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The End

We are now waiting at the airport for our flight home, we had an excellent “last supper” yesterday in a French restaurant who managed to poison Gill with a dodgy piece of duck so she was not full of bonhomie towards our European friends this morning. I had half a chicken, it must be a special breed with four legs as my half had two. We spent the morning in the Toronto aquarium which was quite good, lots of sharks and small children and as with all good museums I learnt something new. Gonads is a proper medical term, I always assumed it was slang. We also visited the Toronto Roundhouse which, like the one in London , was an engine shed with a turntable in the middle. This now has trendy bars and a little museum dedicated to Canadian Train so we stocked up with yet more useless information about our train journey.

So what did we think of Canada?
Everything was good and as advertised but there were few Wow moments, you somehow expect some surprises in the space of seven weeks but apart from the Bell museum, seeing the sockeye salmon in their droves swimming up-stream to their spawning grounds, the four day train journey and meeting my uncle and his family nothing really stood out.

A few observations that I have not covered in the blog so far:
Food - Eating out is always a big part of our holidays but Canadians don't seem to eat out much, they seem to prefer self catering so there are fewer restaurants than in Europe and no competition. The consequence of this is that, with the exception of a restaurant in Vancouver, we did not find any interesting food and the quality was not as good as at home. All the food we had (apart from Gills duck last night) was fine but nothing special, which is a shame.

When we had difficulty finding a restaurant open one Sunday the guest house owner said “it’s your problem, most Canadians bring a cool box and eat in their rooms!” how sad is that?

The biggest disappointment was scallops. The guidebook said Nova Scotia was the epicentre of scallops, they even have scallop festivals but I only found them in three restaurants and they were all bland. The best we had we bought from a supermarket and cooked ourselves on a camping stove and the next best I had was in Toronto which is 1,300 miles from the sea!

It was noticeable that many more people pay their own bill in a restaurant or pub even when there are only a few people in the group. Last week we were in a bar when a group of 10 or 12 people drinking beer asked for individual bills at the end, being a waiter must be very challenging.

At first we thought it was just a very badly trained waiter but it seems that almost all Canadian waiters collect any plate which is finished no matter that others on the table are still eating. I eat quite quickly being a greedy pig and my plate was often snatched away before Gill was half way through her dinner. It would be a sack-able offence in the UK.

Beer and Wine – There are some excellent “craft” beers (real ale) but most are over 5% and many 7%, 8% or even 9%.

Costs - The poor exchange rate means that everything is 30% more expensive than at home and accommodation perhaps double but the big surprise is the cost of houses. Considering land is plentiful and almost all houses are made of wood you would think they would be cheaper than the UK but you don't get much for $1,000,000 (£600,000).

Every small town has a museum, most with the same exhibits, home life in 1900s.

Canada is big of course but it is surprising how many Canadians have not visited the East coast or Vancouver Island and when we say where we have been say "I would love to go there", why don't they?

Not much evidence of Covid precautions except on public transport, the Via Train and airport where masks are compulsory.

With the exception of the bus which connects the ferry terminal to Vancouver public transport is good and like the UK there are lots of city centre bike hire schemes.

First Nation areas in towns are very scruffy, wrecked cars outside, no maintenance. It seems they have a very different view to us regards land, home and property.

So did we have a good time?

Yes we did. As expected the scenery is great, everything works well and we enjoyed ourselves, we get home tomorrow probably spend a couple of weeks sorting out the thousands of photos, I might even start applying for jobs as Father Christmas, my beard trimmer won't work at 110v so I left it at home.

We can then start dreaming of the next adventure. Barnet are playing Altrincham next month so perhaps a few days in Manchester.