Day 700: London to Toronto to Niagara Falls

We managed to find a job in London, Ontario pretty quick after arriving. We worked for Bill Gosling, an outsourcing company that provide emergency road side assistance to hundreds of insurance companies within the USA and parts of Canada.

The work was in the form of a call centre, we spent eight hours a day with a head set on with angry Americans shouting in our ears. Some of the days were dull and long and other days were speedy, however the money made was going towards our next trip which made it all worth while.

Our English accent seems to amaze some and confuse others. Both of us have had Americans asking if we speak English or can they be transferred through to someone who does speaks English. Re-assuring them that we do in fact speak English as our mother tongue is usually met with disdain followed by a handful of abusive words and ending with them calling us liars. We do get the occasional nice client, who is very understanding and helpful but these seem to be few and far between. In typical human fashion everyone believes

they are the most important and should be serviced instantly and priorities to the top of the list. So when informed that they may have to wait an hour for service, the verbal abuse starts up once again.

The job was located in the city centre, in London’s main shopping mall. The term, shopping mall should be used loosely. It housed two discount stores going by the names Bulkbarrel and Dollarama, a spattering of clothing stores along with a college and the call centre.

We stayed with a friendly lady, Emmaline for a short while before having to move to another ladies house, Janice. Although Janice’s has two loveable cats we preferred Emmalines location due to the walk to work being shorter and the area being more friendly.

The two cats at Janice’s house were named LuLu and Laila, which we nicknamed fat kitty and little kitty. We will let you decide if you can work out which one was which. Little kitty was four years old and loved to play not to mention mischievous. Fat kitty was a little bit more relaxed and enjoyed to pass the days by lounging on our bed, spread out to take up maximum space.

Both of the cats seemed to enjoy waking us up in the morning in their own unique way. Fat kitty would insist on jumping onto the bed and would cause quite a fright making us jump out of our skin. She would then hurriedly curl herself up in the warm spot where we had just jumped from. Little kitty would much prefer to paw through our belonging until she found something of interest, whether that be John’s trouser toggles or a set of batteries which she managed to open and chase around the bedroom. If you’re wondering how loud a set of batteries on a wooden floor is, we assure you it is loud!

Despite both cats being little devils we certainly missed them as we made the three mile walk to settle for the last time at Emmelines. Finally having a place where we would be stationary for a good couple of months we could now focusing on arranging other things. In particular, a halloween night out, a trip to Niagara falls and our American road trip.

Being one of Johns favourite holidays we made an effort to get our Halloween outfits together for a weekend in Toronto. We were excited to check out the nightlife and to see Canada’s version of Halloween in comparison to Australia the previous year. Previous years have seen us go as The Joker and Harley Quinn in England, The Mad hatter and Alice in wonderland while in Australia and Captain hook and Tinkerbell for this year in Canada. Always preferring to put costumes together ourselves another visit to charity shop was in order.

Judging from promotions alone, halloween is a much bigger holiday in North America than Europe or Australasia. Only a handful of clubs were available for a night out in Australia while every club in Toronto seems to be selling tickets for some sort of spooky event, there are even two cruises heading out to sea for party goers, aptly named ghost ships.

On the 27th October we headed for Toronto, where we stayed with a lady called Cheryl. We took the Greyhound coach to get to Toronto. We couldn’t sit by each other as the unsociable group on our bus all wished to sit by themselves taking up two seats each so all families and couples were split up for journey. As expected the group was already a little rowdy and getting impatient as the coach was running late. We couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for the driver as it wasn’t his fault that there had been accident on the highway.

We arrived in Toronto, got off the coach then took a 45 minute walk to arrive at a shop. Little had we known we were going to be living above a shop for the next few days. Cheryl turned out to be a lot older than expected, perhaps in her 70s. We got the impression that Cheryl prided herself as having a hippy lifestyle, as she took us on a tour of her small apartment. She seemed a nice lady and seemed willing to chat to us and give us tips about the neighbourhood.

After a good nights sleep we decided to head out despite the rain. We ended up buying a day pass and getting the train around the city to explore. We also visited Mckenzie house where we saw how the old newspapers used to be printed.

Later on in the day we headed out for our Halloween celebrations as Captain Hook and Tinkerbell. Unfortunately after all the planning and outfit preparation we ended up in a extreme gay bar unknowingly which wasn’t really the vibe we were after. After blowing our budget on entrance to the club and one drink each we were sober and fed up which resulted in a early night – nevertheless it had been fun to dress up.

The following day we decided to go for a walk in a national park. The autumn trees were beautiful and it was really lovely to stretch the legs, get fresh air and make the most of having nothing to do. At 2pm we stopped for a picnic lunch then by 3.15pm we headed back into the city. We spent the remainder of the afternoon/evening exploring. We managed to see the harbour, the Flat Iron building, the Distillery District and pretty much everything in between as we did the majority by foot.

On our last day off we went to visit Niagara Falls. With a early start of 8am we walked with our belongings to the coach station once again. After a fast paced 5km walk with heavy bags on our shoulders we were sat on the coach, we even managed to sit by each other this time!

When we arrived in Niagara the weather was pretty miserable. With a 3km walk we arrived at the Falls. Time seemed to go extremely quickly as we walked up and down to view both the USA and Canadian side of the Falls. We then decided as we would only get the chance once that we would take a ride on the ‘Maid of the Mist’.

The Maid of the Mist was a 20 minute boat ride in which you get extremely close to the Falls. We had a really fantastic time and got absolutely drenched in the process. For once in our travelling lives we were more than happy to be carrying round the majority of our belongings as it meant we could change out of our soaking clothes – if not we would be in our wet clothes for 5 + hours.

To round up the day we headed for a local coffee shop to warm up and to get some refreshments before the descent back to London.

We had a really fantastic time in Toronto despite the not so great weather and looked forward to our next adventure. Another bonus was that we only had to go back to work for two days before we could have another two off!