Downtown Adventure!

Not so long ago. A few weeks before classes broke up for Christmas many of us exchange students realised we seemed to have done everything  except go into Downtown Toronto and explore. Thus we started planning a weekend adventure The Saturday was going to consisted of free things, except for a meal in little Italy. The Sunday would then be full of the thing which cost money and that way people could pick and choose what they wanted to do depending on their budget. I decided to go in for the Saturday but then use Sunday to study (I had a lot of exams and essay's to do plus I can do the costly stuff over the next few months). On the predetermined Saturday we: Tanya (our lovely guide, the only one who had previously explored), Monique, Jesse, Lauren, Andrew, Andrew, Preeti, Angel and I (if someone has been forgotten I apologise).  We started by going to look at Casa Loma. A Castle in Toronto. Built in the early 1900's (?) absolutely stunning on the outside. We didn't go inside because it was extortionate but we got many a photo of the outside.  Next we headed to St Lawrence market where we held a competition splitting of into pairs to see who could find and take a picture of the weirdest thing which was a lot of fun. We also picked up a couple of souvenirs and Christmas presents while there. After this we headed to the distillery district, which is the old part of town, and to our surprise (shows how much research we had done) there was a Christmas market on. So we wondered that for a while. Next we headed over to Kensington Market where Monique found the amazing mighty ducks ice hockey jersey and I picked up my secret Santa present for the secret Santa we had set up with residence friends.  At this point there were only two things left on the day's to do list; eat in Little Italy and visit the Bay Christmas videos.  Everyone was hungry so off we went to Little Italy and found a cafe/bar type place to eat at. Then right into the heart of downtown to the Bay videos, which were pretty cool and a sweet classic story. By this time we were all exhausted so we headed back to campus to rest up for the next day, for some ready to head out for more exploring and for the rest so as to get a lot of study done.   

Cavalcade of Lights

Straight after getting our Christmas photo taken we all headed into downtown for another Toronto Christmas must. The Cavalcade of Lights. This is a huge evening for the city, held in Nathan Phillips square they set up stage for live music acts and then there is a fantastic fireworks display (video of which can be found on my facebook). Also they have an outdoor skating rink for which you can either just bring your own skates and hope on and off, or you hire skates at $10 for 2 hours. Which is what Monique, Andrew and I did while listening to the music and watching the fireworks. It took a while to get into the skating since I haven't done it for a couple of years but it was a laugh.  The best bit though had to be right at the beginning when I was still not quite into the skating so looking quite ridiculous all dressed up from the photo barely making it round the rink, when this young girl skated pass me and said "you're pretty". I had a huge smile plastered on my face after that, even when I kept almost falling over. I would recommend the Cavalcade of Lights to anyone in the vicinity at the right time, especially a Brit who may have been upset about the lack of fireworks on Nov 5th.  

Say Rudolph!

One of the things that has been really great about my time so far in Canada has been the people who I've been sharing the experience with. My main group of friends is comprised mainly of exchange students with the odd Canadian thrown in. Living in residence means you all get really close really quickly because you're eating, sleeping (in the same building) and studying together pretty much constantly. Thus, at some point in the semester, we all stopped seeing ourselves as just friends and started viewing ourselves as more of a family, a dysfunctional messed up family but a family nonetheless. This meant that with Christmas fast approaching, and my fellow exchange students time in Canada coming to an end (they are all semester students) we wanted to  get something to remember our little family by and at the same time celebrate Christmas. Thus the idea to have the family Christmas photo was born. We planned ahead to make sure we were all free, and then found a mall close to us that was doing Christmas Santa Photos at that time. On the day we spent the afternoon getting ready, putting our Sunday best on so to speak and then headed to Yorkdale on mass. We queued up behind the young children 'patiently' (some more than others) waiting our turn. Then it was our turn and the elves organised us around Santa and then we had our photos taken, we got several done as we were just sharing the cost of one CD that we could pass around and download the pictures from. Here are a couple:

From the back left to right: Andrew, Andrew, Jessie,
                                                         Me,                            Monique,
                                                          Melinda, Lauren, Santa, Tanya 

Santa Claus is coming to Town!

Every year Toronto has a Christmas Parade and since this year I was in the vicinity I decided to go and check it out. If I'm to be honest, I was a little disappointed with the actual Parade. I thought it would be really festive and Christmassy but instead it was overly commercialised with the majority of the Parade having very little to do with Christmas. That's not to say I didn't have fun. In fact I had a great time it just wasn't really because of an amazing Parade. What was amazing was being out in the city with friends and having a break from studying, oh and getting our photo taken with an actual Mountie!! The best thing though was before the Parade (it was running very late do there was a lot of, before the Parade) when we sitting on the curb of the road guarding our great spot from which to view the Parade and watching all the children get excited about the parade. Now, normally when things are running late children get tired of waiting and become fidgety and start complaining. But not here. No here they were running around in the street playing games with each other. Many of the children had brought  chalk and were drawing and writing in the road. We saw many a wish list for Santa to read as he passed. It got the point where Tanya and I couldn't take it anymore, as children still at heart we wanted to draw on the road in chalk so we asked a girl if we could borrow her chalk (she kindly allowed us to) and drew our own message on a street in downtown Toronto.

Here are a selection on photos from the Parade:   

When In Canada!

Obviously it wouldn't be a trip to Canada if there wasn't some ice hockey involved. So one Friday (it may have been a Thursday) not to long ago we headed out to support York's varsity team in their game against Brock. It was a lot of fun. Obviously it wasn't as intense as a professional game would be but it was a lot of fun to watch. There were a couple of fights and one guy had to be escorted off the ice after he'd been slammed into.

The best bit though had to be the half time game. At York the half time game is always played by members of the audience and is a challenge of sorts. For the Ice Hockey game Lauren (my fellow exchange student from Keele) and I agreed to take part in the challenge. What we had to do was line up 10 pucks and see how many we could shoot into the goal, whoever got the most in won. Out of the first 10 both Lauren and I got three in to the goal so we went to sudden death and the first to get on in won. Sadly Lauren got one into the goal before me so she won. But it was ok because we both got a prize. Our prize was a pair of York Lion Boxers. We have both used them as pj bottoms. Overall the game was a lot of fun, and it was great to spend time with my friends who also went to watch, even if York did lose.

One Sunday afternoon of procrastination

A little while ago Jessie and Andrew went away for the weekend to Boston (mine an Monique's amazing stories made them jealous :P ). I had a friend coming for the night on Friday and Andrew kindly lent my his bedding  but in doing so left us with his key for the weekend. After having used the key to retrieve the bedding I gave the key to Monique (his neighbour) for her to look after until his return. I thought nothing more of it till Sunday morning when Monique  was telling me that she had decided late Saturday night that we couldn't let this opportunity escape us. I agreed (it was do something to Andrew's room or spend the day studying) so we got to brainstorming what to do. The plan we arrived at? We were going to cover his entire room in newspaper. And that is what we spent the next nine or so hours doing with lunch and dinner breaks. If I say so myself it turned out pretty amazing. In the surprised Andrew agreed it looked good and was a great idea.  Here are some of the pictures of what it ended up looking like after we were done.

Just another Sunday afternoon of procrastination when on exchange :)

An excuse to do fancy dress

I'm not a big one for halloween. We didn't celebrate it in anyway when I was a child and as I grew older I felt no need to dress up in various scary/ scant costumes and go party on a particular day of the year. In fact I am a huge fan of fancy dress just not so agreeable to the idea of Halloween. However this year I feel like I may have made up for a lifetimes worth of Halloween partying. Which is exactly what all my Aussie friends wanted (they don't do Halloween at all over there) so I guess we can say it was a success. How we made up lost time was by making the decision to attend three different Halloween parties over the course of 5 day's. Thursday we attended a local club which has a free shuttle to and from our uni. I was dressed as a bat:

We took Friday to recover and then Saturday night went out again. This time to an amazing pub in downtown Toronto which consists of 2 old house each four stories. Thus, this pub has many a room and many a bar. For this night I was a fairy:

After taking Sunday to rest up once more and after a day of classes on Monday we were once again ready to head out to party. This time it was actual Halloween and so we headed back into downtown Toronto to a club called Cobra. This time I was an Angel:

But the best costume of the night has to go to Jesse, guess how long that took to do?

Overall it was a fun time, I partied with friends and got to dress up. Oh, and the porters station and security guard for our building even had bowls of 'candy' for us as we went past so it was like mini trick or treating. 

I could have sworn my syllabus said travelling week!

So, in the middle of October York University gave all us students (and the professors to I suppose) a week off. Why you ask, well York officially  calls it co-curricular week where students are supposed to sign up to clubs, the professors call it reading week and they say we are supposed to get a head start on all our reading and assignments that will pile up from when we start classes again, and to exchange students it's considered a week to go travelling.

Thus since the beginning of term discussions had been taking place about where we were going to go and what we were going to do. After much discussion and an awful lot of internet searching Monique and I set our hearts on Philadelphia, Boston and Salem. Then the heard part started: booking it! When we had originally started our search we could get cheap hostel accommodation in both Philly and Boston (Salem is but a train away from Boston and we were planning a day trip). However, by the time we got around to actually booking the places this wasn't the case. In Philly we ended up in a cheap travel lodge which considering they gave us breakfast every morning was a great deal and in a hostel outside of the city in Boston. For awhile we thought we may be able to stay in Salem for a few days and travel to Boston from there if we couldn't find anything closer for a good price in Boston. Then the reality that it was only a couple of weeks before Halloween hit and thus Salem had absolutely no accommodation, anywhere, let alone cheap, it was just lucky that we found the hostel when we did, otherwise I fear Monique might have had a minor temper tantrum as she had definitely set her heart on seeing both Boston and Salem.

For travel we booked the good ole megabus from Toronto to Philadelphia, and Philadelphia to Boston. Sadly, although turns out not so (their wifi was much better!) we had to use the much more expensive greyhound buses to get us back from Boston to Toronto again. I would not recommend undertaking a 10+ hour bus trip without serious thought. If you are easily annoyed by other people, then don't do it! Or if faulty wifi grates on your nerves, it's probably not for you and if you find it difficult to sleep on a bus at the very least be prepared to be sleep deprived at new levels. Monique and I came extremely close  to thinking horrible thoughts about the adorable baby in front of us who wouldn't stop crying unless I was looking at it, which when trying to read my comparative foreign policy book was not what I needed.  Luckily we can both cope without wifi for small times when we have other things to amuse us, and we are both very adept at coping with little to no sleep (see previous posts :P ).

Philadelphia:

We had three days in Philadelphia.

Day one:

Saw us going backwards and forwards like mad women. First we went to the area where all the independence sites are located and booked our time slot for the independence hall tour. Then, we went to the other side of the city to visit the Eastern State penitentiary. It was a really interesting experience as we learnt all about how the prisoners were kept in isolation for their entire  sentence and the idea was that this would give them time to think on what they had done and repent of it to God. In there cells they even had a slit in the ceiling which allowed a slither of light into the room and was called the eye of God. Later this model of prison was dropped and replaced and then the prison became a much more diverse place. Other cool things from the prison where Al Capone's cell and (well I don't know if you can call this cool) death row. After the prison we went back to the independence area and had our tour of independence hall and learnt all about the signing of the declaration of independence and the swearing in of several presidents. We also went to visit the tomb of the unknown solider. After having a quick rest back at the travel lodge we had dinner in china town before heading back to the prison for the haunted house they put on around Halloween. It was student night so the queue was huge but we finally got in and it was scary! Both Monique and I screamed quite a lot. After this we headed back to the Travelodge to get some sleep  ready for the next day's adventures.

Day Two:

We set of for the west side of the city. We were heading towards the Rocky steps and a few other sites in that direct. On the way we passed some lovely architecture , and a fountain. We reached the Rocky steps and did the obligatory run, taking turns to video it for each other. Then we went behind the museum (for which the Rocky Steps exist) and there are the water works and a lot of statues and a garden area. Photos of which can all be seen in exhaustive detail on facebook. We then walked all the way back to the other side (East) of town and went to the graveyard where Benjamin Franklin is buried. We chilled in the park at the independence area for a bit before heading south to south street which is the really artsy area of the city.  This is where we found the diner we ended back at for dinner that evening. It was a really cool place, so much so that we ended the night dancing in the aisles.

Day Three:

For our final day in the city we started with a walk over the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. We put the music from Monique's iPhone on and partied our way across with many stops for photos. We had planned to get off on the other side but after some friendly advice from a passer by and then having confirmed the safety of getting off with a policeman we decided not to and instead once we reached the end we just turned back and walked straight back the way we had came.  After this we went to check out the town hall, which due to the occupy protesters was incredibly busy. What was probably cooler that the town hall (which, and yes i know I'm a nerd, was pretty cool) was the court yard of an office just across from it.  Where a bunch of large sized games pieces had been set up. You could sit in the monopoly barrel, climb a top a rook from chess, lean against a giant domino. We got some pretty great pictures of these.  By now we had done most of the things on our list to do except two main things: eat philli in philli and get a philly cheese steak. So we headed to a store and bought some crackers and Philadelphia and then went to sit once more in the park and eat. We chilled for a bit longer then went to get our philli cheese steaks. I am sad to say both of us we a little ( a lot) disappointed. So as not to be rude let's just say they weren't are thing. After this we went back to the diner of the previous night where we met up with some other friends who had spent the day in Philly on there way between New York and Washington.  After some more dancing in the aisles  and making friends with our waiter and the boss we headed out once more this time to get our bags from the Travelodge and head to the bus station to get our bus to Boston.

Boston:

Day one:

We arrived early in the morning and got a train and then a bus towards the outskirts of the city where our hostel was. After checking in we quietly as possible  entered the shared dorm we were in and sorted out our stuff so as to have showers before setting out for the day. By the time we had done that the other girls in our room had awoken and we decided to all hang out together for the day. We got the free shuttle to the train station from there we headed to the Common.  After a quick breakfast stop we picked up the freedom trail heading towards Bunker Hill where there is a monument  similar to the one in Washington.  There we climbed the 294 steps to the top of the monument to get amazing views of the city.  Then we went to the museum that it was attached to and learnt all about the fight that had happened there during the revolution. After finishing up there we went and checked out an old navy ship, which was a lot of fun as we got to walk around on it while hearing all about its history. Then we went to Quincy market to grab some food before heading over to check out MIT and then Harvard. We finished our day with hot chocolate in the cutest chocolate shop in the city (you could smell the chocolate a mile away it was that rich).

Day Two:

We were still hanging out with one of our new friends (Sophie) from the hostel the other had had to leave for home. So, Monique, Sophie and I headed into the city to go to the Aquarium where we spent several hours stroking sting rays, watching penguins and trying to spot giant turtles amongst many other things. Next we headed over to the oldest baseball park in the US, Fenway. There we had a great tour of the stadium learning lots about the stadium and baseball. After we walked some more of the freedom trail before heading to little Italy for dinner.  After this we went to the gardens in the common where we walked around and talked for an hour or two.

Salem

On our third day in Boston we took a train out of the city and into Salem (yes the witch trials Salem). It was a great day to visit this creepy town as it was incredibly foggy. It was such a beautiful city we spent most of the day walking around the old streets and grave yards. We also went to the witch trial memorial. Other things we did include dressing up like seamen at a museum, walking out to a light house and having a brilliant meal at the red roof inn. The last thing we did in Salem was a night time ghost tour which was a laugh. Despite the fact that it had rained all afternoon and we had ruined our shoes both Monique and I had a great time.  After heading back to Boston we had one final night in the hostel before we headed back to Toronto the next morning.

Overall the travels were a lot of fun and worth every penny spent and every minute not studying.