London to Manchester

Saturday 31st December
We arrived in Heathrow after a more comfortable night than is usual in a plane, thanks to having been bumped to Club World. This was my seat. I think Paul has a better photograph of both of us in the seat, so I'll try to get a copy on my computer and post it here.



At least I was able to lie out flat and shut my eyes for a little over 3 hours. I didn't really sleep, but I was lying down, so I felt a lot better. Paul didn't even attempt to sleep but watched an opera on his laptop. I imagine he will flake out some time later today.

We were invited to make use of the Club World lounge, so we did just that. We parked our luggage and had a wonderful shower, then enjoyed the free coffee. There was free Wi-Fi too, but I still couldn't post any pictures. I am just slightly worried that the software has gone wrong, but will wait and see what happens at home.

At mid-morning, we set off for Euston Station, and arrived in time to collect tickets, have a quick lunch, then catch our train to Manchester. We had booked a lunch time train in case the plane was late, so we had some hours to wait.

We babysat for our grandson in the evening, and it was NOT a quiet evening, as he had not been put to bed by us for four and a half months and didn't particularly want us, he wanted his patents. So Paul wasn't able to make up for his sleepless night on the plane!


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Ontario to London

Friday 30th December
This is our last day in Ontario, so after breakfast I set out to see if a public Wi-Fi would post my photographs. I had had no joy in the restaurant last night, apparently only a few ports were open. This was odd, as my first 3 photographs posted with no difficulty.

Then the next blog, that for Christmas Eve, failed to post at all. So I took out some of the photos and tried again. Eventually, it posted with only one photo, but then none of the others would post. Eventually, after dinner I gave up in disgust and we went home.

Starbucks this morning also failed me, text was fine but not photographs, so I posted some text but gave up in the end and went home. The weather was very foggy, with only a hundred yards or so of visibility; the landscape disappeared into the middle distance, dissolved in the mist. There was a fair amount of snow lying, and I hoped our flight wouldn't be delayed.



The rest of the morning was largely spent in packing and organising, and after lunch, we set off back to Toronto airport. I was reassured to see there actually was a flight at the correct time, since we still cannot log on to the Qantas web site; it still does not recognise our booking. Neither did BA, with whom we are flying this time, though it did say there was a system error.

We were supposed to check in with BA at a check-in machine, but that also failed, saying it was unable to complete the check-in, so I was quite worried. However, we just joined the enormous queue, and a real person checked us in and printed our boarding passes. That was a relief!

Security was fun. The security scanner took offence at my waist and abdomen - clearly I am far too fat, or else my fat in is some way disturbing to security scanners. So I had to go into the X-Ray machine which also took offence at my fat middle and displayed a picture of me with red-for-danger patches round my waist. So then the woman had to probe my spare tyre to see if it really was all that dangerous. Mind you, the same happened to the woman behind me, who resembled a skeleton, so perhaps it was something else that offended it. Paul had a dangerous middle as well, so it wasn't just being sexist.

Still, at least this time I didn't have to take my boots off. They don't seem to make you do that in Canada.

We sat at the gate, waiting to board, and eventually I drifted off to look at a shop. Then I realised boarding time had come and gone, and there had been no call. So I went back to the gate, and found Paul busy with his laptop, and a queue to board. By the time Paul had packed everything, most people had boarded. The man who took our boarding passes said he needed to change our seat assignment, and gave us row 14, instead of row 24. When we boarded, we discovered that row 14 was in Club World, and we had giant seats which turned into beds. We also had glasses of champagne, a meal on china plates with metal cutlery, and cloth napkins. Then I reclined my seat into a little bed of sorts, and tried to sleep.


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Ontario, Thursday

Thursday 29th December
Thursday being Market Day in St Jacobs, the next town to Heidelberg, we set off through the snow to go to the Farmers' Market. As some of the farmers are Mennonite, there are shelters for them to leave the horse and buggy.



The Farmers' Market is a large covered building with two floors of market stalls, though the upstairs is just a balcony.



There was a very wide selection of food on the ground floor, meat, poultry, fish, cheese, jams, baked goods, tea and coffee, flowers, herbs, juices, fruits and vegetables.




The vegetable stall, which had the most attractive looking vegetables, was a Mennonite one, you can probably see that the girl behind the counter is wearing a black dress and a black cap.

Upstairs, the stalls are not food ones, though most things are hand made.




I spent a long time looking at the hand-made sheepskin hats and slippers. I was really tempted by the slippers, as my feet are frequently cold.




I spent even longer looking at the Mennonite quilts. I did so want to buy a quilt, they are absolutely beautiful, with geometric or floral patterns, but unaccountably I seem to have taken no pictures at all. Quilting is one of the skills prized by Mennonite women and many of them make quilts, which is often a shared activity.

Then we went into the town of St Jacobs itself, an attractive little town, especially in the snow




It is still decorated for Christmas, and the sales have started, so there were plenty of shops to go into. After a quick lunch, we went to the Visitors' Centre where there is a display called 'The Mennonite Story', explaining their history, beliefs and way of life. I must admit that, while studying history and the Reformation, I had come across religious dissidents called Anabaptists, but I did not realise that many of these turned into Mennonite and Amish groups. They were called Anabaptists because they were opposed to baptism of babies, preferring adult baptism when the person was old enough to make a free choice. They also believe that work is more satisfying than consumption, and that tradition should be valued more than change. There were lots of explanations, photographs and videos, and this example of a Meeting House




There is no altar, cross or stained glass. The jug is for communion wine, there is a loaf of bread on the other end of the desk.

We continued to another building where we visited the Maple Sugar Museum. Maples grow in many areas, but it is only in the north eastern part of North America that maple sugar can be made from them. The sap does not seem to rise in the same way in other areas. The trees are tapped in March and April, and the sap collected in buckets. The water in it then has to be evaporated. This is how the early pioneers did it




The museum had a replica sugar shanty, with more up-to-date methods.



This is an evaporator, where the sap is boiled as it passes from section to section. It takes 30 - 40 litres of sap to make one litre of syrup.

When we went back out into the street, we saw a horse buggy approaching, and I was able to take a picture.



This was a great triumph; I had been trying very hard to get a picture, but my camera was not sufficiently responsive to take a picture as we drove past one. So far, I had photographed the road ahead of the buggy, the horse's nose, the horse's head, and even the horse itself, but I never managed to get the whole thing. This time it was easier because I was standing in the street. This is a winter buggy, the summer ones are open. The driver of this one was going quite fast, the horses were cantering, and I'm not sure whether it was the cold or the need to get away from the horrible tourist cameras. So I did feel a bit guilty if the driver objected to a photograph, but I don't need to take any more.

On the way home, we passed a couple of open buggies outside the school house, so I managed another photograph, one with no people this time.



Because it was snowing and very cold, the horses are wearing coats. These are open buggies, so I imagine the drivers and passengers must have needed to be warmly wrapped.

The countryside around is picturesque in the snow.



This is a typical looking Mennonite farm. Agriculture is the preferred means of livelihood in this community. Most depend on dairy, beef, pigs and poultry. Grain, fruit and vegetables may also be grown. The barn is high, like this one, and there is usually at least one grain silo. Most farming is done by older and smaller machinery than is in use on other, non-Mennonite farms. Some Mennonite farmers refuse to use tractors, and use horses instead. Some permit electricity in both the home and the farm, some use it only for farming. Things for sale, like eggs or maple syrup, are advertised at the farm gate. It usually says 'Not Sundays'.

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Toronto, Wednesday

Wednesday 28th December
Today, we made an expedition into Toronto, about an hour and a half's drive away.

Toronto is a big town, with a population in the metropolitan area of five and a half million, so we were driving through the suburbs for a long time. We drove towards the centre, where we noticed the solid buildings



and the transport systems depending on trams. There is a web of overhead tram cables in parts of the city.




Our route passed through the large Chinatown, where you might be forgiven for thinking yourself in Hong Kong. Every single shop and restaurant has a Chinese name, and the area is large.




Our destination was the Royal Ontario Museum, where we had booked tickets to see an exhibition called 'Maya, Secrets of their Ancient World'. We were greeted by a Mayan figure in the foyer, wearing considerably fewer clothes than we were




He was stained that blue colour, rather than being blue with cold, but given the temperature, he must have envied us our coats!

Photography was forbidden in the exhibition, even of the replica artefacts and murals and photographs of the temples facades, so I can't post any pictures here. As I knew very little of the Mayans, I found it interesting and informative. I had not realised that, when the Spaniards arrived to colonise that part of the Americas, the great Mayan cities had been abandoned for over 500 years. Nor had I realised that there was not a Mayan 'empire' with a single governing body; what we call the Mayan civilisation is made up of numerous independent city states, sharing similar traits, practices and beliefs. The cities were frequently in conflict with one another, involving warfare, torture and sometimes sacrifice. As well as the photographs of the temples, there were statues, carvings and sculptures, ceramics, household goods, jewellery, artefacts connected with ball games, and funerary masks.

After the exhibition, we had some lunch and then took some time to explore the rest of the museum, which is enormous. I started in the Chinese area, where there is a Ming Tomb dating from 1656




with attendant statues




This one is a military tomb official.
Some tombs had stone animals lining the path. This camel came from a different tomb, not the one in the museum.




I had time to visit other parts of the museum, for instance the Canadian Gallery featuring art and artefacts from Canada. I spent some time viewing the areas dedicated to Africa, particularly Egypt. This is a bust of Cleopatra




And this lovely diorama shows an imagined Egyptian lady getting ready for a party. She has all her jewellery and cosmetics on the little table beside her.



We only had time to see a fraction of this museum, before it was time to leave. We drove through other parts of Toronto, having a brief look at the downtown areas



and Government buildings.



Toronto is remarkable in that there are quite considerable residential areas in the centre of the city, a legacy of the time before the 1950s when Toronto was a very small city



It gets dark quite early, and bearing in mind that we had 100 km to drive in the snow which was starting to fall, we headed off for home.

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Ontario, Tuesday

Tuesday 27th December
This was another quiet day, spent visiting relatives. The snow started, and was soon covering everything, though not, as yet, very deep.



We managed to see our first horse and buggy, though it was hard to photograph from the car, through the blowing snow.



It is a closed buggy, since it is winter.

It continued to snow, and visibility was limited. Farms and forests melted away into the distance in the mist.



When we came back, in the dark, Paul managed some slightly better photos of the enormous selection of inflatable Xmas decorations which I had previously found too big to fit in my viewfinder.


I wish either of our cameras were better able to photograph this display; there must be 25 or 30 of them, all illuminated at night, but we only seem to be able to capture a few.

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Ontario, Boxing Day

Monday 26th December
Today, we made a long trip and visited two different places. There were snowy fields and farms at first.

As we neared Lake Ontario, the climate became milder, and we passed lots of vineyards.

Paul and I were both amazed, we had no idea you could grow vines and produce wine here, but there are a lot of them. You can normally have tastings, but they were all closed for the holidays. We didn't mind, we didn't like the last wine tasting we went to, so we are not anxious to attend another.

Our next stop was the charming little town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, on the shores of Lake Ontario. It is stuffed full of beautiful old buildings, many wooden or clapboard ones.

Being something of a tourist trap, many of the old buildings are occupied by smart boutiques or gift shops.

Not all of the buildings are wood

This is the Prince of Wales Hotel, looking very French! We thought it was a bit cold for a drive in a caleche, and so did most other people; however, after lunch the sun came out and we noticed that a lot of people went out in one.

It wasn't all shops, there were streets of delightful, and doubtless very expensive old houses.

Unfortunately, it's really hard to find a pretty house without at least one big tree in front of it, so this isn't a great photograph, taken through the car window as we drove off in a hurry to get to Niagara Falls while it was still light.

We paused to look down on the Niagara river as we drove towards the falls

The river is wide here, that tiny white speck in the river on the right of the photo is a boat.

As we approached Niagara Falls, we could see the clouds of spray from the falls high above the river. Since we were last there (in 1967!) a building has appeared across the road from the falls where you can get great overall views. This is looking down on the Canadian Falls, which are horseshoe shaped.

To the left of them are the American Falls, which are not so spectacular.

The bridge is the road into the United States; the other bank of the river is New York State.

When you descend to the road, you can get really close to the wall of water going over the Canadian Falls

There are islands and rapids in the river, and the water looks greenish-grey and cold and almost solid. You can look right down into the falls through the spray

In the summer you would be able to take the boat, 'Maid of the Mists' right into the spray under the falls, but it stops running in the cold months.

We walked back along the road for a better photograph of the American Falls

You can see by the spray that there was a considerable weight of water going over them, they are themselves quite spectacular, just dwarfed by the Canadian ones.

As we drove back along the Niagara River, we stopped to look at the whirlpool which developed when the river changed its course some thousands of years ago.

It was a long drive back home, and we weren't back until after dark.

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Ontario, Christmas Day

Sunday 25th December
There isn't a lot to write about today, it was a fairly typical Christmas Day, when you lie about, eat too much, exchange presents and go for a walk. There has still only been a light sprinkling of snow.




Some people celebrate Christmas by decorating their houses, others by decorating their garden.



This isn't the most decorated garden, by a long way. The most decorated one has too many inflatables, so I can't get them all into my camera viewfinder.

I can't get this wireless network in Starbucks to post my photographs, I guess there must be a block on that, just like in the restaurant last night. I can post the text with no problem, but no photographs at all, which is quite strange.

There is no joy at the airport either. I don't seem able to post any photographs.
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Ontario on Christmas Eve

Saturday 24th December
I have no wireless connection, so this post is a bit late. I could have borrowed a PC with an Internet connection, but I have just got too used to the convenience of BlogPress. I tried two different wireless connections, but could seem to post any photographs. A restaurant connection posted just one, then refused to do any more. However, recent developments seem to indicate that the problem is the BlogPress software I have been using

We are some 100 km west of Toronto, in an attractive part of Ontario between Lake Ontario and Lake Huron, surrounded by Mennonite farms. Mennonites are somewhat like the Amish I am told, so we may see them in horse and buggy, and there are some farms with no electricity, only kerosene lamps.

It has been a bit cold, so we haven't seen any horse and buggy today though. We drove through the countryside, rolling hills with a light sprinkling of snow.


Many of the farms have grain silos along with the other farm buildings.

Our destination was the pretty town of Stratford, a place with some delightful old Victorian buildings. This is the Town Hall.

With the red brick and the gothic-looking turrets, it is slightly reminiscent of the building where I used to work.

Though there was plenty of traffic, the shops were not busy with last-minute Christmas shoppers, in fact many of the shops had no customers at all.

There were a number of Art Galleries, and we went into all of them, but managed to escape without buying anything, in spite of many of the offerings being very beautiful. Many were also very expensive, and our suitcases are already full and very heavy. One shop had wonderful carvings of bears, very smooth and shiny in a hard dark green rock and it was hard to avoid buying one. However, not only were they expensive and very heavy, we don't have a home at present!

It was also very hard to resist the chocolate shop though, especially these wonderful variations on the good old toffee apple

However, we reflected that we were likely to eat too much anyway, without adding extras, and we have already eaten far too many cooked breakfasts.

So we went for a light lunch in a pub where we were almost the only customers, and set off to drive back home. On the way to the car, we passed this gateway

Unless your screen is very big, you won't be able to see that it is the gateway to tir nan Og (The Land of Youth). I would have gone in, but as you may be able to see, there doesn't seem to be anything behind it. Perhaps I should have gone through, just to see what happened!
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