Monday, April 23

Waterloo Park

Waterloo Park is a decent park in downtown Waterloo. The park boasts a mini-zoo, and for small children it is nice to see the small animals present even though you run out of animals rather quickly. We had fantastic weather during the weekend and up to 25 degrees, so not at all bad. Seasons went from winter, skipped spring and went straight for summer. Some thunderstorms followed in the sunny weathers wake, but at least the thunder and rain came on Monday during working hours. Depicted is a picture of the pond in Waterloo Park which the residents insists on calling a Lake, a small pond of about 2x2 m with a bench placed in front of it and finally Tindra on a lawn mover.



Sunday, April 15

Visit to Toronto

The plan was to visit Toronto already last weekend, on the 7th of April. But due to poor weather, the trip was postponed and this turned out to be an excellent choice. 2 friends of mine were visiting from London (the UK town) in the last week, and they spent 2 nights in Kitchener visiting us and some days out traveling, as most people are eager to see the Niagara Falls while over here.
Anyway, this Saturday we took the car to Toronto and walked the city streets for several hours. We visited Chinatown, we walked Bloor Street and had lunch on a Subway restaurant before walking by the University of Toronto (several of the faculties, but not all...). Among the one we saw were Geology, Art, Civil Engineering, Music, etc. We also walked by the Market Hall to check out the wares and eat a quick snack before heading over to the CN Tower on Front Street. The CN Tower is about 550 meters high with two lookout floors, we went up the lower floor as the queue to go to the top lookout was too long. The view was nice and it showed that Toronto is a mixed town, both with high-rises and skyscrapers lined up in a north-southly streak as well residential low areas to the west and east, all very close to the downtown area.

On the pictures below is a really slim building on Front Street with the CN Tower and TD Canada Skyscraper looming in the background. Second picture show the NHL Hall of Fame building, which unfortunately was closed when we walked by. Third picture show an average Canadian Hummer vehicle parked in front of a Hotel next to Union station where a wedding party were taking pictures. The fourth and last picture show the view from the CN Tower looking out to Northeast (apologies for not yet rotating the top picture).





Sunday, April 1

London upon Thames April 1st

Imagine traveling from Kitchener to London and walking down to Covent Garden, or strolling across the Thames on a Sunday afternoon. This is exactly what we did today, but as you may guess there is a town called London also in Canada. The town boasts a cathedral and several churches, a really nice downtown area and a mixture of food and cuisine. After spending a few hours in the town you begin to wonder if this is not the most beautiful and most walker friendly of the two London's. We came the day after Team Surprise from Landvetter again won the World Championships in synchronized skating. Anyway, we spent the day in London and traveled back to Kitchener only in the afternoon. I highly recommend a visit to London, if only to have a coffee or a lunch and a walk in the small but comfortable town of roughly 34o 000 residents. Pictures shows the Cathedral, Covent Garden Market, Art Museum and New Courthouse and the main Church, in that order.




Kitchener Temporary Accommodation

2007-03-31: On Saturday we drove to Guelph to see the town and to find out if the town was nice to walk in and if there was anything of interest accessible for a newcomer. In short, there was little of interest in the town and although it was possible to walk in certain areas, they were not very interesting or beautiful, at least as far as the downtown area is concerned (which is the thing that matters to us).

So instead of posting pictures of roads and concrete and the arboretum in Guelph, we will show some pictures from our temporary accommodation in Kitchener. The apartment is flashy and nicely furnished, but like most building here in Canada the builders did a poor job and no fancy furniture and all-covering carpets on the floor (ick!, the static electricity is killing me ) can cover all the crevices between wall / floor and between wall / wall. You would think it would be easy to carpet a floor, but the dividing lines have been placed in the middle of the room and doorways, directly visible to the eye. Newly built walls does not line up, and when the water pours from the bathtub into the receiving drain pipe, the water overflows and goes straight through the floor and down to the neighbor below. At least that was taken care of after only 9 days of nagging at the janitor to get a plummer, during which time we could not use the bath tub. Each day we were promised the plummer would come the next day. So in abstract, the grass is not greener on this side of the pool as far as housing goes, only dyed a bit different. Luckily we are only here a limited time.