bonjour!!
I'm in the capital city of Canada! And my blog has no pictures of the capital, so the picture is actually Toronto. It doesn't feel like a capital, but I think I'm used to the skyscrapers. This place makes me feel like I'm back in the UK, but not at the same time; it's British meets Canadian. I went on a bus tour of the city today, and my tour guide got really excited when I said I was British and even more so when I said I had studied in Scotland. "do you see how the architecture is very Scottish, do you see that Liverpool (that's my name), do you see it? Do you are it?" he was very excitable in a very French way!
My hostel is a jail, literally. It's one of the oldest jails in Canada, and the prisoners weren't treated very well, so it's also one of the most haunted buildigs in Canada. They bring ghost tour groups through here of a night. I am not going on that tour, I'll never sleep! It's one of the coolest hostels I've stayed in, but really really creepy. I'm in Darcy's cell, but I needed the loo in the middle of the night and the one on my floor was our of order so I had to go upstairs don this long corridor of cells in the dark to get to the bathroom. I will admit, I ran! Apparently there's the hangmans noose on the top floor, but me and my friend went looking for it before and couldn't find it.
I went out for drinks with some English guys last night. One of them had man flu, so I couldn't even mention the American flu I was dying of the days before! We got up early next morning to go on a free tour of the Parliamet building before they left. It is so similar to Glasgow uni! Obviously the canadians have style! We couldn't go into the house of commons because it was in session, but she showed us a picture and explained how it works. It's practically identical to our parliament. One difference is the senate, they can be anyone who has benefitted Canadian society in some way, so there's scientists, hockey players etc. We got to see the senate room, and the chair which would be where Queenie would sit if she came by instead the Governer sits. He of she does the Queens job over here. At then end of the tour we went up the tower to get a view of the whole city, and the province of Quebec across the river.
I then went on my bus tour. At one point by the Governer's house the bus drives through a park. I know everyone talks about the colours changing during fall, but the colour of the maple leaves is indescribable. Just stunning! I walked into the grounds of Rideau hall, where the governer lives. The grounds are beautiful as it's only trees native to Canada likethe maple, so all the fallen leaves are the brightest reds, oranges and yellows. All thetrees are planted by visiting heads of state, I found the tree planted by Wills and Kate. Despite the beautiful grounds, the house isn't really anything to write home about, even though that's what I'm doing. I couldn't go in because some event was going on today.
I then went to the royal mint and got a tour of how the money is made. They make investment coins in this branch and it's here they have the purest gold coin. So they decided to make it a limited edition investment piece with a coin that's over a foot big. It's face value is a million dollars, but it's worth 2.6 million dollars. They only made 5, and one is in thee vault in Ottawa. I did get to pick up a gold brick that was worth 750,000 Canadian dollars, and it was heavy!
I walked back via the Market place, got a crepe for dinner yum! I bought an Obama cookie, oh yeah!! When Obama came here he wanted to buy one for his wife and daughters, so he got one from this bakery he went to so now they sell them as Obama cookies, and they are good! Also got a Halloween pumpkin shaped one! I was going to get a beaver tail, their local delicacy, but I wasn't sure it looked good. It looks like really sugary dough. I did get to try a niagara local cake when I was tree, the woman on the bus shared some with me and that was nice. It was kind of like a Jammu dodger made out of short bread with icing.
I'm heading to a ghost tour now, not in the hostel, it's inside the museum of nature, spooky! I'm glad I booked the early one so it's not too dark out! Let you know how it goes!
Au revoir xXx