The Long Way Home

Goodbye USA!

Al Capone used to buy bootleg liquor in the top floor office of this Toronto flatiron building.

Even on such a beautiful day, it’s easy to picture this historic home covered in snow.

Canada’s famous ‘Fuzzy Peaches’.

Eastern Beaches area of Toronto, right by our cheap, comfortable, safe hotel. A great place to stay next time you visit.

Lake Ontario from 24,000 feet.

Between two layers of cloud on descent into Boston.

Since posting about our visit to Mall of America in Minneapolis, we have received thousands of emails from people all over the world, wanting to know what we bought at the Mall.

So, to satisfy everyone’s curiosity, I can say that we only shopped at one store; the Lego Store. The girls enjoyed it and even I had fun. We bought a three-pack of build-yourself Lego men.

Erin and Marti pose with a life-size Lego man:

From left: Lego Fangio, Lego Farmer Joe, and Lego Porn Star.

It was nice to have a day’s photography work today to help cover the Toronto leg of the trip. This blog hasn’t generated any income (I’ve always said I won’t bombard our readers with advertising) so it was good to have some come from somewhere else.

Happiness is a caffeinated Gemmola:

The home we photographed today:

The master at work, photographing the back yard of the house, located in Toronto’s plush suburbs:

My future kitchen will not look like this. Although I can’t rule out having a Greek bust at breakfast:

Toronto. There’s something very comforting about a city with great public transport. It allows you to feel very quickly at home – and to immediately begin a quest for things like frozen custard, or cupcakes… I am concerned that this trip is becoming frozen-custard-centric, but more on that in a moment.

I’m sure a city’s quality of living can be judged according to the quantity of pregnant women. Every other woman we saw today was either pregnant or pushing a pram. Cyclists galore. And a tram that runs 24 hours a day (day passes end at 5am!) is a lot of brownie points for any city, especially when combined with a subway. Perhaps we’ve just been un-spoiled and are enjoying being spoiled by public transport again…

So, Saf, this one’s for you. On our walks today, after some great curry Pad Thai and a cupcake, we had… A frozen custard affogato. We did do a little bit of research before setting out, to discover ‘Jedd’s', where the espresso is as good as the frozen custard. Even Martina loved it (of course, you say, it had espresso in it!) One for the menu at Degani??

Affogato, frozen custard style…

A little bit of randomness:

Toronto has the largest Greek community in North America – which makes it even more like Melbourne. We went to Greek town for a gyro at a place called ‘Messini’… not far from Militsa, but the gyro was quite far. Too big, too slow (a good gyro should be in front of you in 60 seconds, and you can eat at least 2), and 95% of the staff were Pakistani.

University of Toronto building:

Subway station:

Toronto terrace houses:

The preggo-meter is off the charts – indicating a high livibility factor in Toronto:

Enroute to Toronto, we flew over Chicago again – this time at night.

Martina hanging out in Erin’s F150 truck.

Part of a very large die-cast collection…

Home-made Angel Food Cake, strawberries and icecream: the dessert that followed a delicious lunch at Erin’s grandparents’ house in Waldorf.

Erin with Russell and Dolores – they will soon be celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary! Congratulations.

A Minnesota cat – her kittens were safely stowed away in a hole at the base of a large tree.

Who needs a helmet when you have such a strong, white, shaved head – even at 70 miles an hour?

I think the Mall of America in Minneapolis has been surpassed as the world’s biggest mall, but the fact that it once was is impressive enough. In the middle of it all is a theme park with rollercoasters and rides of all descriptions, which apparently gets many more visitors than Disneyland. There were indeed large groups of Asian tourists who likely came to tue USA just to visit the mall.

Marti and Erin cross the State Line into Mall of America.

The rides were mostly occupied by small children, who looked like they shouldn’t be closer than 50 feet to most of them.

Mystic Lake has a store promoting its casino and hotel at the Mall. It took me back to the days of Digital Plus…

There’s no logic like…

And after lunch, you can get married at the Mall..!

Entertainment at the Mall includes teen musical extravaganzas…

And also, a few rounds of the Midwest Robotics League, or MRL… robot cars pitted against each other in an enclosed ‘ring’ – from what I gathered the aim was to damage and upend the opponent. See videos page for an example of this.

You won’t believe it but we found… Frozen Custard!! Culver’s has a very similar machine to Caliche’s (see post ‘Oh my goodness…!!!’, April 2nd) and was very tasty, but not quite as good as the New Mexico frozen custard.

Arrived in Chicago, connecting to Minneapolis.

CUN-IAD-ORD-MSP

Plane delayed to get me out of here. This gives me time to catch up on news. Here’s the story of the day – and below it, the Rebel Dog Blog link.

“Amid the turmoil of the Greece financial crisis, photos and videos of street protests have turned up a kind of canine “Where’s Waldo” figure: a mutt that may have some German shepherd genes, and clearly has a strong interest in civic disorder.

“While one can’t be certain that it’s the same pooch at every protest — Athens is something of a magnet for street-savvy stray dogs — this mutt does sport a distinctive blue collar, which may indicate that, while he’s a stray, he’s also current on his shots.
By some accounts, the dog has been on the Athens protest scene ever since 2008 (though some say the 2008 pooch is a similar-looking dog named Kanellos who established himself as a fixture at demonstrations and died that year).
The current mutt has won a long string of blog tributes and a number of online nicknames, including “Rebel Dog,” “Riot Dog” and “Protest Dog.” He even has a Facebook page devoted to him (as “Riot-Dog”).”

Rebel Dog blog:
http://rebeldog.tumblr.com/