toronto, you’ll just end up carrying it. 
• Little Italy actually has very few Italian things about it. Greektown, on the other hand, still has many Greeks, of the old men drinking beers on the patio at 10am variety. 
• “East Toronto” is not the same as “east of Downtown Toronto.” 
• Beck taxi drivers are the friendliest I’ve ever encountered, and they actually wear their seatbelts. How novel! 
• Loblaws = Superstore. Leave your Safeway card in Vancouver, but bring your Airmiles card! You can use it at the LCBO = BCL. 
• Looking for a Starbucks? Chances are more likely that you’ll find a Second Cup.
• Multi-culturalism, actually. Vancouver is always described as a multi-cultural city, but it’s mostly Asian ethnicities. Toronto is significantly more multi-cultural - I’ve never seen so many black people in my life! :-P

DT Toronto Walkabout

I really haven’t explored downtown (with the exception of The Eaton’s Centre), so I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to wander.

My first stop was Nathan Phillip’s Square. Cross-legged on a bench by the fountain, I simply sat and took it all in. I pulled out my Gratitude Journal and reminisced about how fantastic the weekend had been. 

Then a long walk down Yonge Street to the waterfront. I ended up at a small boardwalk near the ferries and spent some time by the water (before I had to escape the relentless mosquitoes!). It felt so nice to be near water, and I knew that not being near an ocean would be something I’d miss terribly about Vancouver.

It was a lovely series of moments to simply sit there and just be, with the slight breeze off the water and the sun slowly sinking into the horizon. The sky lit up in oranges and yellows, then dark blues and violets.

And then I realized that it was 9:00pm and I still hadn’t eaten any dinner! So of course I picked up some street meat (by which, I mean a veggie dog) on the way home. Huzzah for my first Toronto hot dog! :-)

I’m really looking forward to exploring the rest of this city. It’s going to be a fun ride!

I have no shame in admitting that I definitely started crying when the pilot said, “And now we’re beginning our descent into the Toronto area.”