Return to Pig City

Erm, I appear to be Indian now.

That's pretty far from the truth. I've been living in India for a week but I'm not very Indian at all. I'm back in Gurgaon (or Gurugram as it now might be called, yep, confuses me too), a city of glass and pigs and appear to be living very much the expat life of speakeasies and over-priced beer.

I have been able to explore a bit more of Delhi. Managed to get up to Delhi proper. Old Delhi. With its kites and its car horns  With its Red Fort and its walls and its tiny, winding, bustling streets. Now I've said bustling and you're probably thinking maybe Oxford Street. Oxford Street is not bustling, there are not enough handcarts, cows or people shouting to make Oxford Street bustle.

I'm guessing in time the traffic and filth and pollution might drag me down - it's so smoggy here that the sun doesn't set - but so far so good.

YYC

Calgary refers to itself as YYC a lot. It is also ridiculously friendly. I don't know if those two things are related but I'd chatted to more people in the first hour in Calgary than I had in the previous eight days of Out East. It was almost disconcerting, I assumed people were trying to mug me. They weren't, they were being nice.

The city is surprisingly pretty. In my head it was going to be a sprawling mess of a place. Which it is, but they have kept the two rivers undeveloped which means you can always seem to find some green space. Or, given the time of year, some Autumnal gold.

Dirty food since the last entry:
Deep fried gherkins. Dirty. 

As an aside I tried to be respectable and have Alberta-raised Wagyu beef. That's about the best beef in the world, right? They only went and fried that as well, the rotters. Why would you do that? That's like shooting a decent whisky. Which they also do. The rotters.

So the end of the trip, what have I learnt?

That Canadia is not only more expensive than I thought it would be it adds tax to everything so it's more expensive than it says it is.
-How much is this?
-$1.95.
-great, can I have that then?
-that'll be $2.23.

That Canadia loves a Christmas shop. At least one in every town I went to.

I'm confused by tips, taps and traffic lights. All have been explained to me more than once. But let's make this clear, you don't have to wait at a redlight but you can't necessarily go at a green, that right there blows my simple British mind a little bit.

The food is really, really dirty. I ate a cricket taco, and that doesn't make my top 5 filthy feeds. Scrap that: macncheese burger, croburger, maple meatballs, pulled pork fingers - the cricket taco was a contender for the healthiest thing I've eaten in the last two weeks. Hmm spicy crickets.

The Rockies

Apparently Canadia is full of this wildlife stuff, so I figured I should head up into the mountains to try and find some.

As soon as you enter the Rockies the warnings start - Don't dress as a pickernick basket, you will be eaten by a bear - so I was pretty hopeful that I would see at least something. Took the Icefield Parkway from Banff to Jasper and back and didn't see anything more wildlifey than a raven. Boo. Only saw ludicrously pretty scenery. Oh well.

Back in Banff after the enormo-drive I did get my wildlife fix from an elk. At least I think it was an elk. I'm pretty confused about these big deer things. Growing up I always thought elk was just another word for moose but it appears to be a species in its own right, albeit one that looks mighty deery.

So what of the ridiculous Canadian food I hear you ask. Two things stick out.

This conversation:
"I'm after something a bit snacky what can you recommend."
"Erm, people seem to like the meatballs."
"That doesn't sound Canadian."
"They're wrapped in bacon and covered in maple syrup."
"They probably need to be in my life."

Pulled pork fingers. Yeah, that's what you think it is. Pulled pork mushed back into a lump, covered in crumbs and then fried. Dirty.

Royal Mountain

So here's a curveball. You know how I was expecting to feel about Toronto? Well that's how I feel about Montreal.

Initially I feared it would be terrible. The old town where the "sights" are is so touristy it almost hits resort levels. Once you're free from that, the city is immense, with its islands and its "mountain" and irs underground passageways and its neighbourhoods and its idiosyncrasies.

That's possibly doing the Old City a bit of a disservice. Its idiosyncratic enough. There's:
- a museum with an inflatable octopus outside.
- a view of Habitat 67. I first became aware of Habitat 67 about the same time as the Donkey Riding song in a kids' book of strabge buildings. I knew nothing about it (what it was called or where it was) and hadn't thought about it in over two decades, so it was a bit discombobulating seeing it loom large in front of me.
- a fire fountain. I feel like that should be in block capitals. A FIRE FOUNTAIN. An actual fountain of actual fire.
- a statue on the main square of a French person and an English person not speaking.
- an interactive art display that projects Montreal history onto the walls of buildings
- a man dressed as Jesus feeding seagulls from his hand. Not sure if he's there all the time. Let's assume he's an art installation.

But the neighbourhoods. I felt like I was making some of the places less cool just by being there. Particularly the Spectacles Quarter where I stumbled across Studio 16, which is the freshest art gallery I've possibly ever been in. It made peak era White Cube seem like the RA. My visit to the Quarter (and, well Montreal) clashed with a three day bloc party there. They had Jazzy Jeff DJ their street party. Ridiculous.

And we've not even talked about food yet. Food is a thing. I ate smoked meat sandwich at Schwartz, which was epic. Poutine covered three different shades of beige - not sure that that's three of your five a day. I ate tourtiere, which apparently is proper Quebecois home cooking at its finest. I had to work for it though, I could only find one place in town that served it (La Binerie if you are using this blog for anything useful - you shouldn't by the way, I've just told you that one of my highlights was watching a crazy man throw things at seagulls).

I ate a cheesecake Beavertail in Ottawa. I had assumed that that would be the dirtiest thing I ate whilst I was away. It wasn't. I've just eaten a croburger. That's a beefburger in a cronut. Utter filth.

Donkey Riding, Donkey Riding

It must be twenty-five years since I last heard that song, yet every time I hear the name Quebec the first verse plays itself out in my head, then the chorus loops in like some kind of ghastly, never-ending earworm.

Anyway, I finally made it to Quebec City and it turns out that the song isn't instructional. There isn't a King with a golden crown riding on a donkey. Or if there is I didn't see him. Presumably because the Quebec Grand Prix was on so getting around the city was a bit of a nightmare, on donkeyback or otherwise.

...where there's a man with a spandex shirt, riding on a pushbike.

Not sure who won the bike race. The last lap I saw the guy on the motorbike was in the lead so I reckon he won. Seems unfair but hey...

Justin Trudeau's Pet Rabbit

My introduction to Ottawa was inauspicious to say the least. First off, what kind of city has a station that isn't walking distance from the centre? If that wasn't bad enough the bus link runs hourly. And, due to its remote, disconnectedness, the station ranks amongst the most soulless places I've ever been. And I've been to Frankfurt.

I was staying in a converted jail - I'm all over a gimmick - but the atmospheric novelty quickly wore off when I found I was in a three foot by nine foot cell. For the record, there's not much space in a three foot by nine foot cell.

I was directed to Byward Market for dinner. Now in my head that sounded like a decent place to get a tasty snack from a tasty snack stall. Turns out all the stalls were closed which left a load of oversized Irish pubs full of frat boys getting LabourDay loaded. Wholly unpleasant. Guess I'm getting old.

Anyway, the next day (when I'd eaten and I'd got my sense of humour back) I found that Ottawa was actually alright. A lot of the buildings are suitably impressive and the riverside walks are ace.

One tiny criticism, on my first day of walkinh there seemed to be charity muggers on every intersection like some insidious YOLO cult. It was almost threatening. Not sure what they were mugging for, I'm gonna assume it was for their experiments in eugenic cloning and ultimate world domination. I didn't give them money. Not certain why anyone would. Maybe Canadans are less cynical.

Speaking of which, I went to the light show on Parliament Hill. It starts with a history of Canadia and then halfway through morphs into something resembling an announcement from the Capitol. The crowd lapped it up. If they had done anything that blatantly patriotic back in Blighty they would be apologising for weeks.

Tea Dot

I've been wanting to go to Toronto since I first heard Abdominal's T Ode almost a decade ago. He just made the city sound like somewhere I wanted to visit (which is more than I can say for any London song that I can think of off the top of my head).

And so I finally made it. I had friends to show me around, this meant I avoided the bulk of the more touristy things to do (CN Tower, p'uh) in favour of doing things that Torontonians actually do (Escape rooms, drinking ale, eating at English pubs - all things that I definitely couldn't do at home). I think that that's what Abdominal would have wanted.

We went to the Ex - Canadia's National Exhibition - which was a Village Fair that had been supersized. So much stuff. So much food I couldn't find the fabled pulled pork eclair in the food court so had to settle for chilli-cricket, steak taco.

Obviously I've been trying to consume all the new things (standard), so far I've tried ice wine (about 80 percent sweeter than wine needs to be) and a Caesar, which tasted like a Bloody Mary.

I stayed in The Beaches. Now in my head Toronto is thoroughly in land so I had always figured that The Beaches was either The Beeches or some other corruption. But no, Toronto has a legit beach. A beach on a lake hey? What will they think of next?

Splishy Sploshy

I'm in St Catharine's, which I think is the point where everyone should start their Canadan adventure. Apparently it's the Canadan town that eats the most doughnuts per capita. Which by my reckoning makes it the doughnut capital if the world.

More prosaically, it also reminds me a lot of the kind of city you see in all American (yes, I know, I'm sorry) movies ever. All decking and driveways and strip malls and drivethrus. And doughnuts. Although it's Tim Horton's in this Canadia place. My first two meals both involved Tim Horton's. Dirty.

I went to Niagara Falls yesterday. That's one of the main ones, right? I'd been warned that it was going to be horribly commercial, but it was nowhere near as bad as I feared. There was just a nearby street full of ways to part tourists from money - why have one wax museum when you can gave two? Why have two minigolfs when you can have three?

The Falls themselves were big and wet and, due to the bank holiday weekend, somewhat queuey. Cobes had been recommended "Niagara's Fury" as a handy and fun introduction to the history of the Falls, so we started there. It was very bad. If you are in Niagara Falls fo not go. It is a waste of time and money which, in a town designed to waste your time and money is saying something. The other Falls based attractions like (TAFKA) The Maid of the Mist and the Journey Behind The Falls were a whole heap better. Almost worth the brutal queues...