Around Toronto

Days Twenty Six & Seven - No driving

Tuesday was time to kick back and visit with cousins and family. We had a look around the Toronto suburb of Oakville where my cousin Elizabeth and her family live, and where I was staying. They live a couple of blocks from the shore of Lake Ontario. I've always been fascinated with the Great Lakes. I remember as a child, my brother used to have a big map of the Great Lakes on the wall in our bedroom, and they seemed so enormous and mysterious to me in little Ireland.

Later, we came back to the house and my aunt - my mother's sister - came over also, with my other cousin Catherine, and her husband Jason and their kids.

I hadn't seen Betty in so long - since Catherine and Jason's wedding - but I thought she was looking very well, and I can't remember seeing her so HAPPY! This was very good to see, as Betty has been having some ups and downs with her health recently. I was particularly pleased also, as Betty liked my hair, and my hair has grown OUT so much recently, like an enormous "Irish Afro," as my friend Tobi calls it. I really need a haircut, but I've decided not to get one until I get back...why, I don't really know - because I can!

We sat around and reminisced about old times, and "Old Ireland," and all that sentimentality we Irish love so much. I took a few photos with the kids in this incredible tree house they have in the garden - and told them the story about how I got into trouble as a "child" in Ireland, for surreptitiously running electricity from a neighbor's outbuilding to our nearby tree house. It's a long story...

It was also Sarah's birthday, and Jason and Catherine's wedding anniversary. The birthday apparently always "wins" each year. At least when they're older, they can guilt-trip her out, and perhaps then the anniversary will always win!

Wednesday, we went into Toronto itself, for a bit of sightseeing. Even though I'd been here twice before for both my cousins' weddings, I'd never really seen very much of the city proper. We did the obvious first - up the CN Tower. Pretty cool, I might add.

Afterwards, we went to the revamped "distillery district," and had lunch. Then we went to the Royal Ontario Museum, and saw an interesting exhibit about First Peoples, as the Canadians refer to Native Americans. I found this fascinating, as it covered a lot of the areas I had already visited, or was planning on seeing on my travels. The exhibit in the next gallery over, was about early Canadian history, and that sort of dovetailed well into the "spirit" of my journey too.

After that, we sat in a traffic jam for a couple of hours back to the house, but we had a bit of fun and good company with each other along the way, so it made it all worthwhile, and before we knew it we were home.

My cousins have the cutest, coolest, most well-behaved kids you could ever imagine. It was so great to spend time with them all. And my cousins and their families could not have been nicer and kinder to me either. THANK YOU GUYS!

I also "converted" Elizabeth's husband, Wilson, to Flogging Molly the previous evening. We were looking at photos on the TV/computer (it's all the same these days) of their visit to Ireland last year. Wilson had picked up a CD of some buskers in Dublin. They were playing fairly traditional Irish music, maybe a little jazzed up. His question to me was, "Why hasn't someone done a 'harder' version of this music - rock/metal/punk - with guitars and drums?" At which point, I responded with something along the lines of, "You are about to have a revelation, my friend!" We duly sat up in the downstairs room fairly late, listening to lots of Flogging Molly. Another fan! I suppose, this gives me a good excuse to come and visit, next time they hit town.

Up around Georgian Bay and Lake Huron tomorrow, to Sudbury, still in Ontario.

Onwards!