After a one year hiatus, mostly due to health reasons, our travel life has resumed. Deb was invited to an animation festival in Toronto, strangely enough called "Toronto Animation Festival" and felt well enough to attend. It had been two years since she had accepted such an invitation from the many festivals that invite her. We chose to go by train, leaving Thursday morning from Windsor and arriving back where we started Friday afternoon. Not much of a journey, I'll admit, but it's a start! Toronto comes very close to being a Hong Kong look-alike. With a metropolitan population hovering around 6 million, at least half must be Asian. There is block after block of noodle shops and restaurants from all across Asia. Whereas Detroit has added 5 or 6 new tall buildings in the past few years, Toronto has added over a hundred. Many of them are condos and apartments in the downtown area, making for a very animated city night and day.
It was a cloudy and stormy arrival day. Our hotel room overlooked Lake Ontario (That's Toronto Island back there) with a busy boating schedule. Bottom right is the brewery.
View east from our 7th floor hotel room window. We were just at the foot of the CN Tower and the baseball stadium, so it was a very busy area.
There were two ales for me and two for Amanda.
We chose business class on Via Rail, and though it's on the pricey side we both felt it was worth it. We received our vegan meals, and there were free beverages, including alcohol. There is also a very nice v.i.p. lounge at Union Station in Toronto. We arrived in the big city in early afternoon, and it was a short walk to our Radisson Blu Hotel. We never stay at expensive big city hotels, but we had enough points from past trips at smaller hotels, mostly in the US, to enjoy a free night at rather nice joint. Just opposite our hotel was Amsterdam Brewery. Amanda met us there for some refreshment before we headed uptown for dinner. Her boyfriend, Bill, would meet us later at the cinema, as would two very old friends of mine, Bill Smith and Dino, who was my best friend growing up in Sudbury.
We ate at a Chinese veg restaurant called Veggie Delight, which was about a 15 minute walk to the cinema afterwards. The food was really good, and as I was served a virtual mound of tofu with my entree, all three of us ate it up eventually. Deb had a bowl of soupy noodles, while Amanda had a steaming veggie dish served over crispy rice.
The event was held in a small theatre, and there were six of us as a group. There were probably about 40 people in all, and ten animated short films were shown. Deb's film "Once Upon A Time", with her original song as the base, was easily the best film overall. It looked really fantastic on a big screen, and the sound was perfect, too. Others had some very good music, but the animation did not measure up. A few were too long. One had totally fantastic animation, but the song was a really bad religious one. Afterwards Deb and two other filmmakers who attended did a Q & A for about 30 minutes. After the show we tried to find a bar but everything was jammed up tight. So we just ended by splitting up into our three groups and going home. We managed to hail a cab just as the rain began to pelt down once again. We were soon snug in our room, very tired.
Three filmmakers at the Q & A. Deb answers a skill testing question from the audience. Back of head from l to r: me, Dino, Bill Smith. Photos by Amanda, who sat just behind us with her own version of Bill.
I must have walked several miles on Thursday, and much to my great surprise my toe did not hurt! Does this mean we might be able to squeeze in a trip to London or Vienna before Christmas? Stay tuned to this channel to find out.
Friday morning we got up late, checked out and wandered towards the train station. We ate breakfast in the special lounge, then boarded our comfy train car ahead of the mob. The trip home was quiet and relaxing, again with a decent vegan meal served us. Once in Windsor (the train was 30' late) it was a 31' drive home through Friday rush hour traffic.
What's next for the world travellers? A trip to Sudbury very soon to visit family. And likely something bigger after that.
Mapman Mike
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