The Joys of Summer
November 30, 2008
The Joys of Summer
by: Susanne Pacher
For me there is no better time of year than late spring, early summer. From about the middle of May to the middle of July I am totally in my element. It’s finally warm, the weather gets better, the days are really long. The summer solstice for me is a magical time, you’re out until 9:45 pm and there is still light on the horizon.
Well, it’s finally warmed up in Toronto. After a long winter (isn’t winter always long here?) and a patch of rain and cool weather in May, June has brought the “3 H’s” to Toronto: hot, hazy and humid. As a matter of fact, I don’t mind at all. I love being outside at night when it’s 25 degrees (above 80 Fahrenheit) and I don’t even need a sweater to protect myself against the nightly chills.
The last few days have been fabulous. Starting on Wednesday, I took a nice little walk downtown with my sister-in-law and we walked down Church Street, heart of the Gay Village, where everybody was getting ready for the big Pride Parade and the other events associated with Pride Week.
Hello from Toronto (5) - Novice Golf, Driving through the Kawarthas, a Little Off-Road Mountain-Biking & Preparing to Say Goodbye
November 30, 2008
Hello from Toronto (5) - Novice Golf, Driving through the Kawarthas, a Little Off-Road Mountain-Biking & Preparing to Say Goodbye
by: Susanne Pacher
It is unbelievable how nine days can just fly by. Today my brother, sister-in-law and our two Austrian friends are scheduled to fly back to Graz, Austria, via Vienna. There has been an increasingly palpable sense of sentimentality in the air, in light of the fact that this wonderful time is coming to an end alarmingly quickly.
It’s also amazing how many activities one is able to cram into a short amount of time. I wanted to give them a really good taste of everything that I love about the city of Toronto and my new country. So occasionally I put a few too many things on our plates and we ended up racing through a few of the activities. On the whole though, I think our European guests had a fabulous time and they fell in love with Toronto, just like I did, many years ago.
Hello from Vancouver (2) - Wheeling around Stanley Park
November 29, 2008
Hello from Vancouver (2) - Wheeling around Stanley Park
by: Susanne Pacher
Stanley Park is Vancouver’s famous urban paradise and I knew weeks in advance that I would need to explore it in detail, preferably on a bike. So this afternoon at about 1:30 pm I set off from the UBC Campus, and navigated my way downtown by bus, taking 3 buses to get to the eastern edge of Stanley Park. This was my first chance to glance at the city of Vancouver. It is a relatively new city and according to some accounts, its origins date back to 1792 , the year when Captain George Vancouver explored this region. Most buildings downtown west of Granville Avenue were built relatively recently as Vancouver has experienced a huge building boom over the last few years. A large part of downtown is covered by modern residential skyscrapers and Vancouver’s building frenzy continues unabated. It’s evident everywhere that this is a very popular place to live.
Hello from Toronto: A First Little Driving Tour -The City Viewed Through the Eyes of First-Time Visitors
November 28, 2008
Hello from Toronto: A First Little Driving Tour -The City Viewed Through the Eyes of First-Time Visitors
by: Susanne Pacher
So my brother is in town, together with his wife and 2 friends from my little home town in Austria. It is everybody’s first time in North America and their initiation to Toronto. Just to give you ideas of dimensions: Austria has a population of about 9 million and the country extends about 900 km from east to west while the Greater Toronto area nowadays probably has about 4 to 5 million people and Lake Ontario alone is over 300 km long. The first thing my visitors noticed was the difference in size: the size of the city, the size of the lake, the size of cars, the size of supermarkets, and even of refrigerators.
On Sunday we started off with a little driving tour of Toronto where I first took my visitors down to the lakefront by the historic Art Deco style R.C. Filtration Plant. All of them love water and to have a lake as big as an ocean so close by fascinated them. After a leisurely drive on Queen Street through the quaint Beaches neighbourhood we parked the car close to the St. Lawrence Market and started our walk around.
“Toronto Unlimited” & Sampling Toronto’s Street Festival
November 27, 2008
“Toronto Unlimited” & Sampling Toronto’s Street Festival
by: Susanne Pacher
I recently went to my first press conference in Toronto’s hip, recently renovated Distillery District, where the new “brand” of Toronto was unveiled. Toronto’s Brading Project was the culmination of a 13-month process with over 4,500 local survey responses and more than 230 in-depth interviews and roundtable discussions with leaders in the leisure and customer travel and convention business and other experts.
The outcome of all these consultations is Toronto’s new brand: Toronto Unlimited, which is intended to express Toronto’s unlimited opportunities, whether they be in film, biotechnology, meetings, conventions or tourism. Our mayor, David Miller, announced that “Toronto is a financial and cultural leader” and competes with such international renowned cities as Chicago, Milan and Barcelona. I learned that upcoming major investments in arts and culture include a new home for the Toronto International Film Festival; renovations and additions to the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario; and construction of the Four Seasons Performing Arts Centre, the new home of the National Ballet of Canada and the Canadian Opera Company.
Hello from Caledon, Elora & Guelph:Fall Colours, Ghosts and Ghouls
November 26, 2008
Hello from Caledon, Elora & Guelph:Fall Colours, Ghosts and Ghouls
by: Susanne Pacher
Fall is one of the most beautiful seasons in Ontario, and after last weeks early fall colour tour through the Kawarthas east of Toronto, it was time yesterday to check out the areas west of Toronto. My husband and I set off on the highway, left the 401 at Mississauga Road and drove north into rolling agricultural farmland. Our first interesting village along the way was Glen Williams, a little hamlet outside of Georgetown, whose former sawmill now houses more than 30 artists and artisans. We headed north along the scenic Credit River and drove up onto the Niagara Escarpment and literally stumbled over the Cheltenham Brickworks, a now abandoned brickmaking factory dating back to 1930 that utilized the area’s clay soil to manufacture bricks for Toronto’s housing boom. Abandoned industrial buildings always hold a strange fascination for me, and they offer great opportunities for curious photographers.
Not far away is another very unique area, the Cheltenham Badlands, a unique geological formation of weathered terra cotta hued rock, that originated as a result of deforestation and overgrazing during the early 1900s. It’s a fascinating landscape of undulating hills of red clay with greenish stripes, due to the soil’s red and gray iron oxide content.
Post-Cuba Reflections: Appreciation and Balance
November 25, 2008
Post-Cuba Reflections: Appreciation and Balance
by: Susanne Pacher
As I sit here in the morning, listening to the rhythmic salsa of Manolito Simonet y Su Trabuco, I am reflecting back on my 16 days in Cuba and all that I have experienced and learned.
My time in Cuba has been the single most interesting and amazing travel experience in my life so far - bar none. I have never jumped head first into a vastly different culture like this before, and it has, without exaggeration, been a head-twisting experience.
No doubt I fell in love with the city of Havana, I find it an amazing, beautiful and multi-faceted place. No doubt I had a really special experience with the people, and I made new friendships, with local Cubans as well as with a small crowd of international people who shared this language-learning experience with me at the University of Havana.
There is also no doubt that going to a totalitarian Communist country shifts your mindset just a little. Starting with the shortages (of food, of writing paper, toilet paper and toilet seats, gasoline, public transportation, consumer goods etc. etc.), to the constant presence of the police, to the palpable sense of guardedness, in some cases even paranoia, among the population. The watchful eyes of the authorities are everywhere and you have to be very careful about how you act and what you say.
Ian Wright - Live in Toronto!
November 25, 2008
Ian Wright - Live in Toronto!
by: Susanne Pacher
Yesterday my buddy Arnie and I had a chance to meet one of my idols in person: Ian Wright, the most famous presenter of the Pilot Guides travel show. The event was sponsored by three great players in the Canadian adventure travel industry: Outpost Magazine - Travel for Real; Mountain Equipment Coop - one of my favourite travel equipment outfitters; and Gap Adventures, a major adventure travel company in Toronto. It was great to see Ian live for the first time.
In many ways, Ian has been an inspiration to me for creating this website. When I started this travel website, I set out to create my own “Pilot Guides” experience, of course without the TV show, without the sponsors or the syndication deals, just me setting off on my own discoveries several times a year and sharing my experiences with like-minded people on the web.
In the 11 years of hosting the show Ian has been part of 55 episodes and traveled to over 70 countries. I have watched his shows for years and his quirky humour, cute English accent and physical comedy really add a special twist to this travel program. Ian never shies away from participating in activities with the locals, and he often samples rather outrageous types of food on his travels, including cockroaches and sheep eyeballs!
Hello from Toronto (3) - Exploring Niagara Wine Country
November 24, 2008
Hello from Toronto (3) - Exploring Niagara Wine Country
by: Susanne Pacher
Two days ago I took our European visitors on a little driving tour of the Niagara Peninsula, specifically to explore some of the 50 something wineries. My brother is a chef and very interested in exploring the authentic tastes and flavours of Canada. So far my visitors have been very impressed with the quality of the Canadian vegetables, meats, spices, and even the various types of beers that they have tried from different microbreweries.
We got going around 9:30 am to avoid the brunt of rush hour traffic and made our way west on the QEW highway on another day of perfect weather. We drove through the industrial outskirts of Mississauga, Oakville, Burlington and Hamilton, where they were particularly fascinated by the huge industrial complexes of Ontario’s steel industry. Just about 20 minutes south of Hamilton we turned off the highway onto local Highway Number 8, Ontario’s wine route, which follows the outline of the NIagara Escarpment.
Visiting 3 Beauties from the 1930s
November 23, 2008
Visiting 3 Beauties from the 1930s
by: Susanne Pacher
Being the architecture buff that I am, I have really been looking forward to checking out Toronto’s free architecture festival: Doors Open. A few years ago I went to Chicago with a few friends for a May long weekend, right at the time when Chicago’s architecture festival was on, and I am really happy that Toronto now has an architecture festival of its own.
The architectural period I am most fascinated with is the Jazz Age and the early part of the Great Depression, the era of the Roaring Twenties and the much less roaring Thirties, when the Art Deco skyscraper really came of age.
So it was only fitting that my good friend Shauna, another aficionado of Art Deco, and I would pick a few beauties dating back to that era from the 144 buildings that opened their doors to the public for free. We started with the Beaux-Arts / neoclassical Canada Life Building, built on University Avenue, Toronto’s biggest thoroughfare.
