It's not so bad once you get used to it.

I misjudged earlier. Truth is, we’re in a crappy part of Toronto, but it’s unfair to impugn the entire city based on one small local area. Once we flag down a taxi (not difficult) and escape into the CBD, it’s actually quite nice.

Yesterday we had a late breakkie (which was really lunch, because we went out the night before) at the St Lawrence Market. Following breakkie we thought it’d be a good idea to get the ferry across to Toronto Island, which is just off the coast, but given it was a sunny Sunday, everyone else in the city had exactly the same idea and we didn’t have the stamina for a gruelling queue. So after taking a few photographs of the lakefront (really quite pretty), we walked back into town, past the railway station, and up towards the main shopping precinct. We caught some Games footage at the shopping centre: Canadians seem to be really quite chuffed with their bronze medal in synchronised diving (textbook stuff), then bought a couple of books (a history of Canada for me, and some ‘refresh your French’ books for Cathy – I’ll be relying on her when we get to the French-speaking parts because my French is almost non-existent, apart from some handy phrases handed to me by some helpful others).

We then headed out to the Distillery part of town, which apparently used to be a large brewery/distillery serving the town (not sure how long ago this was), and the buildings and streets have been preserved but the interiors are now mostly swanky galleries etc; but this is also where the Mill St microbrewery lives, so we dropped in for a couple of drinks. They were serving a seasonal raspberry beer which was nice, but not quite as good (or refreshing) as the Wig & Pen version. Then back to the room for an early night; it feels like things are slowly returning to a more moderate pace following my two-week burst of energy in the north east US. Off to Halifax today, where the pace will probably slow even more considerably.