Canada Vacation '18: Kingston

We had some time before our train left Toronto, so we went out to get breakfast. On the way I spotted this A&W sign. Canada A&W isn't the same as America A&W, and this sandwich isn't available here. Had I known that, I might have stopped in to try a Beyond Meat Burger just for fun.

When I was kid I would always ask my mom if I could take the bags she had filled at the mall out to the car. On the way to the parking lot, I'd swing her car keys around my index finger trying to show the world that I was indeed old enough to drive a car.

Char's version of this display of false maturity is to have milk poured into a coffee cup. She'll sip from the cup and swoon to whoever is within earshot, "Ummm. This is goood coffee!"

It was time to head to the train station. I was struck to see how much it looked like a cathedral. I used to teach the story "By the Waters of Babylon", and its narrator thought that Grand Central Terminal was a place of worship. I get that now.

I'm going to try to not gush, but I discovered that I loved traveling by train. " l'avenir esta bord" translates into "The future is on board." I have to agree. Train travel is definitely in my future.

I thought that trains would just rattle along, and I would be bored out of my skull. Instead, the trains were quite fast and so relaxing that I took more than one nap. I've never been comfortable enough to sleep on a plane, so although planes might be speedier, the time spent on the train went by faster - if that make any sense.

You must pose by a street sign that features your cat's name.

I'm not sure if Kingston is on many people's radar when visiting Canada, but it should be. 

The downtown area is beautiful, and there are blocks and blocks of fun shops to visit.

They had a farmers' market that we had to visit, and the next day this was transformed into a flea market. We didn't have time to visit the flea market, though. So sad. I love flea markets. The uptick is that we didn't have room in our luggage for me to buy much anyway.



The real draw for us to visit Kingston was their prison tour. We all really enjoyed visiting Alcatraz when we were in San Francisco, and this looked like a similar experience.

At Alcatraz you take an audio tour via headphones. The actual tour guides there know all the facts about the prison, but they were too young to have experienced it. 

Kingston Penitentiary closed in 2013, and until then it was a working facility. The tour guides worked at the Kingston Pen as guards, and when they talked about Kingston you can sense the pride they have in their facility, and a real a sense of loss that it isn't in operation any more. 

These are the housing units that prisoners (with no record of domestic abuse) could rent so their entire family could visit for a weekend. Prisoners could earn up to $6 a day, and their savings would provide the rent and the food for the visit. Unused food items were donated because they couldn't enter the prison facility.

These are the solitary confinement cells. These were used as way to keep a prisoner safely away from the rest of population if they had made a mistake (like welshing on a bet) until the problem could be sorted out. They had been removed before we got there, but each prisoner in solitary confinement was given a TV to watch.

Prisoners were allowed to decorate their cells, too.

The stairs to the school and work area were impressive. If a prisoner hadn't earned a high school diploma, then they had to go to school before they could get a job. The school was an entity on its own. It had a principal, teaching staff, and a government-approved curriculum. 

According to one of the tour guides,  the city of Kingston would like to tear down the prison to commercially develop its lakefront location. So, I don't know how long these walls will be here.

Kingston is known for its 19th-century buildings. Stunning houses like these were not out of the ordinary.

Kingston is also doing a lot of construction down by the lake.

Random, this looks like Europe, photo.

We have Dollar Tree stores in Des Moines, but every thing costs a buck there. Must be the exchange rate...

Last year when we visited Victoria, Canada, I called it the B and B city. There were bakeries and book stores on every street. That wasn't true for the cities we visited this summer. We found a few book stores in Kingston, though. I took this picture in one of them because I thought my sister-in-law would like it.

Here's the house we stayed in. It was built in the mid 1800's.

Honestly, this was the location that we were most excited about staying in, and it was our least favorite. When we arrived an elderly couple told us that their son and daughter-in-law had just purchased the house, and they were going to covert it back into a single family home. The woman gave me a "you're lucky you even get to stay here" vibe that I didn't appreciate.

The owners sure weren't trying hard. Imagine giving your guests a threadbare beach towel to use in the bathroom. That embarrasses me, and I was the guest.

How many bulbs aren't working? Yes, you're not trying very hard.

The small apartment had a kitchen that looked like it was updated in the 1950's. It reminded me of a our house in Inwood, Iowa. For me, this was the best room in the place.

Montreal was up next, but we had to first stop by this bakery to get breakfast before we left town.

I'll write a short food post at the end of these Canada stories...

Canada Vacation '18: Toronto

On our second day of vacation we had couple of hours to kill before we left for Toronto. Naturally, we went back to check out the Falls. When we were getting close to our check out time, we used the Incline Railway to get back to the hotel more quickly.

It gave us a good, goodbye view of the water.

As seen outside the bus depot: 

We were going to take the train to Toronto, but we had to take a bus to get to the train station. Here's the view from the top level of the double-decker bus.

I thought the bus would have driven us straight to the train station, but the bus meandered from stop to stop for an hour and a half. I was getting worried that we would miss our train (and so were some women sitting behind us), but the bus dropped us off exactly on schedule.

There was some confusion about getting the keys to our apartment. We went exploring once that was straightened out.

We stopped by Steam Whistle Brewing. 

I like their delivery truck.

I called this the Robert Frost sidewalk. Each path gets steeper. "I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." Char chose the steepest path, and she slid down it like a slide.

The condo we rented was in the 300 Front Street building. This building had 49 floors. We were on the 22nd, but that still gave you a pretty nice view from the balcony.

The CN Tower was right across the street.

I wouldn't like living in that building, though. The elevators moved at a snail's pace. You could wait ten minutes for an elevator to arrive, only to see that it was too full. Then you would have to wait ten more minutes and hope you could get on the next one.

Toronto is a huge city. 2.8 million people live there. Compare that number to the 3.1 million people who live in the entire state of Iowa.

I didn't like the crowded streets, but I enjoyed looking at all the bicycles parked along the sidewalks. Bikes were everywhere, and there were all sorts of interesting modifications to see.

On day three we visited the CN Tower. We didn't know that there was a terrorist threat against the tower that day, but that explained the police presence on several street corners.

Let's go up.

There is a section where the floor is made of glass.

Standing on the glass freaked me out a bit, but Char was undaunted.

I like the "No Spidermen" sign.

It is a quite a distance to the streets below. After an hour up there, I quoted Dug (the dog) in Up!, "Oh, I am ready to be not up high!"

The tower also offers an Edge Walk. Thrill-seekers can walk on and around the roof of the main pod of the tower hands-free by being tethered to an overhead rail system.

Charlotte asked me if I wanted to try the Edge Walk. I told her I could think of three reasons no one on the ground would want me to try that.

We continued exploring once we were back on the street. We found this dog fountain on our way to the St. Lawrence Market.

Charlotte was happy that cats also had representation.

That's quite the facade on the side of that building.

Hey! There's the market!

I did a little research on the food that best represented each city that we visited in Canada. The overwhelming opinion is that a Peameal Bacon sandwich is your go-to meal for Toronto.

Daphne commented that the peameal bacon has the thickness of ham, but it is very tender and easier to bite through. I agree. It was great, and I wanted a second second sandwich as soon as we finished this one.

Every list we read of "Things to do in Toronto" included a visit to the Bata Shoe Museum.

They have activities for kids,

Shoes to try on,

and a whole lotta shoes to learn about.

The "Manolo Blahnik: The Art of Shoes" exhibit had a video clip from the film Marie Antoinette.

I'll admit that this museum wasn't my thing, and I was bored for most of the time. I must have learned something because while we were standing in line in the Toronto Airport, I pointed to the guy standing in front of us, and I whispered to Daphne, "Hey, we know those shoes."

Next stop on our trip: Kingston!