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annathepiperSee my previous journal post for why this second half of my Worldcon report is so late: basically, it is entirely the fault of having caught cold the last day of the con and having had to be in recovery mode since then. I did in fact stay home the day after we got back, which I hadn't planned on doing, since although I was just about dead certain I didn't have SARS or anything of the sort I was still slightly paranoid. And didn't want to spread even just a cold to the others in the lab at work.
This post, at any rate, is for my impressions of Toronto aside from the convention. Not that I saw all that much of Toronto, mind you, just one little corner of it right around our hotel.
I liked the view of Toronto from the air, flying in. A considerable amount of lush green interspersed with thick areas of trees, though it was flatter than![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
solarbird likes. But it was a good first visual impression and goes well with my positive impression of the land around Vancouver. As huge as Canada is I'm sure there must be parts that don't look good, but so far I haven't seen any.
Going through customs, we had our passports taken by a rather good-looking customs guy, and I had to struggle not to grin because he had the stereotypical Canadian accent lampooned in Strange Brew. Customs was notable as well because one or two of the LCDs over the various lines welcomed Torcon 3 to Toronto. That was kind of cool. :) And the cute customs guy asked us if we were speaking at the convention, but no, we assured him, we were just attending.
While we were waiting in the line, a fire alarm went off in the terminal. Dara whipped out her flute to find the note that the alarm was hitting, and we were both amused to discover that, like the fire alarm way back at Forrer Hall at Transy in our college days, the note in question was F sharp. Because F is for FIRE!
There are three airports in Toronto, and the one we flew into was huge. And, well, airport-like, except that all public announcements were made in both French and English. I was somewhat amused to note that the luggage carts looked EXACTLY like the luggage carts at SeaTac, with the exception of the city being displayed as appropriate on the carts in both places. That was vaguely amusing, and makes me wonder whether there are only a couple companies that make luggage carts for airports, or at least if that one has business in both Canada and the U.S.
The airport was huge enough that when Dara and I caught a public shuttle to go downtown, we rode around for several minutes hitting other terminals and their stops before we actually got out of the airport. And the ride to our destination was rather longish, too... maybe a half an hour, or a little shorter, but something in that neck of the woods. Going along the Toronto freeway was a bit like going along freeways in Kentucky when I was a kid, at least in terms of the size of bulletin boards. They didn't have the type of bulletin boards I'm used to now, the ones that change ads by flipping around through a set of three every so often. Or at least, that wasn't the usual sort of board there. I THINK I saw maybe ONE of the flippy type of board, but they didn't seem common at all there.
Once we got to the hotel, though, Dara realized that she'd lost her driver's license in the airport. Which was a significant pain in the ass, though not a disaster since she did still have her passport and was able to use that for identification when required.
The one amusing thing about Canadian billboards that I noticed was that they had certain ads that were a trifle bolder than I would expect to see in the States. One of them was for a particular brand of bra and featured a bra-wearing woman with an arch expression and the slogan "My pair beats your flush." And I saw a similar one on which the slogan was "In high school I got all A's."
Downtown Toronto looked pretty much like a downtown. Right around where we were, there were two big hotels, a small park just over an underground mini-mall, a CBC building, the CN Tower and the Skydome, a block of retail locations which mostly seemed vacant, a stretch of railway tracks that Dara said could be followed all the way to Seattle, a few restaurants, and of all things what looked like a corporate headquarters for Bank of America. Why the heck Bank of America had a building in Toronto was beyond me, but hey, it was there.
I have forgotten the exact name of this one restaurant right across the street from our hotel, but its sign stands out in my mind because it was shaped like a silhouette of a cowboy, and bore the motto "A taste as big as Texas!" Someone had drawn in a smilie face just under the cowboy's hat.
On the far corner of the block on the same side of the street was a place called Mövenpick Palavrion. Unusual name. Decent enough food. The restaurant in general seemed this weird mix between Italian and French and Canadian, what with the overall look of the decor and the menu.
The food court was mostly useless as a place to get lunch and completely useless as a place to get dinner, not because of the quality of the food -- which was adequate for a food court -- but because of the extremely limited hours the place seemed to keep during the span of the convention. Everything seemed to close very early, locking up tight by 7pm or so the first couple of days we were there. And many of the places didn't open at all over the weekend, or on Monday. Some of this can be attributed to it being Labor Day weekend (or Labour Day as they call it in Canada), but the local environment seemed to roll up its sidewalks fairly early in general, even before the weekend really got underway.
Just outside the hotel and convention center were a short row of food carts that sold things like fries and sausage and sandwiches and ice cream and soda. We wound up eating from them a lot especially later in the evening, since our food options were somewhat limited. A little further down, just by the stairs that led up to the CN Tower, were a small gaggle of... I'm not sure what to call them. People trying to sell rides around Toronto, down to the lake, that kind of thing. Obviously trying to cater to tourists.
What else... on an emergency run for personal supplies I wound up walking about eight or ten blocks away from the hotel, trying to find somewhere where I could buy some pads and batteries. This took me down a sort of more office-building-y stretch of road, at least on one side; the other side was the train tracks, with a bridge in the distance. I noticed after walking down that way a bit that a distinct paper-mill sort of smell came up; it reminded me of Tacoma. Toronto's air was okay, quite breathable, but the smell I could have done without. Fortunately it wasn't apparent closer to the hotel.
Turns out you can get really good sushi in Toronto. It wasn't on par with I-Heart here in Seattle, but it was eminently tasty nonetheless; they had raw salmon, which is always good, and it was Atlantic salmon to boot. I wanted to think I could detect some sort of difference between it and the salmon I'm used to, but I am not sure whether I was imagining it. If I got anything at all in terms of difference it was vague enough as to be almost indefinable.
The restaurant we went to (Dara, me, Rod,futabachan, ayilmaz, and two other friends of the latter two) was notable also in that they were set up to do sushi boats. The unusual thing about this, though, was that they didn't do the sushi boats the same way they were done in Hawaii, i.e., load up all the boats with random bits of sushi and you take what you want and are charged by the color of the plate. Instead they just used them as a means to deliver you the things you ordered from the chef.
The CN Tower was the coolest non-con thing we did, though. We weren't able to go up to the very top, but the part we made it up to was more than high enough to give a fantastic view of pretty much all of Toronto as well as a lot of the surroundings outside the city. That observation level had maps all around the windows to label what you were looking at for you, and there was a great deal to see. It was especially cool to look out onto Lake Ontario and see a three-masted schooner out there on the water, and nearer in, at a smaller airfield, we saw what looked like a fighter jet coming in for a landing.
To get out of the Tower, you had to go down to a level where they have a glass floor. THAT was pretty keen, though it gave me vertigo to look over the edge all the way down to the ground. Dara cheerfully flopped down on the thing though, and letamethyst_dancer take her picture.
Leaving the Tower, I decided I wanted one of the stuffed moose they had in the gift shop, since I wanted a keepsake of the visit. So I got a cute little plush moose with floppy antlers and a red ribbon around its neck, and "Canada" all along the ribbon in white. I also wound up buying a polar bear with a red maple leaf on its foot and a buffalo, gifts forrisu and mamishka. The lady who rang up the latter two along with a T-shirt for Dara gave me the "what did you do to your arm?!" routine, but it was more entertaining with her just because she had an unusual accent -- she sounded like she might be Haitian or something like that, but damned if I know -- and it also turned out that she was a physical therapist so she was very interested in the Claw.
And she was quite polite, too. Which was very nice. Dara mentioned to me after we got back that she missed us being referred to as "ladies" all over the place, and it's true, the same sort of politeness to strangers that I have observed in Vancouver was in Toronto as well. While I was reading Long, Hot Summoning, I hit a part where one of the characters tells the following joke:
Q: How do you find the Canadian in a room full of people?
A: Step on everybody's feet, and the Canadian is the one who says they're sorry.
There's another part of the book where the heroine winds up inadvertantly trespassing in the realm of a couple of gods, and one of them asks her why she didn't call upon her own power to remove herself before she came to his attention. She tells him that at best that would have been incredibly stupid, and at worst, unforgiveably rude.
Didn't she have that reversed? the god inquired.
"It's a Canadian thing," was Claire's reply.
So apparently Canadian manners are a well-known enough thing that Canadian authors poke gentle fun at them. :) I think I rather approve.
Going home was something of a disappointment, definitely. The one good thing about it, I think, was that we had to get up incredibly early in order to catch our plane -- and the hotel provided us a car and driver to take us so that we wouldn't have to take a taxi. We still had to pay for it, but still, it was rather nice and more comfortable than a taxi would have been. More Canadian manners at work.
And we got more Canadian manners as well when a woman came up to us and told us that she had found Dara's driver's license and had turned it in! At least, I assume she was Canadian, I can't honestly say that I know for sure, but still it was nice to know that she was moved to do that and observant enough to recognize Dara on sight.
The most amusing thing about going through customs on the way home, though, was getting to argue with the customs guy about whether we were legally married. The guy tried to tell us that I had to fill out my own form, rather than letting Dara's count for me, when we told them that we were marital partners. Our conversation went something like this:
Customs Guy: How are you two related?
Us: Marital partners.
Him: You'll both need to fill out this form since by U.S. law you're not legally married--
Us: Um, actually, yes we are.
Him (looking like he was trying very hard not to roll us his and explaining in a slightly cranky voice, like he'd given this speech a thousand times before): By United States federal law you can't be legally married--
Dara: Look, we have a valid marriage license from the state of Kentucky, from when I used to be a boy. And it's still valid.
Him (backpedalling FAST as he hastily resumed processing our papers): Oh. Um. Well, I'm just trying to do my job, you've got to understand!
Me: It's all right, honest! We understand!
And he repeated that two or three times before we moved on. I think we blew a fuse in the poor guy's brain! Dara theroizes that he must have been having to sternly remind same-sex U.S. couples who have been going across the border to get married in Toronto that a marriage considered legal in Canada is not the same thing as a marriage considered legal in the U.S.
But, Dara added, it made her want to drive up to Vancouver and get married. I can't say I am against that idea myself.
All in all... the second Canadian city of my experience is a win. Not as cool as Vancouver so far, but still pretty keen!
This post, at any rate, is for my impressions of Toronto aside from the convention. Not that I saw all that much of Toronto, mind you, just one little corner of it right around our hotel.
I liked the view of Toronto from the air, flying in. A considerable amount of lush green interspersed with thick areas of trees, though it was flatter than
solarbird likes. But it was a good first visual impression and goes well with my positive impression of the land around Vancouver. As huge as Canada is I'm sure there must be parts that don't look good, but so far I haven't seen any.Going through customs, we had our passports taken by a rather good-looking customs guy, and I had to struggle not to grin because he had the stereotypical Canadian accent lampooned in Strange Brew. Customs was notable as well because one or two of the LCDs over the various lines welcomed Torcon 3 to Toronto. That was kind of cool. :) And the cute customs guy asked us if we were speaking at the convention, but no, we assured him, we were just attending.
While we were waiting in the line, a fire alarm went off in the terminal. Dara whipped out her flute to find the note that the alarm was hitting, and we were both amused to discover that, like the fire alarm way back at Forrer Hall at Transy in our college days, the note in question was F sharp. Because F is for FIRE!
There are three airports in Toronto, and the one we flew into was huge. And, well, airport-like, except that all public announcements were made in both French and English. I was somewhat amused to note that the luggage carts looked EXACTLY like the luggage carts at SeaTac, with the exception of the city being displayed as appropriate on the carts in both places. That was vaguely amusing, and makes me wonder whether there are only a couple companies that make luggage carts for airports, or at least if that one has business in both Canada and the U.S.
The airport was huge enough that when Dara and I caught a public shuttle to go downtown, we rode around for several minutes hitting other terminals and their stops before we actually got out of the airport. And the ride to our destination was rather longish, too... maybe a half an hour, or a little shorter, but something in that neck of the woods. Going along the Toronto freeway was a bit like going along freeways in Kentucky when I was a kid, at least in terms of the size of bulletin boards. They didn't have the type of bulletin boards I'm used to now, the ones that change ads by flipping around through a set of three every so often. Or at least, that wasn't the usual sort of board there. I THINK I saw maybe ONE of the flippy type of board, but they didn't seem common at all there.
Once we got to the hotel, though, Dara realized that she'd lost her driver's license in the airport. Which was a significant pain in the ass, though not a disaster since she did still have her passport and was able to use that for identification when required.
The one amusing thing about Canadian billboards that I noticed was that they had certain ads that were a trifle bolder than I would expect to see in the States. One of them was for a particular brand of bra and featured a bra-wearing woman with an arch expression and the slogan "My pair beats your flush." And I saw a similar one on which the slogan was "In high school I got all A's."
Downtown Toronto looked pretty much like a downtown. Right around where we were, there were two big hotels, a small park just over an underground mini-mall, a CBC building, the CN Tower and the Skydome, a block of retail locations which mostly seemed vacant, a stretch of railway tracks that Dara said could be followed all the way to Seattle, a few restaurants, and of all things what looked like a corporate headquarters for Bank of America. Why the heck Bank of America had a building in Toronto was beyond me, but hey, it was there.
I have forgotten the exact name of this one restaurant right across the street from our hotel, but its sign stands out in my mind because it was shaped like a silhouette of a cowboy, and bore the motto "A taste as big as Texas!" Someone had drawn in a smilie face just under the cowboy's hat.
On the far corner of the block on the same side of the street was a place called Mövenpick Palavrion. Unusual name. Decent enough food. The restaurant in general seemed this weird mix between Italian and French and Canadian, what with the overall look of the decor and the menu.
The food court was mostly useless as a place to get lunch and completely useless as a place to get dinner, not because of the quality of the food -- which was adequate for a food court -- but because of the extremely limited hours the place seemed to keep during the span of the convention. Everything seemed to close very early, locking up tight by 7pm or so the first couple of days we were there. And many of the places didn't open at all over the weekend, or on Monday. Some of this can be attributed to it being Labor Day weekend (or Labour Day as they call it in Canada), but the local environment seemed to roll up its sidewalks fairly early in general, even before the weekend really got underway.
Just outside the hotel and convention center were a short row of food carts that sold things like fries and sausage and sandwiches and ice cream and soda. We wound up eating from them a lot especially later in the evening, since our food options were somewhat limited. A little further down, just by the stairs that led up to the CN Tower, were a small gaggle of... I'm not sure what to call them. People trying to sell rides around Toronto, down to the lake, that kind of thing. Obviously trying to cater to tourists.
What else... on an emergency run for personal supplies I wound up walking about eight or ten blocks away from the hotel, trying to find somewhere where I could buy some pads and batteries. This took me down a sort of more office-building-y stretch of road, at least on one side; the other side was the train tracks, with a bridge in the distance. I noticed after walking down that way a bit that a distinct paper-mill sort of smell came up; it reminded me of Tacoma. Toronto's air was okay, quite breathable, but the smell I could have done without. Fortunately it wasn't apparent closer to the hotel.
Turns out you can get really good sushi in Toronto. It wasn't on par with I-Heart here in Seattle, but it was eminently tasty nonetheless; they had raw salmon, which is always good, and it was Atlantic salmon to boot. I wanted to think I could detect some sort of difference between it and the salmon I'm used to, but I am not sure whether I was imagining it. If I got anything at all in terms of difference it was vague enough as to be almost indefinable.
The restaurant we went to (Dara, me, Rod,
futabachan, ayilmaz, and two other friends of the latter two) was notable also in that they were set up to do sushi boats. The unusual thing about this, though, was that they didn't do the sushi boats the same way they were done in Hawaii, i.e., load up all the boats with random bits of sushi and you take what you want and are charged by the color of the plate. Instead they just used them as a means to deliver you the things you ordered from the chef.The CN Tower was the coolest non-con thing we did, though. We weren't able to go up to the very top, but the part we made it up to was more than high enough to give a fantastic view of pretty much all of Toronto as well as a lot of the surroundings outside the city. That observation level had maps all around the windows to label what you were looking at for you, and there was a great deal to see. It was especially cool to look out onto Lake Ontario and see a three-masted schooner out there on the water, and nearer in, at a smaller airfield, we saw what looked like a fighter jet coming in for a landing.
To get out of the Tower, you had to go down to a level where they have a glass floor. THAT was pretty keen, though it gave me vertigo to look over the edge all the way down to the ground. Dara cheerfully flopped down on the thing though, and let
amethyst_dancer take her picture.Leaving the Tower, I decided I wanted one of the stuffed moose they had in the gift shop, since I wanted a keepsake of the visit. So I got a cute little plush moose with floppy antlers and a red ribbon around its neck, and "Canada" all along the ribbon in white. I also wound up buying a polar bear with a red maple leaf on its foot and a buffalo, gifts for
risu and mamishka. The lady who rang up the latter two along with a T-shirt for Dara gave me the "what did you do to your arm?!" routine, but it was more entertaining with her just because she had an unusual accent -- she sounded like she might be Haitian or something like that, but damned if I know -- and it also turned out that she was a physical therapist so she was very interested in the Claw.And she was quite polite, too. Which was very nice. Dara mentioned to me after we got back that she missed us being referred to as "ladies" all over the place, and it's true, the same sort of politeness to strangers that I have observed in Vancouver was in Toronto as well. While I was reading Long, Hot Summoning, I hit a part where one of the characters tells the following joke:
Q: How do you find the Canadian in a room full of people?
A: Step on everybody's feet, and the Canadian is the one who says they're sorry.
There's another part of the book where the heroine winds up inadvertantly trespassing in the realm of a couple of gods, and one of them asks her why she didn't call upon her own power to remove herself before she came to his attention. She tells him that at best that would have been incredibly stupid, and at worst, unforgiveably rude.
Didn't she have that reversed? the god inquired.
"It's a Canadian thing," was Claire's reply.
So apparently Canadian manners are a well-known enough thing that Canadian authors poke gentle fun at them. :) I think I rather approve.
Going home was something of a disappointment, definitely. The one good thing about it, I think, was that we had to get up incredibly early in order to catch our plane -- and the hotel provided us a car and driver to take us so that we wouldn't have to take a taxi. We still had to pay for it, but still, it was rather nice and more comfortable than a taxi would have been. More Canadian manners at work.
And we got more Canadian manners as well when a woman came up to us and told us that she had found Dara's driver's license and had turned it in! At least, I assume she was Canadian, I can't honestly say that I know for sure, but still it was nice to know that she was moved to do that and observant enough to recognize Dara on sight.
The most amusing thing about going through customs on the way home, though, was getting to argue with the customs guy about whether we were legally married. The guy tried to tell us that I had to fill out my own form, rather than letting Dara's count for me, when we told them that we were marital partners. Our conversation went something like this:
Customs Guy: How are you two related?
Us: Marital partners.
Him: You'll both need to fill out this form since by U.S. law you're not legally married--
Us: Um, actually, yes we are.
Him (looking like he was trying very hard not to roll us his and explaining in a slightly cranky voice, like he'd given this speech a thousand times before): By United States federal law you can't be legally married--
Dara: Look, we have a valid marriage license from the state of Kentucky, from when I used to be a boy. And it's still valid.
Him (backpedalling FAST as he hastily resumed processing our papers): Oh. Um. Well, I'm just trying to do my job, you've got to understand!
Me: It's all right, honest! We understand!
And he repeated that two or three times before we moved on. I think we blew a fuse in the poor guy's brain! Dara theroizes that he must have been having to sternly remind same-sex U.S. couples who have been going across the border to get married in Toronto that a marriage considered legal in Canada is not the same thing as a marriage considered legal in the U.S.
But, Dara added, it made her want to drive up to Vancouver and get married. I can't say I am against that idea myself.
All in all... the second Canadian city of my experience is a win. Not as cool as Vancouver so far, but still pretty keen!
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-12 10:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-13 12:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-13 11:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-13 03:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-15 08:16 am (UTC)Sorry I missed you all at the convention. Next year in Boston?
Cathy
no subject
Date: 2003-09-23 09:44 pm (UTC)But yeah, sorry to have missed you! We'll definitely be at the Boston con next year.