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maradyddUnlike Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, however, I think Toronto's pretty nice. I had a great time there at the World Science Fiction Convention in 2003, raising hell with the Online Writing Workshop crowd and the subset of it which became known as the Axis of Evil. Also, I spent last Halloween in Washington D.C., and had enough of a blast to make me think it might be a cool idea to spend Halloween somewhere different every year. So when ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
enochsmiles mentioned that he was going to Toronto for a conference around that time and offered crash space, I said "sure!" and booked a flight.
CVG (Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky) is the most confusing airport I've ever been in. Oh, don't get me wrong, it has large and copious signage, indicating the direction of various gates, but when you actually get to the gates, it is not immediately evident that the huge arrows pointing left and right really do mean that the rows of little doors to the left and the right are the gates. (They're so large that I was expecting long corridors, like Every Other Airport I've Ever Been In.) This was mildly troubling until I figured it out, since I only had a half-hour layover, but I still made it to the plane with plenty of time. Curiously, it is only about 1:15 from CID to CVG, and about 1:30 from CVG to YYZ, so both flights were on commuter jets that were only about two-thirds full. I spent the flights working on a mottled purple eyelash-yarn scarf and reading the Silmarillion, and before I knew it, it was 1500 and I was in Toronto.
enochsmiles was due to arrive at 1605 at Terminal 1, where I foolishly expected there would be wifi for me to doublecheck his arrangements. (I later learned that Toronto as a whole apparently does not yet believe in public wifi.) I was a little concerned about being able to recognise him, since I'd only seen him in person at CodeCon before, and at the international arrivals gate it quickly became evident that they were updating flight arrival times to reflect expected landings, not scheduled ones. So I knitted some more, kept a close eye on the big sliding doors, and luckily managed to spot him immediately. We both already had all our baggage, so we snagged a cab and made our way downtown to the bed-and-breakfast-ish place he'd booked. It was a beautiful old house on a side street off Bloor, not far from an equally lovely little pub; I imagined that the place had once been a mansion and later became a boarding house before settling into a hotel, and quietly entertained myself for the rest of the weekend considering what it might have been like decades ago.
We were both completely famished -- I never manage to eat properly when I'm on the road -- so we dropped off our gear and set out in search of food. In downtown Toronto, this quickly becomes an information-overload problem, as there is just so damn much of it. We initially considered Thai, but as we passed a sushi restaurant,enochsmiles waxed rhapsodic about how one just can't get good sushi in Belgium, so sushi it was. At Sushi On Bloor our eyes considerably outmassed our stomachs; we tried to order conservatively, but still ended up with enough leftover sushi and sashimi to have fed a third person. Mmm food coma.
One thing I hadn't remembered about Canada is that they don't see the point in bringing you your check until you ask. This allowed us to chat off enough of the food coma to enjoy some green tea ice cream, but on the down side, we had to remember our time constraints: we needed to meetcristalia at the bookstore where she works before it closed, and then we needed to make it to the event we wanted to attend in time for Diana Obscura, who came strongly recommended by thewronghands. Unfortunately, upon returning to the hotel in order to change and double-check locations and phone numbers, we discovered that either the cat5 cable I had brought was shot, or the jack in the room was. But a quick check of the phone book (paper! how quaint!) put us in touch with cristalia, who gave us streetcar directions, and we were on our way.
"This is a dangerous place for me to be," remarkedenochsmiles as we reached cristalia's workplace -- a science fiction bookstore comparable to DreamHaven in Minneapolis or Borderlands in SF. She pointed out a number of must-have-soons, including ccfinlay's new short story collection, and I made enochsmiles read "Footnotes" right then and there. (Best. Concept Story. Ever.) We also noticed the YA Best Of anthology with cristalia's April-Fool's-prank monkey story in it, and read it when she went off to change; it prompted enochsmiles to remark (accurately!) that if she had intended only a simple gag story, she failed completely, because it was just that complex and nuanced and good. (And it is.)
Thus, bedecked in various degrees of gothy attire and chatting merrily about writing, we made our way to the Royal Sarcophagus Society. Diana Obscura was supposed to go on at 9pm, which was about when we got there, but we heard no music from the main room, and instead ended up in the side room with various vendors and hors d'oeuvres and things. We ogled a few corsets clearly not intended for anyone over 5'6", then happened across a table full of lovely bracelets and earrings and things -- each one named after some mythological entity, and bearing a card with a small story. I fell for a green fluorite, black onyx and amethyst bracelet called "Herne", and for my money received not only the bracelet but a spooky story from the jeweler. (It occurs to me that I haven't purchased jewelry from anyone other than the people who made it in the last six years. I creditczarina69 for turning me on to just how much more rewarding and personal it is to know artists.) Meanwhile, enochsmiles meandered off and returned with little chocolate brownies, and was adorably baffled when I leaned down and messily ate one from his hand. (Memo to self: wearing dresses apparently turns me into a shameless but inept flirt.)
The side room exhausted, we retraced our steps to the main room, wondering what was up with Diana Obscura. I saw a placard with her name on the stage, but there was no cello music to be heard, and we had not managed to hear anything even remotely loud enough to be someone performing. We hung about a while longer, went back to the entrance to inquire about Diana, and discovered that somehow we had managed to miss her after all. *pout* Meanwhile, another performer took the stage, another woman playing vaguely cabaret-style piano who did not even compare to the Dresden Dolls.cristalia snarked about the sound design -- the acoustics were such that we couldn't make out her voice at all -- and we decided better times were to be had elsewhere. Thus, we strode off into the night in search of dancing.
I forget the name of the place where we ended up, butsandwichboy joined us, in any case. The music was passable, on balance, but with some of the worst transitions I've heard in years -- following up the Smiths with the Smashing Pumpkins was the closest to continuously-danceable the DJ got -- and it was far too loud to talk, so we repaired to a Chinese restaurant. The food was good, but they almost poisoned enochsmiles even after he returned a bowl of hot and sour soup due to its obviously containing something to which he's allergic. Fortunately, no late-night ephedrine-injector search or emergency room visit was needed, and after the nearly-impossible-these-days circumstance of all four diners receiving an actual fortune in their fortune cookies (as opposed to receiving Advice Cookies or Compliment Cookies), we rambled through the dark and the cold back to the hotel. (Along the way, cristalia pointed out a neat feature of Toronto that I think more cities should adopt in the manner of having local artists decorate otherwise-identical statues: at various locations there are signs indicating a phone number you can call to hear a brief story associated with that site. Yay public installation art.) We bid them farewell at the corner, and after I took a hot shower to thaw out my poor frozen body (note to self: sleeveless gowns and Canada in late October do not mix), we turned in for a well-deserved night's sleep.
(Continued next post.)
enochsmiles mentioned that he was going to Toronto for a conference around that time and offered crash space, I said "sure!" and booked a flight. CVG (Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky) is the most confusing airport I've ever been in. Oh, don't get me wrong, it has large and copious signage, indicating the direction of various gates, but when you actually get to the gates, it is not immediately evident that the huge arrows pointing left and right really do mean that the rows of little doors to the left and the right are the gates. (They're so large that I was expecting long corridors, like Every Other Airport I've Ever Been In.) This was mildly troubling until I figured it out, since I only had a half-hour layover, but I still made it to the plane with plenty of time. Curiously, it is only about 1:15 from CID to CVG, and about 1:30 from CVG to YYZ, so both flights were on commuter jets that were only about two-thirds full. I spent the flights working on a mottled purple eyelash-yarn scarf and reading the Silmarillion, and before I knew it, it was 1500 and I was in Toronto.
enochsmiles was due to arrive at 1605 at Terminal 1, where I foolishly expected there would be wifi for me to doublecheck his arrangements. (I later learned that Toronto as a whole apparently does not yet believe in public wifi.) I was a little concerned about being able to recognise him, since I'd only seen him in person at CodeCon before, and at the international arrivals gate it quickly became evident that they were updating flight arrival times to reflect expected landings, not scheduled ones. So I knitted some more, kept a close eye on the big sliding doors, and luckily managed to spot him immediately. We both already had all our baggage, so we snagged a cab and made our way downtown to the bed-and-breakfast-ish place he'd booked. It was a beautiful old house on a side street off Bloor, not far from an equally lovely little pub; I imagined that the place had once been a mansion and later became a boarding house before settling into a hotel, and quietly entertained myself for the rest of the weekend considering what it might have been like decades ago.We were both completely famished -- I never manage to eat properly when I'm on the road -- so we dropped off our gear and set out in search of food. In downtown Toronto, this quickly becomes an information-overload problem, as there is just so damn much of it. We initially considered Thai, but as we passed a sushi restaurant,
enochsmiles waxed rhapsodic about how one just can't get good sushi in Belgium, so sushi it was. At Sushi On Bloor our eyes considerably outmassed our stomachs; we tried to order conservatively, but still ended up with enough leftover sushi and sashimi to have fed a third person. Mmm food coma.One thing I hadn't remembered about Canada is that they don't see the point in bringing you your check until you ask. This allowed us to chat off enough of the food coma to enjoy some green tea ice cream, but on the down side, we had to remember our time constraints: we needed to meet
cristalia at the bookstore where she works before it closed, and then we needed to make it to the event we wanted to attend in time for Diana Obscura, who came strongly recommended by thewronghands. Unfortunately, upon returning to the hotel in order to change and double-check locations and phone numbers, we discovered that either the cat5 cable I had brought was shot, or the jack in the room was. But a quick check of the phone book (paper! how quaint!) put us in touch with cristalia, who gave us streetcar directions, and we were on our way. "This is a dangerous place for me to be," remarked
enochsmiles as we reached cristalia's workplace -- a science fiction bookstore comparable to DreamHaven in Minneapolis or Borderlands in SF. She pointed out a number of must-have-soons, including ccfinlay's new short story collection, and I made enochsmiles read "Footnotes" right then and there. (Best. Concept Story. Ever.) We also noticed the YA Best Of anthology with cristalia's April-Fool's-prank monkey story in it, and read it when she went off to change; it prompted enochsmiles to remark (accurately!) that if she had intended only a simple gag story, she failed completely, because it was just that complex and nuanced and good. (And it is.)Thus, bedecked in various degrees of gothy attire and chatting merrily about writing, we made our way to the Royal Sarcophagus Society. Diana Obscura was supposed to go on at 9pm, which was about when we got there, but we heard no music from the main room, and instead ended up in the side room with various vendors and hors d'oeuvres and things. We ogled a few corsets clearly not intended for anyone over 5'6", then happened across a table full of lovely bracelets and earrings and things -- each one named after some mythological entity, and bearing a card with a small story. I fell for a green fluorite, black onyx and amethyst bracelet called "Herne", and for my money received not only the bracelet but a spooky story from the jeweler. (It occurs to me that I haven't purchased jewelry from anyone other than the people who made it in the last six years. I credit
czarina69 for turning me on to just how much more rewarding and personal it is to know artists.) Meanwhile, enochsmiles meandered off and returned with little chocolate brownies, and was adorably baffled when I leaned down and messily ate one from his hand. (Memo to self: wearing dresses apparently turns me into a shameless but inept flirt.)The side room exhausted, we retraced our steps to the main room, wondering what was up with Diana Obscura. I saw a placard with her name on the stage, but there was no cello music to be heard, and we had not managed to hear anything even remotely loud enough to be someone performing. We hung about a while longer, went back to the entrance to inquire about Diana, and discovered that somehow we had managed to miss her after all. *pout* Meanwhile, another performer took the stage, another woman playing vaguely cabaret-style piano who did not even compare to the Dresden Dolls.
cristalia snarked about the sound design -- the acoustics were such that we couldn't make out her voice at all -- and we decided better times were to be had elsewhere. Thus, we strode off into the night in search of dancing.I forget the name of the place where we ended up, but
sandwichboy joined us, in any case. The music was passable, on balance, but with some of the worst transitions I've heard in years -- following up the Smiths with the Smashing Pumpkins was the closest to continuously-danceable the DJ got -- and it was far too loud to talk, so we repaired to a Chinese restaurant. The food was good, but they almost poisoned enochsmiles even after he returned a bowl of hot and sour soup due to its obviously containing something to which he's allergic. Fortunately, no late-night ephedrine-injector search or emergency room visit was needed, and after the nearly-impossible-these-days circumstance of all four diners receiving an actual fortune in their fortune cookies (as opposed to receiving Advice Cookies or Compliment Cookies), we rambled through the dark and the cold back to the hotel. (Along the way, cristalia pointed out a neat feature of Toronto that I think more cities should adopt in the manner of having local artists decorate otherwise-identical statues: at various locations there are signs indicating a phone number you can call to hear a brief story associated with that site. Yay public installation art.) We bid them farewell at the corner, and after I took a hot shower to thaw out my poor frozen body (note to self: sleeveless gowns and Canada in late October do not mix), we turned in for a well-deserved night's sleep.(Continued next post.)