Oh Canada

We’ve been in Canada for a day and a half now. And it seems like most of the time we’ve been driving. To our surprise (or not) it is noticeably different from the US, mainly in that we really feel that there are less people. Also, there’s a lot less billboards on the highways, there are less major highways and chian-type fast food are further apart. The last undoubtedly has to do with the fact that we spent most of our time in “the country”, areas where the biggest town has a population of 5,500, but still, in the US there’s a McDonalds even in towns of 300, or at least it seems that way.

Yesterday after crossing the border, we just drove to get as close as possible to our next destination – Manitoulin Island, the world’s largest sweet-water island. The drive was actually quite beautiful, afterwards I actually read somewhere that the stretch of road heading towards the island is considered to be one of the most beautiful in Ontario. Had I known that, maybe I would have taken pictures, as it was I assumed the same landscape would continue. Sorry.

Today we did some hiking on the island, namely the “Cup and Saucer Trail” (I still can’t figure out why that’s the trail’s name). It was a lot of fun, and confronted us both with our slight 9and very sane) fear of heights.

It turns out that to get off the island in the direction we wanted to go, there is a ferry that runs only 4 times a day and takes 1.75 hours, that pretty much set the rest of our schedule for the day too. The cruise was nice as well, I say cruise because that’s the only way that I can rationalize the ridiculous amount of money that we had to spend on it. It’s pretty crazy how big these bodies of water are. There was about 30 minutes during the cruise where we could not see land on any side.

After getting off the ferry, we continued on. I say we all the time, but I do want to give credit to Uri who did all the driving today. I emphasize this now because, as I said, no major highways, not much happening on the sides of the road – it was a pretty boring drive. Again, given the ferry schedule, we decide to skip hiking in the Bruce Peninsula – though if any of you are planning a trip to Canada any time soon, it is supposed to be very beautiful. We headed straight for Toronto. Once again, we booked a room through Hotwire, providing us a great deal, though this time we’re not as centrally located (upside: we get to save on parking too). I think Toronto, like Chicago, will mainly have culinary highlights with a theme of celebrating the city’s ethnic diversity. We already started tonight with a fantastic dinner at a Persian restaurant. Mmmm.