The Rockies to the Capital

Early 1900s houses or even earlier I had volunteered to cook on Monday night for Joly and Lisa, who was coming around for dinner that night.   I found a recipe and all we had to do was get some supplies in for the meal.   Joly was working from home as builders were there to do some maintenance on his house.     Paul, Yvette, Lisa and Joly had said we ought to go to the Kensington Market and do the west side of Queen Street.   Apparently, it was quite a funky area and   a bit like Cuba Street in New Zealand.   With Joly’s help we figured out how to use the public transport.   I like using public transport because you get to see other parts of the city.   And sometimes it is a reasonably quick way to get between points A and B.   They have a subway system and we all needed to do was find the station and take the westbound line to Spadina.   However, we decided to check out the local supermarket first to ens...

  New City Happy All Black matches at the Rugby World Cup are something worth watching particularly if it is reputedly against the best team in world rugby at the time.   I had told everyone I didn’t want to know the outcome but   Bev and Joly already knew   but they kindly indulged me so I could watch it after we got up the next day.   What a match!   It was seat of the pants stuff and I would have been happy with whoever won as they provided a spectacle that is often lacking in rugby.     It was a cold day, but not so in Joly’s place and it was a bit of a shock to hit the cold air as we headed into town to meet an old but young friend Lisa who is resident in Toronto these days.   It was with much excitement that we greeted each other in front of Union Station.   St Lawrence Market Street Joly took us to a café by the St Lawrence Market (the market has been there since the early 1800s).   The café was ful...

  I woke to the news that the government in New Zealand was going to change to a far more conservative one.   A disappointment for me but not surprising. Even the scale of the defeat was as expected.      Perhaps there would be a better result from the All Blacks versus Ireland Rugby World Cup match.   Due to our travel that day, the outcome was to be left unknown until later that day when hopefully we could watch it at Joly's.     Union Station, Toronto We had had a couple of messages the day before saying that there may be delays with our train journey to Toronto, caused by trackwork.   Something we are very familiar with in Wellington and Auckland.     Our departure was 10:30 but when we got to the train station we were informed that it would be an hour and a quarter late.   So no rugby match to watch at 3pm, given the estimated time of arrival.   The train was joined to another train leaving a...

  Riding the line   Ottawa has, amongst other museums, the National Aviation and Space Museum.   I had been to it many years ago but figured it must have some new exhibits.   Graham kindly transported me there.   I had a wonderful two and a half hours looking at the various aircraft.   One had even been reconstructed by Peter Jackson’s firm.   It was nice to see that New Zealand had a little bit to do with the exhibits.   The aircraft were all planes that had been part of Canada’s aviation history.   Like New Zealand, the government of Canada has been a small spender on the military. Thus, any military aircraft have to last a long time.   Dragon Moth - descendent of the Tiger Moth   In the afternoon we went for a bike ride.   It is the first one I have done for a while.   The route took us mostly on a disused rail corridor, so it was very flat and very straight.   Canada is relatively flat especi...

  It was time to vote in New Zealand's election.   I had found out where the High Commission was situated and Graham agreed to take us to the location in Elgin Street in downtown Ottawa.   What could go wrong?   We would be in and out in a few minutes having cast our vote.     It started fine with Kirsty the deputy High Commissioner welcoming us to the High Commission and ushering us into the room where voting was to take place.   We filled out the requisite forms and she noted that all the Wellington Central voting papers had been used (they only get a few papers for each electorate and apparently Wellington Central is a popular one) and she would have to use a master copy.   The master copy was nowhere to be found in the meeting room.   She was rightly getting a little frustrated as the person who normally did it had gone out and she was the back-up.   She went further into the office to see if she could locate it...

  Visiting a supermarket is not on everyone’s wish list of things to do when visiting a different country.   I love going there to see what products there are and the prices.   Graham took us to Farm Boy which is a similar concept to Moore Wilson, with lots of fresh food and well labelled with provenance and even calories if you want to know that.   The prices were very similar to what we would pay for similar products in New Zealand.   Of course there were lots of differences as well.   The range of yoghurts was less, the cereals were mostly full of sugar (although many of ours are as well) and there were lots of out of season products at reasonable prices.   The supermarket was in a huge shopping mall which consisted of a series of very large car parks with big box retailers forming the boundaries.   Walking around would not be the thing to do.   Porirua in NZ has a smaller version.   Not the ideal place for a sh...