Canada - the first few days

The flight was uneventful and LONG. All in all about 9 and a half hours, which was too long for me in one go. The cold was bearable, but still with me. We arrived 40 minutes early, an advantage, which was duly cancelled by taking an hour and a half queueing first in immigration and then in the luggage hall. Latter was fortunate, as Alex got held up in traffic and just arrived minutes before we got out of the airport.

Roy and Alex in Woodbine Park

It took about an hour to get home and meet Callum and Meaghan. The rest of the day was uneventful and we fell into bed quite early. On Friday Callum was having a cross country running race in a park down by the lake, so we all went to cheer him on. Unfortunately, there was a brisk wind blowing, so my cold got considerably worse. Callum enjoyed the race and we left him to have a Japanese "All you can eat" lunch.

Callum with his mates after the run

Sushi is always a must on every trip to Canada, so we started as we meant to go on. Even Roy enjoyed his beef and prawns, although he insisted that his greatest enjoyment was watching me loving it.

Roy and Alex round the table laden with sushi etc.

Jetlag has combined with my cold to make adjustment to Canadian time very hard this time. Several nights I had very little and mostly disturbed sleep, which then made me very tired and like a zombie at times. Still, the new custom of Callum climbing into bed with us in the early hours cheered me up and kept me going. He is growing up so fast and is great fun to be with.

My delicious brunch

On Saturday we all went to a lovely pub called House on Parliament to have brunch. Mine had two poached eggs, smoked salmon on a bagel with a lovely salad. We toasted Roy on his 75th birthday (again) with Bucks Fizz, which was delicious.

Gran in the tunnel, surrounded by sealife

Sunday's program started with Callum taking Roy and me to the Aquarium. Amazing place and the third one I visited after Brighton and Barcelona. It is by far the best one of the three. I loved the glass tunnel with all the marine life all around you and the educational hands-on exhibits for Callum. We spent a couple of hours there and then took Callum to a games shop for some Pokemon stuff.

Proud owner of 60 new Pokemon cards

In the afternoon and early evening Alex and I attended a Marxist discussion group on The Communist Manifesto, followed by an IMT branch meeting at Fightback's Toronto Centre. It was nice to see a few of the yougsters from last year's World School in Bardonecchia as well as some new ones.

On Monday I finally managed to post Joseph Zsombor's forgotten T-shirts to him in Quebec, do a bit of food shopping and then go home to veg out. In the afternoon we cooked a chicken paprikash with dumplings and cucumber salad for tea which went down quite well. Straight after tea we went to Callum's Beaver meeting where he was inaugurated into his lodge. He enjoyed running around with his mates and proudly wore his white tail on his Beaver hat.

The anxious Beaver candidate with Mummy

Tonight it is soccer practice, so we'll probably have another outing to that, but before that Roy and I plan to have a slow pootle through the centre of Toronto, retrace our steps from years ago when we were taken to the Distillery District and St. Lawrence Market.