The Toronto Trip Conception
This summer, my friends Kristin, Mike, Z, and I begin toying with the idea of traveling to Toronto. The four of us have all been there as a group for a few days the summer of 2007. I was working with Free The Children at the time and they came to visit me. That being said, Toronto already holds a permanent place in each of our little spirits filled with fun memories and is a location we all wish to journey to again. At the onset of this conversation, I mention the idea of us waiting until summer passes and going during TIFF instead. At the time I honestly don’t think it will actually end up working out, but one-by-one we each buy our tickets, have a g-mail conference chat (I mean, really, we are quite serious in planning this), and pick out movies that we all want to see.
The Arrival
With this first step in place, on the 15th of this lovely month, I bus it down to the Hartford bus station and catch a Greyhound to NYC. Fortunately my bus isn’t late pulling into Port Authority and I’m quickly able to drag Big Blue, my trusty suitcase, over to Penn Station where I hop on a Megabus that drives straight to Toronto. It is astonishingly a great travel experience. I get to sleep straight through, work on the computer (the Megabus is not only inexpensive, it has free wireless which makes it awesome), and arrive intact with all my bags. This is saying something since I have a tendency to miss my transportation, lose my baggage, be severely delayed, be searched, and sleep in sketchy-ass stations. The only problem is, the bus is running late, neither my ride, Kristin, or I have phones, and I don’t really have any way of getting a hold of her. However, Kristin is phenomenal and as soon as I got off the bus to look for my suitcase, I feel myself enveloped in a huge hug. Immediately the chitchat, catching up, and soul smiling begins. I’ve just got to say, it’s really great when you can see someone you love after over a year and feel like you’ve never been away from them because being together just seems so normal.
Being that my bus is late, Kristin declares that we should pick up her husband Umair’s friend Melkamu from the hostel he is staying in rather than driving all the way out to NE Toronto, back to the downtown area, and back to NE Toronto in the next hour. Of course this makes sense to me, so we head towards King and Spadina to the Global Village Backpackers Inn.
The Global Backpackers Inn
Rain is pouring onto the streets, so we pull up right in front of the hostel, put on our blinkers, and Kristin goes inside to retrieve Melkamu. After about 10 minutes, she returns alone.
“You’re going to have to sneak in and get him,” she tells me. Apparently when she went to the front desk, the woman in charge told her that no, she could not go upstairs and retrieve Melkamu and no, she would not go upstairs to wake him up. However, Kristin could leave a message for him on the bulletin board which of course defeats the whole purpose of picking him up. Oh, and the woman also asks Kristin how to spell his name to which she replies, “Do you think I know how to spell Melkamu? …How many Melkamu’s do you think are here?!” So, she leaves a note, sticks it on the bulletin board and returns to the car.
We sit for awhile munching on trail mix, cucumbers, and carrots, and she gives me a description of Melkamu and the layout of the place saying, “If you just walk past the front desk and past the computers, there might be a door that goes up to the rooms.”
Sigh. “If Z was here, he would totally do this”. Alas, he will not be arriving until later in the evening. I pull together some Z courage, tell myself that at least it will make for a good story and walk into the place. I walk straight past the front desk and conspicuously peer around every corner looking for a door that leads in the upward direction. No doors are present, so I head towards the entrance and open the door that says “Upstairs to Rooms” right by the front desk and go up. Success. I’m one step closer to being there. Then I try to open the door that goes to the next floor and it is secured with a magnetic lock that you need a card for. After a few minutes, a couple of girls come down and I sneak past them and get to room 108. Knocking the door, a shirtless, burly, Russian-Irish-looking fellow opens the door.
“Hello, is Melkamu here?” I hesitantly ask while a head with dreads pops up from one of the bottom bunks and replies, “Yep, that’s me.”
“Hi, I’m Camila. I’m friends with Kristin and Umair and I was sent to get you. We’re here to pick you up and we’re waiting downstairs.”
Poor guy has never met me before in his life. I could easily be here to kidnap him but he nonchalantly responds: “All right, I’ll be down there in a minute.”
I return to the car, hop in, and tell Kristin that the mission has been a success. It takes a few minutes, but Melkamu comes down, gets in, and we head to the Don Valley Parkway to get to Umair’s Auntie’s house. It’s about 10am when we arrive and Auntie Suffi makes us eggs and toast for breakfast, and we bumble around for several hours before finally heading to the door to get out into the Canadian air.
First stop is… some mall close to their house. Umair’s uncle has to pick up some meat and we end up going with them. Fortunately they’ve got some cool things in the place like bins of bulk food and a little shop with Pakistani clothes which is beautiful. Kristin buys a couple of head coverings, Umair buys another decoration for the rearview mirror, and I look at the lovely clothes. After getting a couple of samosas and some coffee, we part ways with the Uncle and head downtown parking in the entertainment district.
Kristin and the bins of food in the mall.
Over the next several hours, Umair, Melkamu, Kristin and I walk aimlessly around the city, stop to get drinks at Starbucks (where we get in trouble for taking a picture inside the store), take picture after ridiculous picture, and just have an hilarious time posing with statues.
Me, Kristin, & Melkamu "running" with the CN Tower looming above us.
Umair & Melkamu strolling with Starbucks.
Kristin & I amidst the foliage on University Ave.
Mischievous Kristin.
Melkamu & Umair on University Ave.
Kristin's epic X-men pose.
Me & Kristin posing with armless statues.
Oh, and of course on University of Avenue, we ran into some statues that we took pictures with in 2007… so we had to do it again.
Mike, Kristin, & I with the statues in 2007.
Kristin & I with the statues on September 16, 2010.
At one point, we’re standing in front of a fountain on University Ave. and want to take a picture of the four of us as part of the fountain with the water coming out of our mouths. We ask a lady if she’d be willing to take our photo.
“It might take awhile,” Kristin tells her, “we kind of want a certain setup with us looking like we’re part of the fountain with the water coming from our mouths."
The woman is a great sport about it, and even though it’s not exactly what we want, it’s fun having a stranger take part in our ridiculousness.
“It might take awhile,” Kristin tells her, “we kind of want a certain setup with us looking like we’re part of the fountain with the water coming from our mouths."
The woman is a great sport about it, and even though it’s not exactly what we want, it’s fun having a stranger take part in our ridiculousness.
The failed Umair, Camila, Kristin, & Melkamu fountain.
Right after that, heading towards the Parliament building, Kristin and I invent a lovely little song called “Rat of the Sky.” It’s about pigeons and goes like this:
“Rat of the sky, rat of the sky, rat of the rat of the rat of the sky”
and is sung while hopping on one foot like a one-legged pigeon. There are also meant to be big-breasted female pigeons singing in the background in operatic voices. Kristin and I sing this, hopping around, and people just sort of stare at us with amused expressions.
At Parliament, for some reason, Kristin and I begin singing “Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes…” from The Sound of Music, which is, by the way, one of the most amazing movies ever.
“What’s shnitzel?” I ask her.
“I think it’s dumplings,” she replies.
This conversation continues as I pass a yellow “Slow” sign that has been etched with other words.
“Make... love.... slowly…” I read.
“With noodles...?!” Kristin glances at me in awe, thinking that I’m telling her that shnitzel means to make love slowly. This begins to be one of the jokes of the weekend. “So, you wanna schnitzel some time?” and “I like to start my day off with some TIFF and schnitzel…”
Editor's Note: Schnitzel is in fact breaded meat.
It’s turning into late afternoon, so we decide to walk eastward towards Yonge and head south on Dundas to the Eaton Centre. The four of us decide to all might up in 45 minutes and Kristin and I split up from the boys to do a little clothes looking.
“Do you have a feeling that something’s going to go wrong” Kristin asks me.
“You mean with us all meeting back up?”
“Yeah.”
“Probably, none of us have phones or watches, and we all kind of have a tendency to be late.”
“And they might not be able to find our meet up place again.”
Either way, we know it’ll end up working out, so we keep looking, decide that it’s best not to buy anything until we get to Kensington, and we go back to meet the boys who are waiting for us. No problems there. We head back to the apartment and eat some Biriyani, spicy meat, and na’an before looking online for a place for Melkamu to stay the night and see if Z has written to us about meeting up in the morning. After a couple of hours, we still haven’t found anything, so us girls sleep on the couches, the boys take the bedroom, and we decide to check in on Z again in the morning.
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