Day 104 Niagara Falls - Toronto
Trip Start
May 07, 2008
1
112
205
Trip End
Nov 22, 2008
Hamilton,
Ontario,
Canada
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
We planned a trip into Toronto today, but gee we all know about the "best laid plans of mice and men", don't we?
It didn't come together for us at all.
We set off and headed to Wal Mart for our usual "top up" of groceries, but gee, we are in Canada and the Wal Mart is not our usual Wal Mart, it was not stocked up to the standard we are used to finding. Never mind we will make do and keep heading to Toronto.
We head to the KOA called West Toronto, they had advertised bus/train system to Toronto.
This trip became an adventure as well, simply because we could NOT locate this KOA in Mandy, oh well, good clear instructions in the book; YEAH RIGHT! Until we get to a point they are doing road works and detoured us off the road we required to travel along. "Sorry, they have not put in a diversion road, and NO I do not know my around here! I live in XXX"
Oh well we will turn left and then turn right and follow our nose, Gee! great idea except the road narrowed (warning no trucks, We decided the Castle is a car for today!) and it twisted around a little, but at least it was sealed. J
We continued on this for a while until it came to a cross intersection and the road we were on narrows some more, a decision was made to turn right, just because the road appeared more inviting.
We did this and travelled a short distance with NO IDEA where we were, we came across an "Emergency Response Depot" so guessed it might be a good place to "have an Emergency" "HELP!"
So Rick heads over the road and it is a police emergency response depot and is secured, as he tries the door it is opened by a guy on the inside and is invited in. After talking to two great guys, especially after they "recognised the accent" (Do we have an accent or them??) The correct directions were obtained and we managed to proceed along to our KOA.
We book in and enquire about transport to Toronto. MMMM this seems to be a problem, we are about 15-20 mins away from the GO bus route/station, and they do not run a shuttle bus. Oh boy!
Never mind we are allowed to wander in and pick a suitable site and decide that this will do and we will go in the Castle to the Rail station. A quick lunch and away we head, with a map and Mandy telling us where to go. We are not sure whose clock it was timed on to say 20 mins but ours took around 30 -35 mins (remember the Castle is not sluggish on the road and easily maintains the speed limits.
Never mind there is ample parking, which is a consideration for the travellers in the Castle, we pull up and walk up to a closed station, and a sign saying trains run between 6am to 9am approximately, and again in the afternoon from 5pm to 7pm, the alternate is to take a GO bus, Oh well we head to the Go bus Platform, Karon asks a person where we get the bus to Toronto, Section 4! Ok lets sit and wait it should be every half hour we reckon, during the wait period we watched some come and go but not to our section, mmmm getting a little suspicious we go looking for a time table, to discover we still have 30 mins wait and it takes an hour to get into town, we figured hey that makes it 3:30 arrival in town and a bit late to look around. Let us abandon this idea for today and try tomorrow.
We head back home and stopped off at another new supermarket Canadian type, to top up the stuff Wal Mart didn't have and then went to an information centre to obtain maps and information of the state, and area.
We had spotted a truck wash on the way in, so decided to take advantage of the down time from the hectic tourist schedule to give the Castle a well over due wash.
That was fun, we drove in and were told yes they can do it, we didn't even have to get out of the Castle(except to pay) but there were about 6 guys swarmed around the castle with high pressure guns, spraying foam , and other fanciful stuff that removed the gunk from 5,000 miles of travel since the last clean and Castle came out all lovely and bright and shining, and we are proud Aussie travellers again.
Home we head (easy this time we have been here before and Mandy knows the way now) and settle in for a relaxed evening
