Familiar territory

We travelled through familiar territory this week, starting in Montreal we stopped in smith falls, Toronto, London, Windsor, and are currently in London for the weekend. We also tested the track that goes through a 2.6km tunnel from Windsor to Detroit, which was pretty cool!

 Had quite a few early starts (Monday and Tuesday were rolling at 5am). I’ve seen more sunrises this term so far than I have my entire life. It’s pretty cool to watch the day get brighter and brighter and finally see the sun for the first time, it really feels like a new day, a new beginning. I’d still prefer to sleep in though. One good thing about starting early is that we also finish early, so I’ve had more time to explore this week. In Toronto we were in the middle of a pretty huge train yard and too far away from anything cool, so not much happened. But I was able to go for a run in London, and go for a long walk in Windsor. We finished at 1ish, so I found on google maps where we were, but then the internet quit, and it was taking a long time to work again. I had a vague picture in my head of where we were and where the river was, and I didn’t want to waste any more time, so I headed out in that general direction. If there is a river between two major cities, and even better between two countries, there’s a pretty good chance for a cool bridge to connect the two. And there was indeed a bridge, a fantastic 560m span suspension bridge.

I wanted to walk across it, but wasn’t sure if there was a pedestrian path or not. So I asked an old lady who was walking her dog nearby, and she said it was just for cars/trucks. She also gave me a history of the bridge, that it was owned by one man, and this man was trying to prevent a second bridge being built to handle all the traffic. Apparently 25% of all trade between Canada and the US cross this bridge. I kept walking beside the river, it was a very nice area with lots of gardens and sculptures,

Including a cool structural one, a cantilevered platform with the ends supported by counterbalancing weights. There was one that made sad though, a triceratops trapped in a cage with barely enough room to turn around L, let alone run freely like it should

While I was walking along a boat was going through the river. I stopped to take a picture, and someone a little ways down was also taking pictures, and informed me that the boat was built in 1901 and was still going strong, and that he had been waiting for 3 years for that boat to come by Windsor so he could see it.

I also was finally able to do one of my favorite things to do when visiting cities. Pick a tall building, go to the elevator, press the top button, and see if you can get a good view.

Hotels work the best, as apartment buildings and office buildings usually have restricted access to the elevators. Some hotels don’t have any windows along the hallways though. When that happens I usually go to the stairs to see if other floors will work, but once I did that and to get back into the hotel you needed to swipe a card, and I had to go down a couple floors before I could get back to the elevators.

I found a map downtown that said there was a woodcarving museum which sounded pretty cool, so I walked all the way to where it was supposed to be only to find that it had been converted into a bookstore…darn.

We are currently parked in London, and I’m getting visits from Crystal today and my parents tomorrow. It will be nice to see people I know again J