Toronto's district: Beaches

Toronto is on the lake Ontario, one of the five big lakes of North America, a "small lake" of 19000 km squared. Actually it is the smallest of the 5, but it's the 14th big lake in the world.

In this area there are more than 2 km of white beach, where during the summer it is possible to take a bath of sun or swim.

The lake is so big that it seems to be at the seaside, you can't see the other coast of the lake for km.

During the summer there are beach-volley courts and an outdoor swimming pool. Near the lake there are also bicycle and rollerblade paths.

To arrive at the beaches you have to take the subway and get off at Woodbine station and than get on the bus 92 that arrives at the beaches.

Toronto's district: Chinatown

As we said the city is very big, so you need time to visit every single corner. So every time that we visit a district of the city we'll write a post in the blog.

Today we tell you about Chinatown.

In Toronto there are 2 Chinatown: one in the downtown (the one we are going to talk about) and the other one in Missisuaga a Toronto's suburb.

What to say about Chinatown... it seems to be really in China!!!

Suddenly, you are the only european among only chinese people. The names of the shops are written in Chinese, and they are are full of things. The big sidewalks that you can find in Toronto, here become narrow, as they are full of things and people.

Prices are very cheap, and if you want you can also cut your hair for 7$.

I think you have to visit this part of the city, because it doesn't seem to be still in Toronto.

Supermarket

Doing shopping in Toronto is not a problem, you can find a lot of shops and malls everywhere.
For the food, we can suggest you Nofrills, Valumart and Basic Food, they are quite cheap and you can find whatever you want.

There is also an other market, Saint Laurence market, that is not a supermarket, but it's an indoor market with real little shops sending meet, fish, fruit, vegetables and all kind of spices.

If you want to buy cheap fruit and vegetable you have to go to ChinaTown, things are good and very cheap. The biggest Chinatown is near downtown, but there are other areas that can be consider little Chinatown in the city, for example Gerrald street east.

Toronto is an international city, so it's easy to find product from all over the world, also in the supermarkets. So if you like ethnic cuisine, here you are in the right place!

Public transportation

Here public transportation works very well, and the buses are punctual! if you want, you can leave the car in the garage and tour the city only with public transportation. Toronto has 2 subway lines and a lot of buses that reach all areas of the city. The ticket (or better the token) costs $2,75. You can pay directly on the bus but you have to pay cash and there is no change. There are also daily and weekly pass, but if you use the public trnsportation every day we suggest you the monthly pass. It costs $109, but you can use every kind of transportation (bus, subway, streetcars) every time you want. To know more about the public transportation you can visit www.ttc.ca, you will find the subway map and the list of all the buses and their schedule.

The weather in April

Today is the 26th of April and I think it's time to say something about the weather in toronto.

It is very different from Italy, in fact it's like the weather we have in March and the average temperature is 13-14 degrees celsius.

The most different thing is the change of temperature that you can have between one day and the other or sometimes also in the same day!

These pictures show you everything:

April 1st 2009 - 14 degrees celsius

April 6th 2009- it snows!!!

April 12th 2009 - 25 degrees celsius

Here is quite normal to have a difference of temperature like 25 degree . Actually before leaving we knew that these kinds of changes are normal in the candian climate, but from 0 to 25 in 6 day I think it's really too much!

In addition we can say that it has rained a couple of days per week and that there isn't humidity but there is wind!

Toronto raptors

Michele really loves basketball, so in Italy we bought 2 tickets for the Nba game between Toronto Raptors (where plays the italian Bargnani ) and New York nicks (where plays another italian guy Gallinari). Unfortunately Gallinari had an injury so he didn't play.

Air Canada Center is really big, it has about 19800 seats and it was completely full!!! The atmosphere in the stadium is very nice, there is loud music, there are some shows at the end of every quarter and games that involve the public.

The public, for the italian standard, is quite calm, the jingles they sing are only two: "Defense", "Let's go Raptors" and as Isaw also on tv these are the only two types of jingle people sing, not only in Canada but also in Usa!

Another interesting thing, that in Italy doesn't exist, is that you can order food and drink directely from you seat. Besides the guys that sell drinks, chips or icecreams in the stadium, as we have in Italy, there are other guys in every section of the stadium going up and down the stairs to receive yourr order. Usually on you seat you have a menu and you can choose what to eat (pizza, sandwiches, hot dog, salads,etc). The guys have a small pc where they enter your order, your row and number of seat, you can pay cash or with credit card and after 5/10 minute you will received you order without moving! That's incredible! We should have something like this in Italy!

Regarding the security guards, it's better don't joke with them. There were some guys some rows after our that were arguing and one of them went to call the security. two minutes later arrived 3 big men and brought them out . After ten minutes all the people came back (alive!)but the security stayed there until the end of the game. I think that in Italy there would be a scuffle involving all the stadium...but you know here we are in Canada.

The game wasn't so good, but it was a very nice experience!

First day in Toronto: some pictures

First impression: this city is very big!!! We live about 8 km from the downtown, and we need 10 minutes by bus + almost 20 minutes by subway to arrive in the downtown, but we're still in the centre of the city.

It's not easy to describe the city, because the scenery changes a lot from district to district.

Streets are very wide, there are a lot of skyscrapers, but you don't feel "oppression" as in our cities.

The air is very clean, as in the mountain, and there are a lot of parks.

Here you can find some pictures of the financial district and Dundas square .

The arrival and the jet lag

We left our italian house the 1st April at 5.00 am, the flight was at 7.00 am.

The flight Verona- Paris was with Airfrance by Regional a small plane with 50 seats... a really coach -plane! you could feel every single movement of the plane in a very strong way, but we survived and we arrived on time for the connection Paris-Toronto.

The second part of the trip was perfect, Air France gave us the vegetarian meals we asked two months before during our booking, and we arrived in Toronto at 13.15 pm (local time) or 19.15 pm (italian time). Six hours of difference!

The first thing we noticed here in Toronto is that you can't joke with the police! you can't say anything if they don't ask you something. At the first check-point in the airport there was an indian guy that wasn't able to answer very well to the policemen's questions, because his english wasn't so good, and I think he is still there!

So after 4 check-points, the immigration office, that gave us the working-holiday visa, and a last check-point after the baggage claim, we finally went out the airport!

We got in a taxi and we arrived at our new house (you can see a picture of the house in this post) at about 15.30 (local time), or 21.30 (italian time).

The area is very nice and we are at about 8/10 km from the downtown.

What about the jet lag? We tried to be awake until the evening, but you know when it's almost 20 hours that you are awake , it's not so easy....

I (Giulia) went to bed at 19.30 (1.30 am italian time) and michele at 20.00 (2.00 am italian time).

Here you can see when we woke up the days after:

2nd April: 4.30 am

3rd April: 5.00 am

4th April: 5.30 am

5th April: 6.30 am

and 6th April.... 7.30am!!! Yes, we did it!!!

Before leaving 3: how to find a house

At the beginning to save money, we were interested in "home exchange", that means that you exchange your house with a torontian one for free, so you don't have to pay for a rent.

As we have a rented house in Italy, we had to ask to our landlord, but he said "No", so we had to find a normal rental.

We have found our house in a very good web site: www.sabbaticalhomes.com. This web site has a list of houses or apartments available for one month or more and there is no agency to pay, because all the announcements are from private people.

Usually the landlords are teachers, who want to go in a sabbatical period or have long vacations and rent their house in the meanwhile.

Maybe we were lucky, because our "new" house is very nice and in a good area, but if you are looking for a house not only in Toronto, but all over the world, you should take a look at this web site.

Before leaving 2: health insurance

In Canada sanitary assistance is free... but only for canadian people!

So it's better, but also mandatory, if you have a private sanitary insurance before arriving in Canada.

For our trip we have chosen www.insurancebookers.com. Why? Because it's cheap!!! in Italy there are a lot of insurance companies, but most of them don't cover more than 3 months and some are very expensive.

Insurancebookers is an English company, low cost, and has also a branch in Milan, so for us could be interesting.

We saw another one interesting, www.worldnomads.com, but Insurancebookers gave us the civic liability included in the price.

Before leaving 1: visa

Italians can enter in Canada for vacation without visa for 6 months. But if you'd like to work there, there is a special agreement between Italy and Canada that allow you (if you are 18-35 years old) to have a particular visa, a working-holiday visa, that give you the possibility to work in Canada for a maximum of 6 months.

In Italy there are only 500 working-holiday visa available in a year, so you must present all the documents as soon as possible.

The price is about 80 euro.

This working visa doesn't exist only for italian people, but it exists also for people from Japan, Korea, Europe, South Africa, Australia, America. Every country has a different agreement with Canada, so rules are differents. But if you are interested in, you can visit this site http://www.visabureau.com/canada/working-holiday.aspx and discover what you have to do to have this kind of visa.

What about you parents? Did they accept easily your decision?

This is a good question! The situation wasn't very easy. Before telling our parents our decision, we thought that my parents (Giulia), first of all my mother, could have a bad reaction, instead Michele's parents could accept easily the news.

But this wasn't true! My mother's reaction wasn't good but after one day she was ok, but Michele's father had a really really bad reaction! He has almost stopped to talk to Michele for months.... Actually we don't know why he made a fuss, but we hope that the situation will be better when we come back.

Why Toronto?

A lot of people have made us this question, here the explanation:

1. we were looking for a city where we could improve our English

2. we liked the idea to go over the ocean

3. Life in the big american cities frightened us a little bit

4. Toronto seemed to us like an american city but without being as chaotic as a Usa city (and it is!)

5. In Canada there are a lot of nature and green areas and we really like nature.

6. we had the possibility to have a working-vacation visa for 6 months (we will talk about this in an other post)

So Toronto seemed to us a good destination, easy to reach directly from Verona by plane. Besides it is near Usa, so maybe we can go to visit New York city...

The decision...

You know, before an action there is always a decision...and our decision was to leave Italy for a while.

Have you ever been in a period of your life when you need to change something? when you need to take a break and think about which direction you want to give to your life? This is what happened to us, and that's why we are here in Toronto now.

We don't know if here we will find all the answers we need, but so far we are happy of our decision because we are over the ocean and every day is a discovery.

Stay with us!