Toronto, Canada
It's our final night of the trip, and with the exception of Thursday's Thai dinner courtesy of the band, our first chance to have a proper sit down meal. Everything else has been a cheerless bit of fast food for lunch or a snatched plate of food from catering in the evening.
Katie has suggested a restaurant west of Downtown called Marben, and as Alex, Paul and I make our way there with minutes to spare we observe that this part of the city is a little less salubrious than what we've seen to date, but it has its own funky little vibe going on.
The restaurant however is lovely. We sit outside and peruse the menu, lots of gorgeous fresh seafood and little plates for sharing. So we order a mix of pork empanadas, scallops and jerk chicken skewers to start and then tagliatelle, gnocchi and, for me, a sous vide trout for mains. Light and tasty it's the best meal we've had in days, washed down with a bottle of Fielding Estate Pinot Gris from Niagara.
Once fed we hop in a cab to Ossington Street in Little Portugal, where we find a tequila bar called Reposado, with an ecclesiastical-style cocktail counter and an extensive menu of exquisite tequilas. Being more accustomed to the quick salt and lime slammer, it's a revelation to discover that sipping like a connosieur on fine varieties of tequila brings a whole new experience to the table.
It's still a mind-bendingly potent affair though and after we've all bought a round each the hilarity and volume in our corner is noticeably rowdier and more bawdy than our civilised fellows. Eloquent and profound discussions in the art of expletives that would shame Malcolm Tucker and Stephen Fry spew forth, their descriptive power delighting us as new collective nouns are coined.
The flush of tequila is making our eyes twinkle and finishing a particularly fine Dom Juan Pedro Alex plonks his glass down with force and declares, "Suddenly I feel sexier and more aggressive," to peals of laughter from us all.
By now psychedelic rock is pumping out louder and louder from the speakers above our heads as the clock ticks towards midnight. It's so hot and humid that Paul suggests iced margheritas in the garden outside just to cool us down.
I'm fading fast but Paul and Katie are possessed by mischievous sprites tonight and at 1am, as I'm suggesting we call it a night, they instead lead the charge up Ossington to the legendary Sweaty Bettys, where we find a secret back patio, like some hallucinatory absinthe den, and carry on until closing time at gone 2.30am.
Finally we pop Katie in a cab back to her home and we return to our hotel, dreading the inevitable agony that our morning hangover will bring. As I crawl into bed at 3am I swig back a bottle of water and rummage in my bag for painkillers which I lay out on the bedside table, ready for the horrors to come.
Gingerly, five hours later, I open my eyes and scan the room. Hmmmm. This doesn't seem so bad. Getting upright doesn't set the alarm bells ringing or my head throbbing. The pounding shower is wildly refreshing and by the time I'm dressed I feel a million dollars. How I swerved that particular bullet I'll never know. Must be all about the quality of the tequila.
We've got a few hours to kill until we head to the airport so we decide to head up the CN Tower having failed on Friday. Toronto has obviously never got over having their major landmark trumped in the 'highest freestanding tower' stakes. Having spent 34 years as the record holder it's now a mere sixth with a recent spate of construction around the world seeing five taller towers being built, including the ridiculously skyscraping Burj in Dubai which holds the current record.
All over the CN Tower are reminders of how it was a record breaker and how annoyed and, to be honest, embittered the city seems to be that its crown has been stolen. The chronology of the Tower, once so proudly displayed on the walls, sees all its claims broken and now ends with the rather barrel-scraping boast that since 2010 it's featured the World's Highest Wine Cellar! As Paul says, drag a pinball machine up there and claim it's the world's highest games arcade too. It's hardly an earth-shattering record.
We wander around the viewing platform but unlike the rest of our stay, today is a little overcast so the views aren't amazing and having been up a stack of towers in a variety of cities around the world I'm a little past being wowed by urban sprawl, especially jostled by a thousand other tourists as we go.
A quick, vertigo-inducing step onto the glass floor to see the sheer drop below us follows. Apparently, fact fans, the glass is strong enough to support 14 hippos. Hey guys, why not open the world's highest zoo and claim a proper record?!
We whizz back down to earth in the lift and hail a cab over to the Kensington Market area for lunch. George, our cabbie, is ancient and eccentric in the extreme with a worryingly desperate need to play tour guide, semi-kidnapping us as he tells us at length why Toronto is the greatest city on earth and everywhere else sucks and tries to force us to go to places other than we want.
In atrocious traffic he drives us up Spadina, one of the main roads, then around Chinatown, before 45 minutes later he finally allows us out at Kensington Market. We ask him how long it'll take to get back. "About ten minutes," he admits.
With our time now massively curtailed we have a quick wander down the main thoroughfare which is a bit like Camden meets Latin America. With a bohemian air of record stores, clothes shops, market stalls, murals, street food, restaurants and bars it's a vibey place to wander round but we have to grab just a quick bite and disappear. Finding a little cafe called Jumbo Empanada we have chicken empanadas that look like pasties and a Chilean salad, sipping guava juice, and feeling little spots of rain start to materialise out of the humidity.
Sensing it's time to leave before the monsoon arrives, and with eyes firmly on the ticking clock we just make it back to our hotel as the heavens open with pent up rage. Grabbing our bags we jump in the hotel limo to the airport as the deluge comes down accompanied by thunder and lightning.
We've promised Katie we'll swing by the boutique she opened when she returned to Toronto but the roads are turning to rivers and at one intersection we have to turn back as the road is so flooded other vehicles have become stranded, their drivers marooned in the rising waters.
Our driver's satnav finds an alternative route through the Hyde Park area of the city, past gorgeous old houses and very well-to-do suburbs until we come to The Belle and Bauble, Katie's retail emporium. It's gorgeous, a wonderful array of art and antique, kitsch and elegant, with gifts and decorations throughout. We each purchase some souvenirs, make our fond farewells and then run through the rain to the car and continue to the airport.
Our Canadian adventure is at an end. We've bagged reviews, interviews and stories, plus anecdotes and experiences to last a lifetime. And the weather has been a welcome taste of summer to remind us what's missing back in England. At least today's rainfall prepares us for conditions to come.
So we take to the skies, waving goodbye to Toronto and hello to London, praying we've brought some sunshine back with us. We live in hope!
