The sales on Boxing Day were crazy enough, yet the crowds even more so. In fact, shops opened as early as 7am, and we'd already seen people carrying Forever 21 and H&M shopping bags when we left our hostel at 9am (i.e. they must'd been the really super early birds!) Omg.. it was snowing flurries too, but despite weather conditions people still ran from building to building, shop to shop. Check out the crowds both on the open streets and inside the Toronto Eaton Centre - some shops even had people waiting in line outside, and security guards had to regulate the inflow and outflow of customers..! Tskk.. scary sight.
I'd suggested a Christmas gift exchange amongst the 6 of us by way of drawing lots. I was supposed to get something for Pompidou, and'd set my eyes on a very classic Levi's tee. I even requested for Shuwen to vet it in the end before confirming my purchase, so it was good! Haha.. Huilin got me an *erhermz* below-stipulated-budget top too, haha. But it was nice la, though we had some fun niao-ing her about it heh. :) Unfortunately though I didn't manage to get anything else for myself! ROAR. Not that the sales weren't great enough, but I really didn't find what I liked to be sufficiently value-for-money, and the long lines just turned me off at times haha. On top of that, the items on sale were mostly Fall and Winter clothing too, so they didn't appeal that much to me.. yep.
After shopping we attempted to do some sightseeing, though nothing much was achieved eventually. Even the Toronto CN Tower was kinda disappointing despite the hoo-ha about it being the world's tallest building as well as one of the 7 Wonders of the Modern World. We even had to pay CAD 20 to go up the tower! Bleah. :(
The view from almost 553.34 metres way up above
At the souvenir shop, where we took a pic of the souvenir pic we took (which cost a whole CAD 20!) Haha.
It was Iryna's last night with us before returning to Europe, so we spent some time chillin' at a bar and went to Yuk Yuk's, a stand-up comedy club with rather crude yet entertaining comedians
Pretending to be King Kong or some gigantic monster on a rampage, haha
Happy Belated Boxing Day everyone! :)
Toronto has by far the warmest climate we've experienced, and by warmest I mean -7 degC! HAHA. No really, "cold" has evolved to a whole new level for us after experiencing temperatures/windchills all the way down to -48, and I foresee difficulties getting used to Singapore's weather again (though undeniably I'm indeed looking forward to sunny weather and more daylight hours). But if only my aircon back home can go all the way down to 0 degC..! Haha.. I reckon 16 will still be quite warm for me for a start, hmm. And on a random sidenote, I think I've experienced so many different winters in the various parts of Canada that I prolly can write a Wini's Winter Survival Guide in Canada or something la, hahaha.
Anyhow, Toronto's climate is moderate for Canada due to its southern location within the country and close proximity to Lake Ontario. Yet Toronto winters sometimes feature short cold snaps with strong windchills; snowstorms mixed with ice and rain can also result in really heavy snowfalls. In fact, we are fortunate enough to have escaped the storm that'd occurred just a few days ago, and is now moving on to Quebec or something (lucky us we're done with that)! Heh. Temperatures these days in Toronto are not that low, and somehow this'd resulted in the city experiencing incessant rainfall instead of snow, making everything seem rather dreary and gloomy. In fact, the streets of Toronto are lined with slippery slosh and ice, rather than a pure white sheet of fluffy snow, making our dream white Christmas a grey one. :(
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Christmas Eve
We'd spent our Christmas Eve evening in Toronto looking for food, literally. Apparently there weren't many restaurants nor food places open, so our hopes of reserving a place for a warm and cosy Christmas dinner were dashed. I guess we were really disappointed initially knowing that our Christmas wasn't as nice as previously perceived, haha. But everything worked out well in the end, we finally found a diner and had a rather decent meal in a friendly ambience, heh.
Wet weather and sloshy roads on Christmas Eve
Toronto's a place with high immigrant influx, and we actually discovered lots of Asian food places while walking around! Here we see a shop featuring Singopore noodles, which is hilarious. Haha.
Downtown Yonge, and our nice Christmas meal where Huilin and I shared most of our food, just the spirit of the season!
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Christmas Day
To our dismay, almost all shops and food places are closed on Christmas Day in Canada, particularly cos people spend time with their families and stay home! So we couldn't do any form of sightseeing at all (yes, even the tourist attractions were closed)! Yet lo and behold, we found out that Chinatown was still fully open (in fact, the only place that's even open), so off we went to seek good food and cheap deals! Haha.. :)
We were attracted to a signboard which had Singapore chilli crabs, mee pok, laksa etc., and it turns out to be a place offering Singaporean/Thai/Malaysian cuisine..!
Dim sum for breakfast, my long-craved century egg porridge!
Pompidou and Jinsheng (affectionately known as Ah-Pong and Ah-Jin these days), and woots, wife biscuits (lao po bing) and green bean pastries! Yummmmmy.
Interesting stuff - foot reflexology sign with gross hairy feet (!!!), and a Chinese police signage
After Chinatown we sought to explore Toronto on foot, in light of the good -7 warm weather, heh. We could only visit the open parks and spaces of course, but the weather was so good we didn't mind taking long walks, admiring Toronto's sights even though everywhere was just empty and quiet in general.
Queen's Park Legislative Building
University of Toronto campus
Downtown Toronto and the Gay District - check out the picture on the left, which depicts books for "comrades", haha. Nude bars are also abundant in the city.
So yep, that's Christmas Eve/Day for us in Toronto, simple yet interesting in its own way. It's Boxing Day tomorrow, which signifies a day of shopping in light of crazy sales. According to Laura, we must prepare ourselves for the battle against the most aggressive Canadian shoppers..! I can almost foresee a day of auntie-ness and kiasu-ism at work, haha. :D
Despite the incessant horror stories surrounding the Greyhound bus, we finally embarked on our first Greyhound-Canada journey from Quebec to Ottawa. It wasn't all that bad though, or perhaps I've just been accustomed to travelling on coaches since I was young (and anyway, nothing can be as bad as standing 4 hours when I took the Greyhound from New York to Jersey 2 years ago, haha). But yep, my experience'd allowed me to share lots of lil' tips with my friends, about how to take care of personal belongings when asleep on the bus, as well as the weird mechanisms of Greyhound - apparently tickets for the bus have no timings stamped on them, so everyone has to go early and get into line to ensure you get a seat and depart at your desired timing, haha.
So it all worked out well for us, it's already been more than a week since we started on our travel itinerary. I guess travelling in a group always entails some form of learning - be it dependence, independence, or looking out for your friends. Cultural sensitivity perhaps comes into play too, since Iryna (Shuwen and Huilin's friend from Ukraine/Czech) is here with us as well. Yep.. it's gonna be a tiring 19 days altogether but I'm sure we'll enjoy one another's company and keep each other sane, heh.
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Few people actually know that Ottawa's the capital of Canada; many people mistake it for Toronto or Vancouver. But yep, we've heard it's not a very exciting place, since it is renowned only as home to a wealth of national museums, official residences, government buildings, memorials and heritage structures. Still, Ottawa was an interesting and beautiful place to see even though we spent only 1 night there, and personally I'm just so thankful and amazed that every part of Canada is so different and displays a unique culture of its own, so much so that every place we visit is a new discovery for us. Winter conditions here are also slightly different from Quebec's; snow and ice (and snowstorms) are super dominant in the province of Ontario, and Ottawa itself receives about 235cm of snowfall on average every year! So yep, coupled with the humid continental climate the city can get very very cold, bleah.
Ottawa Backpackers' Inn
ByWard Market with its exciting food variety (see below) and souvenir shops!
Left: cafeteria in Byward Market / Right: pasar-malam in the cold, haha
National Gallery of Canada (Musee des beaux-arts du Canada), with its iconic gigantic spider (the Maman). I think I look like a teddy bear there! Haha.
Ottawa's castle-like Parliament House and City Hall.. simply beautiful with the snowfall. :)
The frozen canal in Ottawa, known to be the 2nd longest skating rink in the world (once again, Winnipeg's 1st! Haha.)