Today we spent the day in Toronto. We managed to get a Greyhound bus in the morning to get us into Town by 11:00am. It rained pretty hard before we got the bus, and during the journey.
When we got off the bus, the rain decided to come down as hard and as fast as possible - it was unbelievable! Even though I had my waterproof jacket and my umbrella, my trousers got soaked all the way up to my thighs! The water was falling so fast, I was getting wet from the water bouncing back out of the puddles, which were as deep as my shoes were - so my shoes were wet, but my feet weren't too bad - thank goodness for Gortex!!
So, the first stop was the Gallery of Inuit Art. Now...could we find it?? We walked around for about an hour and couldn't find it anywhere. We even asked someone who worked on the sea front, who told us it was "around this corner" but it was nowhere to be seen. All we knew was that the address was "Queen's Quay", and after searching the road and the block, we saw a shopping mall called "Queen's Quay". I said "Well, lets go through there and if its not there, we'll give up and go straight to the CN Tower". So in we went, found a mall map and....there it was!! It was IN the shopping mall. And there were so signs to it either (unless it was signposted just from one side of the mall...), which was strange considering that it was apparently "Toronto's Newest Museum". Do they not want to promote it? Let people know how to get there?
Anyway, there it was tucked neatly away in the corner. It was quite small, but there were a LOT of things, and we found most of it very, very nice indeed - even some of the contemporary art. I particularly liked the 'dancing bear' sculptures and the 'dancing walrus' looked particularly playful. There was a sort-of shop afterwards, but it was more like a gallery extension with pieces you could buy - seriously expensive though. $4,000 for a medium, good sized dancing bear. It was unfortunate that the actual gift shop seemed closed, otherwise I may have bought the book on the gallery or on the art and sculpture.
By this time we had dried off completely, and standing under the hand-drier in the washroom definitely helped..! It was lunchtime. We found a place with a name like "Cafe Suprema" or something similar. I chose a panini and I was asked which soup I would like with it. I said I didn't want soup. "Okay," he said.
Then one of the ladies asked me what salad I would like with my panini. I said I didn't want a salad. "Okay," she said.
Then the second lady asked me which TWO salads I wanted with my panini.
At this point I thought *oh, to hell with it!* so I chose a mixture of plain and greek salad.
Then I was asked which DRESSING I wanted.......
I chose the Caesar dressing and before I knew it, I was ordering my decaff coffee at the till. Yes, I finally got to the till and
I finally got my panini. And the panini itself was the lightest wholewheat bread I have ever eaten! It was like eating light toast or crackers - very light. Mathew had chosen soup which came with noodles and salad. Soooo much food all for $5 each!!The CN Tower was our next stop, very extortionate at $27 (about £14 at the time) of course, but you can't really go to Toronto and NOT go up that Tower. That would be like going to Paris for the first time and not bothering with the Eiffel Tower. Despite the bad weather, the view wasn't all that bad as it had brightened up somewhat. The view was actually strangely eerie - we could see the weather front coming in and raining just outside Toronto, and where the last front with the really heavy rain which we had got soaked in, was passing over the other side. We couldn't see too far in the distance which was a shame, but the moisture was rising with the humidity creating a fog which crept over everything very slowly. From above, it looked pretty dramatic.
We went further up into the "Sky Pod", although we couldn't take proper photos because of the wire mesh which really HAD to be there...! It was also a shame about the weather because there could have been a baseball match or practicing going on in the pitch next door - but the roof was closed.
We came down the lift into the gift shop where I had my photo taken with a goofy looking black bear, and later a polar bear. I bought a few postcards and a maple leaf brooch as a gift for Mum.
We then walked to the Art Gallery of Ontario. At this point I had pretty much decided that Toronto reminded me very much of London, what with all the construction going on, heavy traffic, loud, and bustling streets. I was thinking earlier that Toronto looked cleaner, but on the way to the "AGO", I realised that it wasn't much different from London really - both cities have their grey areas and bright, clean areas.
The "AGO" was not what I was expecting. It was a very modern building throughout, which kind of threw me as I was expecting the building to be much older. I guess I'm used to entering more historic buildings when visiting a Museum at home or in Europe, and I guess I forgot that Canada - like America - has a much shorter historical timeline than Europe! This was the first point where I suddenly realised the short time span of history in Canada - I remembered what Janet had told us: 100 years = old. 150 = very old. 200 years = Quebec or First Nations Settlement.
We mainly looked at artwork created by "The Group of Seven" which I would describe as a cross between impressionism and fauvism. It turned out that I seemed to be very picky about which ones I liked, as most of it seemed quite fauvist which isn't one of my favourite styles but - as with many things I'm not too fond of - there were a handful which I did quite like, and I really liked the more impressionist style pieces. I thought I might buy postcards of the ones I liked the most.
BUT - this Museum gift shop seemed to be in league with the British Museum in London - there were NO postcards of the pieces which I liked. NONE. As a consequence I bought nothing. NOTHING! This is the only Museum where I have visited, gone to the gift shop, and left with nothing!! Astounding. But, it didn't put me in a bad mood..although I was quite fed up with the fact that I didn't buy anything. Although it wasn't all bad - had spent $113 yesterday in "Gallery Indigena"....! (of which I discovered later, there is one in Vancouver.....!)
My feet were hurting by now, so we went to the bus station and got onto the Grayhound back to Cambridge where Janet picked us up and took us home.
No comments:
Post a Comment