USA & Canada

Day 7 - Toronto, or what seemed like a wild fever dream

New York, the city that never sleeps - well, maybe at 6am on a Sunday it does. The streets were almost eerily empty on my drive to LaGuardia. Luckily, that also meant that there was almost no traffic and the ride went smoothly, as did the check-in with AirCanada. The security check was something I wasn't looking forward to. I completely forgot that you're supposed to take your shoes off during security checks in the US. That still seems weird to me. However, all went well and I killed the time on the channel #breakfastclub on Dimitri's server, ironically being the only one to actually have breakfast - I needed to try Dunkin' Donuts in the US eventually, after all. I spent the flight listening to music and catching up on my Norwegian lessons, which I haven't really paid attention to during my trip. Since it only took 1h40min, the time was quite easy to kill. The first thing that made it blatantly obvious that I was about to enter another country was the language. I hadn't been exposed to this much French in a long time. After landing, I got on a train to Union Station and wanted to drop off my suitcase at a nearby place until I could check-in at my hotel. However, I was a little lost in thought and realised after some time that I had long passed the lockers, so I decided to simply walk around the city carrying all of my stuff with me. Toronto at first didn't seem too different from New York. There were skyscrapers, there were really nice and warm people, and there were way more homeless people than I am used to from home. All in all, almost the same with a bit of French mixed in. However, I soon started to discover some differences. One thing that stood out to me was that Toronto apparently tries really hard to be artistic - in my opinion, successfully so. There's some kind of art at almost each corner. My first stop was the CN tower. Security-guy informed me that he'd have to search my entire suitcase. We started making conversation throughout the process; about my travels, with whom I'm staying and how I got to know people from North America. As it turned out, Security-guy uses Discord as well, only in his case for gaming. I was intrigued to ask for his username, but considered that this would be rather inappropriate and decided against it. The view from the CN tower upon the city was a bit underwhelming in comparison to NYC, however, the view of Lake Ontario was breathtaking. I also saw the Island Park from above and decided to take a ferry over there after I was done with my tour and the check in. After I came back down from the CN tower, I got a cold drink and relaxed a little in the sun with some music. It was 14° with a clear blue sky, no comparison to the miserable weather we had in New York these last few days. Another difference that I noticed as I continued my walk came to me as I started smelling weed - and realised that I haven't smelled any here before at all. NYC was basically covered in that smell, somehow I expected the same for Toronto. I stopped at the old spaghetti factory to get lunch and ended up ordering the by far most fancy pasta I have ever had in my life and am likely to have again - butternut squash, caramelised onions and brie stuffed ravioli with cherry tomatoes, spinach and garlic shrimp in alfredo sauce. From the start I knew that the food was going to be a huge aspect of the experience and it was one of the things I looked forward to the most about my journey, but it was still amazing how much different, yet great food I ate within the span of a week. It is also incredible how many calories I consumed and how much money I spent on said food, but I try not to think about that too much. This was going to be a one in a lifetime experience for me, so I wasn't going to start counting pennies. I also ordered a pitcher of Canadian draught beer without really knowing how much a pitcher is. As it turns out, it's about 1.5 litres. Slightly tipsy due to the burning sun, I continued my walk to the City Hall. After that, I wanted to go to my hotel to check in. However, my day would turn out to go in an unexpected direction. A few metres from City Hall, I met Dave and his two dogs, Oni and Fiasco. Dave was sitting on the street, begging for - as his sign said - money or weed. I gave him props for the sign and asked him if he wanted my leftover doughnut from the morning. He agreed and I sat down next to him for like half an hour. We talked about alcoholism, drugs, the criminal law system, COVID and so on. During the conversation, he shared some of his joint with me. He seemed quite educated, although leaning very heavily to the alternative and slightly to the conspiracy theorist side. He was then kind enough to show me the way to my hotel. After I checked in, we walked down to the Waterfront together. On the way, he wanted to teach me how to skateboard, which turned out about as well as you would expect knowing my terrible balance. He also pointed out some interesting places to me. Turns out, I found a local guide in Toronto as well. In this case, it was just a polite beggar. We arrived at the Waterfront and smoked another joint together, before walking along the water to the harbour where a ferry would take me to Ward's Island. We parted ways and exchanged our contacts, saying we'd stay in touch, both perfectly aware that we wouldn't. I was awaiting my ferry as I realised I'd have to make my way back alone, in the dark; around half an hour of walking through a city full of homeless people and addicts, still slightly tipsy and under the influence of drugs, not really knowing where exactly I'd need to go cause my Google Maps wasn't cooperating. You've got to give me one thing, I do know how to stay safe. On the ferry, I started some smalltalk with the guy standing next to me. His name was Ivan, a 19 year old economics student from Russia who'd been living in Toronto for 3 years but still took the ferry every other day to walk around the island. He walked me around and showed me some of his favourite places there. As it got late, we found ourselves some chairs and sat down by the lake to watch the sunset. He gave me a jacket but I still think I might get a cold because of that - but even if I will, the view was definitely worth it. We arrived back on the mainland at around 9pm and took the metro together. Ivan then told me how to reach my hotel from my stop and our ways parted there. Back at the hotel, I needed to figure out how to get to the airport the next morning. I also tried out uber eats for the first time and got some very cliché things - pogos (or corn dogs), tater tots and flavoured cheese curds. Tomorrow, I'd get to try poutine. Gotta love Canada, man.Read more