Sudbury and onward to Toronto
2011/08/24
Didn’t get enough sleep last night. Good room, but the jerks next door kept going in and out with much knocking and slamming of doors, starting at 5am. Grr.
Sudbury is an interesting patchwork of town. Neighborhoods, as defined by areas of similar building style and degree of upkeep, are small and jumbled together randomly. You can have nice modern homes next to ancient slums next to middling high-rise apartments. As for commercial zoning you can really tell the old city from the new city – the older commercial zones are rotting badly, with decaying buildings and bumpy streets, whereas the new shopping areas on the edges of town seem to be doing really well – instead of replacing the old, they’re just growing outward.
First stop was the Dynamic Earth tourist trap (where the big nickel is) as I wanted to take in the mine tour. I arrived just in time to join a tour.
It was disappointingly short and shallow. I mean, it was interesting – they talked about the formation of the rich ore deposits, and showed examples of mine drift working conditions from the 1900s, 1950s and modern times. But we didn’t go very deep underground – I wanted to see huge underground vistas with big machines, dammit. These mines go down 2.2km – there must be some interesting things to see down there!
Breakfasted and hit the road. Stopped for a break at the French River crossing, which almost looks like a canal at this point:
Major important canoe route in the pre-railway, pre-Trans-Canada days, yadda yadda.
Stopped in Parry Sound to get some lunch. Nice town. No pictures because I couldn’t find the particular sites, but I have two important memories of this town. One is that this is the home of Tim Horton’s, or something like that, and we once made a point of stopping here for supplemental bread torii. The other was that near the Timmy’s there was a basement arcade where I first played Roc’n’Rope, a game I had scrutinized screenshots of in video game magazines but never dreamed of actually finding in Canada. I really liked that game and wish it was more common.
Continued on, but had to leave the highway at Barrie because the traffic suddenly became way too intense for me. The 400-series highways here should have a sign saying, “You must be at least Mario Andretti to ride this road.” I was afraid to use my brakes for fear of causing a pileup. So I switched over to Yonge Street – in my mind, Toronto’s spine – which runs all the way to Barrie where it has addresses in the 20,000 range. Much slower road – cost me an extra hour – but better to arrive late than late.
My route down Yonge toward my hotel took me past two of my previous residences. North York at least has changed in that there are lots of new high-rise buildings, but there was also much that was still familiar. North of Steeles was way more developed than I remember – it’s pretty much city all the way to Aurora now.
This hotel (the Westin Prince) is probably the fanciest place I’ve ever stayed at. It seems really nice – I picked it because it looked like it might have a quiet location, and it does. First place I’ve ever had to contend with a bellhop insisting on helping me with my luggage – I had no idea how much to tip him, but Google tells me I wasn’t far off the mark with my guess.
Was treated to another nice lightning storm from the balcony windows of my room. Today was hot and humid, and as I was entering the city some dark clouds started brewing. Shortly after I checked in the lightning started. The concierge tells me there are tornado warnings for the area tonight (first time I’ve ever heard of that in this area) and that one actually touched down somewhere near Sudbury after I left.
I’ll be at this hotel for three nights, but probably in Toronto longer than that – starting Saturday I’m supposed to stay with my cousin Tanya for a while. I have much more than three days worth of stuff to do here anyway.
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