Woo hoo, in double figures again: Toronto Day 9 (1 May 2014)

With essentially no rain and a maximum of 14° forecast for the day, we felt positively light-headed when we woke up this particular day. Len headed off soon after 9am to collect his tickets for the night’s ice hockey game that he wanted to experience, and got back in plenty of time for our … day with Hannah, who had managed to take a day off to spend with us.

Appassionato: Another free concert at the Four Seasons Centre

We were all looking forward to the free concert this day … And so were many other Torontonians because we got there at 11.15am, with the interior doors opening at 11.30am for a 12 noon start, to find the queue already out the entrance door. We got a decent seat and watched the crowds continue to pour in. If we thought the turn up to last week’s new music concert was good, this one was amazing, with people sitting and standing up on the mezzanine floor overlooking the performance space.

The performer was a young but highly accomplished young man, 23 years old we believe, named Leonard Gilbert. He played pieces by Bach (from his English Suite No. 2 in A Minor), Ravel (from Gaspard de la nuit),  Liszt (Transcendental Etude No. 10 in F Minor), Chopin (Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante, Op 22) – and the feature Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata. They were all wonderfully, and feelingly played, but interestingly we all have similar likes: we all agreed that the Beethoven, Chopin and Ravel were our favourites.

Lunch and a movie

You might think that all our eating has been high-end but not so. It just looks that way! Hannah’s choice for our lunch was a chain called the Pickle Barrel – chosen mainly because she wanted their waffle with frozen yoghurt! We were happy to oblige with Len settling for an all-day breakfast option, and Sue for Atlantic Salmon with sautéed potatoes and asparagus. We were entertained by our waiter whose manner and sense of humour was drier than we have usually experienced. We weren’t sure always whether he was being funny when answering our questions or thought we were peculiar!

Anyhow, then it was movie time. We forgot to explain the culture here – or, at least at the cineplex (containing 24 screens!) that we’ve attended with Hannah. Advertisements etc start playing as soon as the doors open, that is, not at the start of show-time, and include pre-show trivia and games some of which you can answer on your i-device and win prizes or points. The games include questions like “What line comes after [insert movie quote]?” and “Which films did [insert actor’s name] appear in?”. The first was presented as a multiple choice, and the second comprised eight movie titles that you would say Yay or Nay to. All a bit of fun. However, we all, including our young’un, found the pre show presentation, including the part that occurs after the formal start time, horrendously noisy, way noisier than we experience in Canberra (and we sometimes think they’re noisy!).

The film we saw was a new Indian release called 2 States, a sort of musical romcom with Bollywood influences. It was a hoot, and rather charming, though surprisingly long at 149 mins. It charted the relationship between a young Madrasi woman and her Punjabi boyfriend. It’s about love, cross-cultural relationships, love marriages, arranged marriages, and the importance of the wider family in marriages. Several times our hero and heroine consider eloping but the message was that they realised success in marriage is likely to be helped if your families are happy and support you. That’s probably a good point we reckon, not that you can always ensure it. There is a nice little twist to do with the hero wishing to be a writer, but we won’t give away anything more about that. Overall, a fun movie, with a serious core, that could be too long if you didn’t enjoy watching the gorgeous actors going about their business!

Separate ways

At this point, Len headed off to his ice hockey match, while Sue and Hannah had some mother-daughter time. First stop was the Indigo Bookshop in the Eaton Centre. We know, we know, it’s a chain but it was the bookshop most accessible in the time we had, and Sue wanted to check out some Canadian authors. Suffice it to say that the shop, while fine, was just like a chain. The staff did their best but were not really able to provide the sort of advice Sue wanted, like, you know, Canadian authors besides Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro (whose books they have a lot of, the willing sales assistant said, since she’d just won the Pulitzer! We didn’t bother to correct him but just smiled because he had done his best –  and then noticed that we were actually standing next to a little display stand of just what we were looking for, that is, all the books were tagged “Canadian author” and were all new authors to us!).

Sue and Hannah then walked the several blocks down Queen Street West to Spadina where the restaurant that Hannah had chosen for dinner was located. Along the way we passed the stunning, and large, Old City Hall that was built in 1899. Sue also noted embedded in the pavement the Toronto Book Awards Hall of Fame! That well made up for the Indigo kerfuffle!

We arrived at Fresh – a healthy eating chain – around 7.15pm to find a line and a 30 mins wait. We decided to wait, and got our table pretty much 30 mins later. A fascinating menu of really interesting and, yes, healthy food. Sue chose the Soup and Salad which was served with grilled gluten-free cornbread. The soup was Jamaican greens and spinach soup, and the salad was a green salad with edamame and napa cabbage among other items. To go with this, Sue had a hot Moroccan Mint Tea. No wine, though they did serve it! Hannah chose her favourite salad which featured Tempeh, and had the hot Flu Fighter drink. It had lots of carrot in it. Sue could see why the place was so popular – good, fresh food, reasonably priced.

Toronto Marlies vs Milwaukee Admirals

Never having seen an ice-hockey match before, Len took the opportunity to attend the American Hockey League match between the local team, the Marlies, and the USA based Admirals.  It was a play-off game, best of five. The Marlies were two up so far, so they could clinch a play-off berth and it was do or die for the Admirals. His surprise at being so easily able to buy a ticket to this match turned out to be because this was the second level league, not the top level National Hockey League, a game of which would have been sold out, with a scalped ticket apparently fetching over $300 a pop.

The match was played at the Ricoh Colisseum,  just a ten-minute walk from our condo – very convenient. An ice-hockey match has three periods.  This is very strange, since one team gets to play twice in the same direction and only once in the other.  It must be feasible because ice-rinks are very flat and symmetrical! The game was interesting enough, although the action is very fast, and what constituted a foul and what not (most scuffling and fighting appeared not!) was difficult to determine to the untrained eye. The play was, given the stakes, very defensive until at last, late in the second period the Marlies scored.  They went on to not only hold, but consolidate that lead with a second goal in the third period and win 2-0.  Of course, there were the concessions – burgers, pizza, popcorn, beer, ice creams galore. Len also was issued with and brought home his obligatory Marlies towel, having given it a good twirl/wave during the match when encouraged to do so by the always effervescent, locally biased, match announcer/compere.  It had been good fun.

A TV show entitled “Cracked”

There being no television set in our condo (a fact which didn’t really bother us too much) we took the opportunity to investigate the Canadian equivalent of the Australian iView system.  We latched on to a police TV drama series which focusses on how Toronto Police handle cases involving folks with mental conditions.  As in Australia, apparently there has been a recent history of shooting incidents involving people with mental conditions and, in this show, the local police have established a squad, which includes professional psychologists/psychiatrists, to produce a better outcome. The show is called Cracked, however, not because of the people the police deal with, but because one of the policemen on the squad has a history of unusual behaviour himself, as a result of PTSD associated with his service in the force.  If it comes to Australia in the future, we will certainly watch it, and recommend that you do too – if you like police dramas!

Today’s slideshow …

This slideshow requires JavaScript.