Well hello and welcome back to upside down photos!

So, we had a great flight over with West Jet and were very impressed by the service, movie choices and great food. We got to Toronto mid afternoon and arrived at our apartment for 3 nights, first night we were wiped out with the time difference, even though it's only 5 hours so were early to bed. The apartment was really great, right in the heart of Downtown just a few steps to the CN Tower (which we had a great view of from the balcony) and well equipped.

On the first day we had snow, so that was a wonderful start, and we had a lovely walk around the waterfront and saw the Christmas market in the daytime. It's set in the cobbled distillery district so had a really good vibe to it and we had 'tornado potato' which is a spiral potato on a stick, delicious! That evening, the Toronto Maple Leaf ice hockey team were playing and so we went to the local sports bar to eat and watch the game. Never seen a bar like it, packed out and over 200 screens to watch it all on! Lots of the people there were going to the game so there was a great buzz about the place and during the game there are loads of breaks but they filled this with crowd whooping and someone famous called Wendell someone (?!) who gave out free team t-shirts, which we both got!

Because of the long game, and far too many ad breaks we didn't stay til the end but found out they had won the next morning. Go Maple Leafs!

The next day it was bitterly cold, more snow, and about -7 with a wind chill of -16. We took the train and bus out to Toronto Zoo, and saw animals we don't get to see at Marwell including bison, moose, racoons, cougars and many more although the grizzly bears were in hibernation. Then we went to the CN Tower for sunset and reminded ourselves - once again - how much we hate towers and heights! It was so cold and windy, the external lifts were slowed from the usual 58 seconds to 3 minutes and it was far too harsh to venture outside to the observation deck - we whizzed around very quickly before returning to terra firma and a great dinner out at a nearby Italian.

Thursday morning, we checked the forecast - no snow due, and headed back to the airport to pick up the hire car - a very small Kia. Just as we came out it started to snow (forecast as trust worthy as the UK obviously!) and as I started to learn the car controls and James put the route in the sat nav, the snow reached near blizzard conditions so it made for an 'interesting' drive out of the city to the house sit. After many wrong turns as the house was hard to find, we arrived after about an hour and a half. The house is really cosy and Caroline was very welcoming. We have 5 cats to look after, a couple are on medication and kept separately but instructions were clear and they are all lovely friendly cats. They are a bit of an eclectic 'crazy cat' couple with a ton of cat memorabilia and a mountain of stuffed toys in every room but it's a lovely house, split level over 4 floors with 2 lounges, plenty of Christmas lights and trees and a full sized pool table in the basement, oh and an outdoor hot tub! We are about 20 minutes from the nearest town so we went food shopping in the afternoon and then cooked dinner for Carolines husband in the evening as she was working.

They left Friday morning, for warmer climates in Florida and the the Dominican Republic and we will be here for just over 2 weeks. On Friday we had a stunning sunny day but the snow was still about 3" so we had a country park walk. Yesterday we went into Guelph to get each other Christmas presents at the mall and today we walked the local 'block' which was actually far bigger than expected and took over 2 hours. Loads of the local houses are really large on big plots of land so we had a good nose at them. Oh and this morning I made pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast, pumpkin pie is on the list to try whilst we are here!

So that's our news so far, we have been watching lots of Christmas movies and getting in the spirit of things and we are doing the Christmas food shop tomorrow.

Love to you all

xxx