It was Monday and so unfortunately that meant back to work for me while the rest of them continued to enjoy their holiday. The good news is that the weather really looked perfect yesterday – around 22 degrees C, no wind and the view was so clear that you could theoretically see across Lake Ontario to the US. For me it still looks like the horizon haze but people from Toronto say that is in fact land that you’re seeing (I’ll take their word for it!).
I had some online meetings until just before midday so worked from the apartment. S, K & H headed out before 10am and took the subway up to where they were taking a hop-on-hop-off bus trip around Toronto. The tour takes 2 hours on the bus and then there is included a 45-minute boat trip (which they plan to do today). They said the tour guide was excellent and H said it was probably the best one of these bus trips she has done (and we have done a few of them in numerous cities around the world). It is a great way to get a feel for a city.
Meanwhile I had both lunch and dinner with clients and worked the afternoon in the Toronto office (where there were only 3 of the total staff from Toronto actually in the office yesterday – apparently they generally don’t come to the office on Mondays at all).
I got back to the apartment just after 8pm and all the family (including my sister and her family) were winding up dinner in our apartment. Nice to be able to join in the conversation. Then (believe it or not) the fire alarm went off again! This is becoming seriously irritating now. We had the window open and we could smell people smoking on their balconies (including cannabis smoke – it amazes me how often we have smelt that over the last few days of being here). It seems some idiot though (on 27th floor again, same as Sunday) has decided that smoking in the stairwell is a good idea and sets off the fire alarm. We could see five fire trucks from our balcony. This time we waited for the announcements and didn’t head downstairs and again it was determined to be a false alarm. Someone needs to figure out who the idiot is and lock him/her up or do something. From the tour today, H said that one fire station they passed gets 5000 call-outs per year – that is just over 13 per day!
On another note, the stadium roof was opened yesterday as the Toronto Blue Jays were playing baseball there yesterday evening. You could hear the occasional roar of the crowd. The roof takes 20 minutes to open and close. They closed it again around 10:30pm obviously after the game was finished. I didn’t get to see it open (the others did) but it was nice to see it closing. Strange how small things like this can bring you pleasure!
Until tomorrow …
P, K, S & H