We knew there were a lot of lakes in the province of Ontario (there are around 250,000!) but nothing could really prepare us for the sheer scale as we descended down towards Toronto Pearson Airport. Glistening like mirrors and dotted like puddles across the mountainous terrain of Canada, there were some places so surrounded by water that they could only be reached by boat or seaplane.
Stepping off the plane, we were immediately hit by temperatures and humidity you would expect of a Spanish summer – wait… isn’t Canada supposed to be cold?! No one prepared us for this! After some waiting around in immigration, and a fair bit of panicking that people would accidentally make off with our bags, we were given our shiny new work permits and sent on our way to a hotel near the airport where we would rest our weary heads until morning.
On Friday, after a lovely American breakfast, we headed to our first AirBnB apartment by foot. This turned out to be a big mistake. After trekking across half the city in the searing mid-30s sun, carrying our lives on our backs we finally made it to our apartment. After shopping at what we now feel is the Canadian equivalent of Waitrose (and then freaking out over how expensive it was to buy basic food and drinks) we discovered that KFC was pretty cheap in comparison so came to grips with the fact we were going to end up fat and poor.
Saturday, we awoke to a bit of a shock – there was a man outside of our 2nd floor window who was fixing the AC! We took a stroll to Kensington Market to grab some Belgian chips at Moo Frites. This is definitely somewhere we will be paying another visit! Dan got excited at some of the cars parked up along the sides of the market. Next stop was Michaels for Vikki to be in awe of the floors upon floors of art supplies, along with the largest yarn section we’ve ever seen, who knew Canadians had such an obsession with yarn?? Continuing on down towards the waterfront we passed the Rogers Centre – the home of the Blue Jays, who just so happened to be in the middle of a game against the Detroit Tigers (Jays ended up losing 3-2). The roof was closed due to the extreme heat, but the commentary was being played outside of the stadium. Walking along the boardwalk by the lake was surprisingly cool with a refreshing breeze, but the water was quite choppy. We had never seen a lake with such big waves before! An attempt at understanding the street cars (trams) was made before we decided it would be easier to walk the 1.5 hours home in the heat of the day – mad dogs and Englishmen, eh? We tried to keep our temperatures down by grabbing an ice cream, although it was a cup of milk no more than 5 minutes after leaving the shop!
We finished off the evening by venturing to Walmart to grab some supplies for the next week. Relief struck when we realised that the prices we paid at Metro were almost double those of Walmart and that we might not end up being both poor and fat from having to live off of KFC after all.