Back in Ottawa and TO

So, we finally arrived back in Ottawa, exhausted but glad. There was a message waiting on our machine... I'd been accepted for a position that I'd interviewed for just before we'd gone on holiday! Good news.

We spent an exhausting week trying to unpack, clean the house after our absence, get back into ultimate, and settle back into our (new, in my case) jobs. That weekend we went a bit crazy... we went to two shows, went horse-riding, saw a movie, went shopping (it was my birthday), went for a roller-blade... Monday morning I was so exhausted I was physically ill!

The weekend after we shot down to Toronto to catch up with Rach, Ben and Ley. We carpooled down with the lovely Seanna, and we stayed with the gracious Jess. We met up with the Aussie crew in a park in downtown Toronto, and had a nice picnic lunch in the sun.


We did a couple of touristy things over the weekend - we went up the CN Tower, the tallest free standing structure in the world quote unquote. We stood in line for two hours to get there, only to find that, in the immortal words of Andrew M. Ley, it was in fact, "lame". We did have fun standing on the glass floor 600m above the ground, but it definitely wasn't worth the time and money. Then again, these towers never are, are they?

Creepy...

Later that day we met up with Jess and Seanna and wandered around China Town for a while, before going to one of Jess' favorite dives; a down-to-earth little place with a great live band that's been playing there for twenty years - sort of fifties, big band, swing music. Lots of fun. After a while however, us tourists got hungry, so on Seanna's suggestion we refueled at a nearby Thai eatery, which was very good.

Ben, Rach & Seanna free-stylin'

Then we stumbled upon the Toronto comedy festival which was busy and also a little weird. There were rubber-suited aliens chasing small children, two mischievous mushrooms running havoc through the crowd, huge flamingo-like things on stilts, a bunch of German firemen blowing things up, a bizarre new-age dance interpretation of Mad Max (?), and so on in a similar vein. Probably the coolest thing we saw was a dance battle between some 'traditional' breakdancers and some acrobatic Tae Kwon Do students. Lastly, we went and had a couple of games of pool before heading to our respective beds.

A flamingo... I think

The next day we had organised to meet at the ferry and head over to the Toronto Islands for a day at the beach. This we did, and it was a gorgeous sunny day - we swam, threw a frisbee and lazed around in the sand. Eventually, we left the girls (except for Rachel, who is Australian and thus understands the importance of beer) on the beach and did a tour of The Roundhouse. The Roundhouse is an old steam train repair facility that now houses a local brewer, who brew a great little drop called "Steam Whistle". The tour included lots of free beer, and Ley got to pull the actual Steam Whistle! All very exciting.

Ley, Me, Elli and Jess... cheers!

After that, we bid adieu to Ben and Rach and headed back to Jess' place for a spot of sushi; then, Ottawa with Seanna, Ley in tow.