I was reminded of another border crossing tale of woe, this one much shorter and not as funny as yesterday’s. When I was about 12, I went to a youth rally in Detroit or Rochester Hills or some other place in Michigan. We went down with a friend from church driving and picked up her niece on our way from Kitchener to Windsor.
The van we were in was pretty much the best conveyance in which I have ever been conveyed. It was super-plush on the inside with four captains chairs (the rear ones reclined and swiveled) and a bench seat in the back that folded down into a bed. There was a TV and VCR, curtains, bells, whistles, partridges, pear trees, etc. etc. I think it belonged to a couple from our church who used it to do six-month road trips or something.
The problem at the border were manifold. Our driver/chaperon was from Texas. She had an Ontario driver’s license and had lived in Canada for many, many years, but was technically an American. All of the kids in the van were Canadians and only one of them was related to her. This difficulty was compounded by the fact that one of our number had not brought a birth certificate/letter from family authorizing this little jaunt. The van also had Oklahoma license plates on it. We were stuck at the border for about two hours and missed the entirety of the Friday night program of the youth rally and very nearly had to sleep in the rapidly-less-luxurious-when-contemplating-spending-the-night-in-it van, but fortunately our billet had waited around at the church building for us.
I don’t remember difficulties in re-crossing the border which is either a sign of my faulty memory or (and this is equally likely), the Canadians just waved us through after making sure we weren’t importing any oranges.
A few years ago, Amy and I took a road trip down to Florida to visit Disneyworld and meet some of my Imaginary Friends (the term Amy coined for the people I know solely via the internet). We crossed the border at Buffalo at about 5:30am as we were driving a very, very long way and wanted to avoid some of the day’s heat in our un-airconditioned Toyota Echo.
Since we were Canadians, we barely slowed down through customs on our side of the border, paying only the bridge toll and receiving a friendly wave from the customs official. Canada customs gives a really good impression to most people who are coming into our country. They just seem to be happy to see you and they really want to know if you’ve got any fruit.
The yankee side of the bridge was a different story. It’s always the third degree: WHERE ARE YOU GOING. HOW LONG WILL YOU BE THERE. DO YOU HAVE GUNS. DO YOU HAVE ALCOHOL. DO YOU HAVE TOBACCO. DO YOU WANT SOME I HAVE SOME HERE.
Our guy was kind of annoyed. I’m not sure if that was due to living in Buffalo, him starting his shift really early in the morning or having worked all night. Hard to say. Likely all three. We stopped at the line marked ’stop’ and I rolled down my wind for the interrogation.
“WHERE ARE YOU HEADED.”
“Florida”
“HOW LONG WILL YOU BE THERE.”
“About a week.”
“ARE YOU FLYING OR DRIVING.”
Now this took me a minute. It hadn’t occurred to me that people would drive across to Buffalo airport and fly to other parts of the US. We actually did this in 2006 or 2007 to go to a wedding in Galveston, Texas. At the time though, it took a whole lot of self control not to say “What does this look like, a Cessna?” I answered “Driving” after giving him a look that, had the light been better, would have resulted in several hours of detainment and possible inclusion on the no-fly list at a bare minimum.
My computer is choking to death on a video processing job right now and as a result I can’t scan anything. It’s difficult even to internet anything. In lieu of a comic or a drawing or an anything useful, interesting or good, here is this thing.
Every year around our anniversary (typically the week between Christmas and New Year’s, during which my office goes on what are rather euphemistically called “holiday hours” and really just means that we close it up and don’t return phone calls or emails for 7-10 days), Amy and I go away for our honeymoon trip. This is a tradition we are carrying on from her family where her folks, both teachers, would go away around their anniversary, the 31st of December. Each year they made that a special them-only trip, as far as I know, and we are keeping that up in our family.
This year we went and stayed at the Royal York hotel which is right on Front Street across from Union Station. To be any more downtown one would have to wear SCUBA gear and a heated wetsuit (Lake Ontario is usually than I like to swim in at summer’s zenith so imagine it in December). Each night we went for dinner at a different restaurant and here are mini-reviews of each of them.
Frans, 200 Victoria Street
On our first evening, we went to see what we could find up Yonge Street. It turns out to be: Nothing. Between Front and Dundas there were no restaurants open whatsoever, so we went to Fran’s which is sort of a 50s style diner. I had five-cheese mac & cheese and Amy had a honey garlic chicken bowl. This was the least value for money of any of the places we ate. The food was pretty good but it was over-priced. The service was so-so. In retrospect I probably ought to have tried the all-day breakfast or similar. Not the worst place to eat but I wouldn’t really recommend it.
Regal Beagle Pub, 335 Bloor Street
On the 28th, we walked from our hotel all the way to Honest Ed’s on Bloor Street. We walked for about seven hours all told and felt like some pub grub at lunchtime. Bloor Street is fairly well packed with restaurants and we just happened to hit one that wasn’t wonderful. It once again wasn’t exactly bad but it wasn’t exactly good, either. Amy’s French Onion soup vegetarian chili, despite being priced like a main course was sized like an appetizer and whatever I had left so little impression on me that I can’t bring it to mind now. We should have gone to the burrito place that looked condemned. Ah, the crystal clear vision of hindsight.
Later that same day we took ourselves along Front Street toward St. Lawrence Market and happened upon the Hot House Cafe, 35 Church Street. It is right where Church and Front meet or diverge or whatever. It’s sort of across from Toronto’s Flatiron Building and in the same general area as the nearly-complete Sony Centre for the Performing Arts. This was the best place we ate the whole time we were in town and we actually went there twice, first for dinner and then the next day we returned for dessert. I had the chicken pizza, as is my wont and there was enough for both of us to have some and then to have it for breakfast the next day. Amy elected to have their hamburger which was juicy and really nicely seasoned. The waitstaff were excellent, as was the ambiance (apart from the guy at the next table who appeared to be hitting on the girl he was with so hard until she started talking about her boyfriend. Then he started going on and on about how he was gay and how gay he was and how long he’d been gay so that was kind of weird). There is a sort of prep kitchen right in the main part of the restaurant and a glass case full of desserts. We saw desserts going by to other tables and decided to come back the next night, which we did. I had chocolate cake that had icing out to here and Amy had something lighter and lemony. We also split an appetizer (dip platter, skip the eggplant stuff as it tastes of cigarette smoke). There was enough cake that I had it for breakfast on the morning we left.
Spring Rolls, 85 Front Street
We went back down Front Street to St. Lawrence market the next morning (when things were actually open) and stopped at Spring Rolls for lunch. There are apparently four of them in the downtown area. This one had a fairly large dining room and all eight couples were shoved into the front eight tables with between four and eight feet separating us (and less so when one of the couples had a friend join them, necessitating a move of our closest neighbours’ table toward us). They do sort of an Asian-inspired thing. My General Tso’s Chicken was labelled as spicy but I managed not to eat any of the chilis so I found it very nice. Amy had pad thai and it was good, too. Our waiter, Joao (who looked Italian, maybe? I think it was an assumed name) was extremely creepy. Our table was right beside a big column and when he did the ‘how is everything?’ thing that waiters always do, he just sort of leaned out from around the column about a foot from Amy’s head. Decent prices, pretty good food, weird/odd/cramped service.
So, there you have it. A gustatory whirlwind tour of south-central Toronto.
Update: Amy reminded me that she had vegetarian chili at Regal Beagle, not French Onion Soup. It was in a french onion soup style bowl.
My laptop has decided that it is a good time to start not booting properly (as I mentioned yesterday). As a result of this and of the holidays, Bad Comics will be on hold until probably the first week of January or so. Thank you for your patience and forbearance in these trying times and please have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Today we took the students to the CN Tower, a place I had never really been (apart from the old Tour of the Universe moving theatre ride they had back in the early 90s). It is pretty tall from the ground but once one actually ascends, it doesn’t seem all that high up. I certainly wouldn’t want to fall off of the thing (the second worst part would be how long one would have to contemplate the impending contact with the ground. The worst thing would be the contact itself) but I sort of half-expected it to feel higher. I think the fact that I have been in three storey apartment buildings with significantly longer elevator rides and wait times probably contributes somewhat.
In the plaza below the tower (and specifically below the glass floor which is awesome) there are several large X shapes. Amy thought they looked like targets. I forgot to go and look to see what they were when we got down. Probably targets. Comparing the experience to the Empire State Building, I think I prefer the ESB. Part of that was that New York has a certain mystique that I have long since misplaced for Toronto. When I am confronted on a more or less daily basis with the vagaries and irritations of the people of Toronto, I feel that I know the place almost too well.
A more significant part of the difference is that I was in NYC at night (and with my wife alone rather than with a dozen students), and I was able to get a picture like these:
sup, flatiron building
I just realized that I made almost this exact post in August but that is okay because I didn’t talk about the CN Tower that day.