Toronto

The Detroit border crossing into Canada was swift and painless; we spent five minutes in the immigration office getting a temporary six month visa, and we were soon on our way with no vehicle search and no inspection of any of our paperwork. Having left Ann Arbor late in the day, there were not many hours of daylight left by the time we arrived in Canada. Not wishing to spend a night in a truck stop, we left the 401, and headed to the north shore of Lake Erie to find somewhere to spend the night. After a drive along the coast north of Point Pelee, we found a quiet parking lot at the end of spit of land jutting into the Hillman March Conservation Area. The muddy and choppy waters of Lake Erie were a surprise after our days on the placid shore of Lake Michigan, but the windswept coast gave us a quiet and picturesque place to walk Boris and spend the night.

The following day we drove the remaining distance to Toronto, where we would soon be meeting my cousin Jamie who would be joining us for a couple of weeks. On entering Toronto, we were immediately engaged in a time consuming search for a place to park on the crowded and narrow streets. I have clearly been spoiled by the wide streets, huge parking spaces, and drive-everywhere attitude in America, and so it was a shock to return to the reality of parking in an old city. It is rare that I find somewhere as awkward as London to park a truck, and I was surprised to find Toronto so problematic. Not only is the entire city covered by a three hour maximum parking law, but temporary parking permits are only issued to vehicles under five meters in length, and not to motorhomes of any size. Even more absurd is that Toronto residents must even pay for a permit to park on their own driveways!

After a slow crawl around some inner west side neighbourhoods, we found a place to park that didn’t have resident’s permit restrictions, and was wide enough for us to park without blocking traffic. Unfortunately the space was on a busy road, we partially blocked a bike lane, and like all of Toronto, the parking was limited to three hours. Thankfully our foreign plates posed too much of a problem to the local parking wardens, and they ignored us for the week that we spent there. Unfortunately we were less lucky with another aspect of the area that we had parked in.

Toronto has a major graffiti problem, and our truck was clearly an irresistible temptation for one local tagger. I am no stranger to the world of graffiti, and am probably more deserving than most of this fate, but it is generally considered an unwritten rule amongst graffiti writers that personal property is off limits. Clearly MANIC of Toronto didn’t get the memo, because he tagged our truck one night, and then after finding his tag buffed off, tagged a smiley face on it the following evening. I managed to remove the worst of each tag, but pen ink is much harder to remove than spray paint, and the graffiti removal solution I bought at the local hardware shop couldn’t erase all evidence. The tags join a collection of war scars from this trip which won't be removed until Jim undergoes cosmetic touch up's sometime in the future.

When we are with company, the general tourist activities tend to go out the window, and we spend more time getting drunk and eating out. It was therefore natural that on our first couple of days in the city, we spent time getting to know the city before my cousin Jamie arrived. Toronto is not an especially beautiful city, although it does have an interesting mix of architecture, but it more than makes up in the culture and dining department.

With Jamie in town, we managed to continue the tourist activities, in between watching various doom/metal bands, and drinking heavily. It was fantastic having Jamie along to enjoy a small section of our trip, and it was great to do things which we would never have chosen had we been on our own.  The international restaurant options in Toronto are diverse and excellent, and the three of us enjoyed several excellent meals together. I particularly enjoyed eating in the largest Chinatown I have ever visited, an indulging in Toronto's rudimentary but delicious specialities, putine and peameal bacon.

Parking on a busy street in a large and conspicuous vehicle can lead to problems, as testified by the tags on the truck. To avoid any unnecessary issues, we often leave a note in the windscreen with our contact details so that people, can contact us if they need us to move. In Toronto, nobody asked us to move, but on several occasions the telephone number was used by people who wanted to tell how great Jim is. We gave a couple of the more enthusiastic Jim fans a tour of the truck, and one was kind enough to reciprocate with the offer of a place to fill our water tanks. After a week spent in Toronto with three people to wash, the water tank was almost empty, an so on our way out of town, we swung past Rob's house and filled the tank. We turned the spare bed back into the dinette area, and were soon back on the road, headed again for the US border.

Thankfully, the tagging was the only element of our stay in Toronto that I can find to complain about. In all other ways I loved Toronto, and felt that in many ways it is more like London than many European cities that I have visited.