Every January I come to Canada, and every January I get hit with a
blizzard or blinding cold. The Canadians then look at me and earnestly
proclaim, “It’s been such a mild winter until now” and “This weather is unusual.” I
haven’t decided if this attitude is a country-wide effort to convince the
gullible American that Canada has a temperate climate, or if they are just
eternal optimists.
So here I am in Toronto, and it’s -14C (that’s 7F). I helped out with
running a conference this weekend, then tacked on an extra day to visit
Andrew’s cousin, who lives nearby. I arranged for a late flight this afternoon
so I’d have time to do a bit of touristing. This hasn’t worked out quite as I
planned, as it turns out the city is closed on Mondays. My cousin-in-law and
her husband spent last evening suggesting a dozen or so tourist attractions,
and then discovering that each was closed closed today. I completely support
the right for every worker to have days off, I just wish they’d stagger them a
bit. Toronto is the fourth-largest city in North America, but my sight-seeing
options basically came down to shopping malls or a shoe museum.
For the record, the shoe museum was much better than you might expect.
They had reconstructed shoes from prehistoric times, and lots of indigenous
footwear, so it was the history of the world through shoes. Did you know you can make shoes from fish skin?
4 comments:
Not only did I not know, but now I want a pair!
In Norway, our hotel restaurants in Tromso were closed on Sunday even though there tons of tourists there and it being right in the middle of the busy holiday season...because it wasy Sunday (duh what's wrong with you Americans). And in Finland we found all the tourist attractions closed on October 1 not to open until May 1 because "well who would come Finland after October 1?"
Do you go to the same conference every year on the same dates?
I knew museums, etc, are closed on Mondays, but needed this reminder for when I travel.The shoe museum is a departure from what I usually am invited to visit such as the largest motorcycle museum in the world.
omg. It is on the one hand good to see that some parts of the world are still getting snow but I personally think it puts Toronto out of the running for me for places I'd like to live. I think the shoe museum sounds quite good!
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