Unfortunately check out was at 11am so we dragged our bleary-eyed selves out of bed, packed up, cleaned up the 5th floor patio from last night and put our luggage in storage all before 11. Having forfeited our breakfast food voucher for a cheeseburger last night, we ate leftover butternut squash soup for brunch. A friend we met the night before, Greg from Vancouver had the afternoon free so we arranged to met up with him after he’d been to a baseball game. We retraced our steps from the night before back to the waterfront but this time bought a ticket for the ferry over to Toronto Islands. Toronto Islands were created when a storm cut them off from the mainland. Now there is a small zoo, a theme park, beaches, bikes and boats from hire, and a nudist beach for Torontonians to enjoy. We made our way to the bike hire shop and hired a normal bike (although it didn’t have any brakes- you had to pedal backwards) and a tandem. Gillian and Bessie bravely tried out the tandem first with the result in some hilarious video footage:
Soon enough we got the hang of it, and rode down one side of the island, stopping (easier said than done on a tandem!) to admire the view of Toronto’s skyline with sailing boats and kayakers enjoying Lake Ontario.
We returned our bikes and in an attempt to get rid of our Canadian dollars before returning to the US, we splashed out on lunch at an expensive cafe. While we were eating our ridiculously overpriced salads, a reggae band we beginning to set up on the stage in front of us. Whilst we were enjoying the Bob Marley tunes they were playing from speakers, in a frenzy of creativity, possibly inspired by our numerous trips to art galleries, we decided to draw each other on paper napkins and on the back of maps etc. As is what happens when any of us try to expressive ourselves through the medium of art, our drawings didn’t turn out to be the masterpieces we had planned:
By Alice
By Gillian
By Bessie
Unfortunately, our rush of creativity bought some unwanted interest in the form of the lead singer/drummer of the reggae band. Mistakenly thinking we were skilled artists, he commissioned us to attempt to draw him. Left without an option of escape, and feeling more than a little conscious of the gaping hole in their artistic abilities, Gillian and Alice obliged. Here is the frankly, rather embarrassing results:
By Gillian
By Alice
By the way, his name is Sunray (lol) and his father is a ‘music legend’ and knew Bob Marley. You can Wikipedia him apparently; his name is Winston Grennan or something. You know you’ve made it if your dad’s on Wikipedia.
Turns out he’s quite famous. Fancy that.
We watched his son play for a bit. He was also pretty good at singing and playing the drums. He even gave us a call out whilst he was playing. What a claim to fame. All too soon we had to get the ferry back across, as the ferry sailed passed the pier that the band were playing, Sunray waved manically at us.
Back on the mainland, we met up with Greg. This was actually a brilliant idea. Greg was originally from Toronto and knew his way around. We used him as a personal tour guide although he didn’t seem to mind. As we were travelling to the States that night and there are obvious restrictions about age limits and buying alcohol, restrictions we don’t meet, we decided to stock up on alcohol legally in Canada and transport it across the border (illegally). We got the subway to Dundas Square and reached a liquor store before closing. Unsure when we’d next be able to do this, we possibly went a bit overboard with some unnecessary purchases. Weighed down with our brown paper bags of booze, we went to the grocery store to get rid of more Canadian dollars on dinner. On the way out we bumped into Fabio (Colombian guy from last night), he was on his way to New York that night too, and we exchanged contact info.
Back at the hostel we ate dinner, changed clothe, packed up, strategically hid alcohol in our suitcases, said goodbye to Greg and headed off into the moonlight.....JK we dragged our cases noisily through the streets, stopping to buy a stamp, and deeming it too far to walk so waited for a streetcar to take us 2 blocks. Possibly more effort loading and unloading our cases from the streetcar, trying to avoid crushing people’s feet, than it would have been to make the 5 min walk.
After a subway journey, we arrived at the Toronto bus terminal where we met Paul (german from last night) also heading to New York. We exchanged contact info as he was spending the first day alone. The bus journey was pretty boring, slept most of the way. At 1am we stopped at Buffalo to cross the border. Let's hope we manage to get our contraband across without getting arrested.....
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