Canada I
As requested, some bloggery. Staying about 25 minutes out of Toronto, in a house that'd be considered a mansion anywhere in the Old World. It doesn't look much like it did the last time I was here (I was 4) and of course the old folks and the dog are long gone, but I remember the land that counts as 'garden' - a space somewhat larger than the average city park.
I'm up, somewhat sleep-deprived, at 7am local time, trying to keep my tea off all their beautiful things and eating cake because I was told to help myself to food and could not find the bread. Flight in yesterday was unremarkable except for the seat booklet claiming Economy now had "more legroom", which foxed me since posibly the only way to fit a person of my size or over (say, the average Canadian male) in with less would be to assume a foetal position. For 8 hours.
The bilingual labelling of most things here is going to leave me with a mental tic for a bit ("thing! Repeat thing!"), I can tell. It's pretty hot here at present, but very misty. A brief walk in the garden yesterday showed up deer tracks, the smell of several animals I don't know (I suspect the foxlike reek is coyote pee) and all sorts of exotic fungi.
On the theme of exotic, Toronto's suburbs apparently have a huge Indian/Bangladeshi population, which meant the supermarket we visited (the size of a European hypermarket - easily three times the size of the sprawling monstrosity that is Tesco Kirkwall) was absoloutely full of Asian as well as North American foodstuffs I had never seen before. Familiar foods also took a turn for the weird: the default Heinz beans here are alarmingly brown, due to being cooked in brown sugar and bacon fat, with bacon left in. They also sell milk in bags for some mad reason, ice cream in buckets, and chocolate chips in sacks. O_O
I'm up, somewhat sleep-deprived, at 7am local time, trying to keep my tea off all their beautiful things and eating cake because I was told to help myself to food and could not find the bread. Flight in yesterday was unremarkable except for the seat booklet claiming Economy now had "more legroom", which foxed me since posibly the only way to fit a person of my size or over (say, the average Canadian male) in with less would be to assume a foetal position. For 8 hours.
The bilingual labelling of most things here is going to leave me with a mental tic for a bit ("thing! Repeat thing!"), I can tell. It's pretty hot here at present, but very misty. A brief walk in the garden yesterday showed up deer tracks, the smell of several animals I don't know (I suspect the foxlike reek is coyote pee) and all sorts of exotic fungi.
On the theme of exotic, Toronto's suburbs apparently have a huge Indian/Bangladeshi population, which meant the supermarket we visited (the size of a European hypermarket - easily three times the size of the sprawling monstrosity that is Tesco Kirkwall) was absoloutely full of Asian as well as North American foodstuffs I had never seen before. Familiar foods also took a turn for the weird: the default Heinz beans here are alarmingly brown, due to being cooked in brown sugar and bacon fat, with bacon left in. They also sell milk in bags for some mad reason, ice cream in buckets, and chocolate chips in sacks. O_O