theotherlex

I love Schenectady.

The supervisor at the custom's stop outside Buffalo (at 2.05am) said that it was suspicious that I could pronounce it so well. :-) I think I must have seen a TV show or a film where someone is from or goes to Schenectady, because I think I've always wanted to visit. I know that I was very pleased to be able to come here. And it is a real town. It has a main street with a park in the middle and buses and shops. Some of them are closed and for lease, but there are also building and renewal projects. And a really nice Italian restaurant where I had dinner. White bean soup, because I haven't had white beans in ages and they remind me of home, and a stuffed mushroom, which was sharper, had stronger spices than I was expecting but was also very yummy.
I'm still a little under the weather, and very tired from the overnight bus, so I wasn't in the mood for dessert. :-(. But I did have a very nice liqueur coffee. Mmm.

I left Toronto on the 11.15 bus. I was going to leave at 9.30, but that would have got in at the same time, it would have just meant longer in Buffalo. So I played rummy with a guy at the hostel in Toronto and ate some grapes and then walked myself to the station. Both my backpack and my crumpler bag are very comfortable to carry on my back. Unfortunately, I can't carry both like that, and I have to get a new system, because the crumpler bag shoulder strap puts odd strain on my neck. Still, it's only down hill for about ten minutes to get to the train station tomorrow. Yay, train! That will take me to Montreal.

I'm watching the CNN channel at the moment. It seems to be about Joe Biden won last night's VP debate but not quite as well as he should have. Also there are ads for medicine, religion, bibles and credit. Very different ads from the ads in Australia. It's strange to be watching TV again. I also watched "Burn After Reading" at the cinema. It's a cinema that shows classic films at 11am on a Saturday. It was showing "Breakfast at Tiffany's" today. But I was wandering back to my hotel to have a nap.

I got to have blueberry pancakes for breakfast from a cafe that could have been on High Street in Westgarth.

It has been a good day. Although I am sick because on Thursday I walked up the Cineforum in Toronto to watch a film about Jane Jacobs and got rained on. Grr. Still, I think that walking in the sun today and sleeping will help. I will try to find cold and flu tablets in Montreal tomorrow, because I never take them, and they really might help. The Jane Jacobs film was great. I don't her stuff at all, but she was arguing that discrimination of any kind is bad for the economy, which is brilliant. Also, the guy who runs the Cineforum, Reg Hartt described Jane Jacobs as getting out into the city and seeing not what she had been trained to see, but what was actually there.

I had no idea who Reg Hartt was, but the Cineforum is in his front room, and he was a person friend of Jane Jacobs, so I was happy to just listen to his lecture. Also, I didn't have to be anywhere else. But one the other people in the audience was a student and obviously took offense at the anti-school tilt on the lecture. He asked if Reg Hartt could just start the film and got soundly told off, so he left. I was surprised by the anger in Reg Hartt's response, but moreso by the guy leaving. If someone is giving you a lecture in his loungeroom which you have paid to see and he has the film you want to watch, you just take it all on board and chuck out the bits that you don't like later.

I also went up to the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, which was very cool. Also, to get there I had to go through a part of Toronto that I had not been before, except on the way to the travel agent. Turning left at Queen street instead of right towards Downtown. This is the Art and Design district and has designer clothes shops and retro music stores and a brilliant Sci-Fi bookshop (with all of Elizabeth Bear matociquala Promethean books). I didn't buy those, but I did buy a book called "Full Frontal Feminism" which was excellent.

So I like Toronto as well. Probably more than Schenectady, because I haven't found a big bookshop here, and they built over their canal.

I will do my best to write up going to Niagara tomorrow. It deserves a post all of its own, despite not being one of the natural wonders of the world. Now for bed.

I am in Toronto! I quite like it. I haven't seen much, yet. I arrived yesterday and walked from the Greyhound station to the hostel and then back into a more busy part to get some late lunch. I went out later to get dinner from the local grocery store, which is very close. I went there again at lunchtime-ish today to get food. I had breakfast at a cafe on the way. The coffee was bad, but the blueberry bran muffin was good. I so much prefer Canadian money, because it's coloured.

I leave tomorrow morning for the Moose Tour that will take me through most of Eastern Canada. I've given up the plan of making my way through New England on my own. There's another tour I can do right up the east coast. It's called the Island Hopper and will take me to wilderness that I really wouldn't be able to get to on my own. Then I'll spend about a week in Boston before flying to Miami and working my way back up the coast. I've book all the extra accommodation and transport for that, now I just need confirmation from the tour itself.

I left Milwaukee on Sunday night. We got to the bus station more than an hour early, which was just as well because there wasn't room on the 9.05 bus to Chicago (to catch the connection to Detroit), but they could put me on the 8.10. Even then there were two people in the aisle. I feel good to be on the road, and I had a good time last night in the basement here eating dinner and watching Canada's Next Top Model and Prison Break with a few drunk Scots and several Australians.

So, yes, it's Tuesday night now. I'm going out for a walk in a bit before coming back and making sure that everything is packed properly to leave on the bus tomorrow. I have grapes and scorched almonds (with too much chocolate). I have a week in Toronto after the tour. That will be at a different hostel. This one, the HI hostel, is good. The common areas are good, but the rooms aren't great, and they've painted the main stairs, so we have to the use the emergency stairs to the basement common areas and kitchen.