Sunday began with a slow start and a lazy morning. We needed some extra snoozing to recover from lack of sleep on the train. This might seem strange given we'd just spent three days doing nothing more energetic than looking at the view but we were weary so went with what our bodies told us.

Once we were refreshed we decided to head into the city centre to check out the bus and subway routes and systems. Public transport is very reasonable. You buy tokens for $3 and these pay for an extended multi-mode journey with transfer tickets picked up as you board your first bus or subway.

We called in at Union Station as our late arrival meant Via Rail "owed" us significant travel credits. As we'd already bought our remaining train tickets this wasn't looking very useful until Dave had the bright idea of using them to upgrade to Business Class for our onward journey to Quebec City. Thanks to a hugely helpful assistant we were able to accomplish this: our credits were not quite sufficient to fund the journey but she tracked down a discounted fare that was within our credit budget and got us sorted and booked into Business Class.

With the remaining afternoon we decided to take in the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario). The AGO is housed in an interesting building, relatively old but with some impressive wooden facade and winding staircase additions (see photo). There's a relatively famous "Group of Seven" Canadian artists who worked together, visited France and were influenced by the Impressionists. The Seven were well represented in the gallery so we were keen to see their work. The experience was a little disappointing, you could see the European influence but the works themselves were not up to the quality of Monet etc, at least not in our eyes. Of the group we found Lawren Harris most interesting. Judge for yourself at: http://www.ago.net/the-group-of-seven-and-the-art-gallery-of-ontario

We were also interested in finding work by Emily Carr, a contemporary of the Group, whose house we'd seen in Victoria. Some of her paintings were quite etherial, particularly a forest scene. However, again we were a little disappointed with the work and the fact that she wasn't better represented here. Beyond this, the AGO is a bit of a maze and the Gallery's habit of not labelling any of the works on show was a little frustrating. Each room does have a single copy of a booklet that lists the works and artists but having to access this detracts in our view: no doubt the curator thinks that reading labels beside works of art detracts from the art viewing.

So with our cultural fix complete we headed back to the apartment, stopping off to do the week's supermarket shop on the way. We did a little advanced planning for the rest of the week and then it was off to bed.