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Toronto! Also, Starfleet Academy!

In the second instalment of my unadvertised ‘visit all of the Canadian provinces and territories’ challenge (note: not actually a thing) I just spent a long weekend with my parents and Randi in Toronto. Canada’s largest city is a self-evidently wonderful place with friendly vibes, a self-confident multiculturalism and lots to see and do.

The only drawback, as everyone there will tell you, is that the weather alternates between hellishly cold winters and stiflingly hot summers… so much so that a chunk of the city is hidden underground within a network of pedestrian tunnels. We obviously hit a sweet spot for weather, however, with snow on Friday complementing our Niagara Falls tour without it getting too freezing, and then increasing sunshine as the weekend progressed!

At the Niagara Falls!

In front of the American (i.e. less exciting) falls

Most people I spoke to were pretty down on Niagara Falls beforehand, so we were pleasantly surprised by our day tour. (Incidentally, Trump really has put rocket boosters on the standard tour guide repertoire of jokes about America: we got to a contrived but accurate slam on the US healthcare system within about 10 minutes of the bus setting off.)

Alongside seeing the Falls themselves, which were smaller than I’d imagined but very cool to get up near in a boat, we also got to sample Canadian ‘ice wine’ which is super sweet, like drinking a tasty dessert. Randi and I drank more later on at the top of the CN Tower, the ‘tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere’ (as a careful lawyer might write) which really shows off what a metropolis the city is – not just a cluster of skyscrapers in the centre, but spreading far and wide with many different clusters of development.

We didn’t push the boat out in our giant heart photos

Within the Distillery District

Dim Sum in Chinatown

At the top of the CN Tower

We also enjoyed a great dim sum lunch in Chinatown, drank beer in the famous Distillery District, went on a great walking tour (during which the guide claimed that Doctor Who was doing location filming in Toronto that day – sadly we could not verify this by spotting Capaldi anywhere) and had a unique guide to St. Lawrence Market with a thick French accent and a relaxed attitude to trespassing. (This person may or may not have been my mother.)

Finally, a shout out to Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. Imagine an airport which is within walking distance of the city centre – like a train station – with no queues, tiny planes which are quick to board and (best of all) free refreshments in the waiting lounge! If you visit Toronto, such things can be mere imagination no longer. Magical.

The world’s best airport

Two quick pre-Toronto things to squeeze into this post. Firstly, we had a lovely night with Grace and her mother (both visiting from Wyoming) plus other friends in their fancy AirBnb. Grace’s mother is as cool as I would have expected Grace’s mother to me. Secondly, at Toggolyn’s we followed-through on our plan to watch The Godfather Part II together. I’m not sure I take the popular view that the sequel is better than the original, but it was certainly enjoyable to watch. The unanimous consensus is that Part III is not worth it.

Since Jason and I live half an hour away from each other in Chicago, it seemed only natural to hang out by both flying to Denver at different times and overlapping for a day. So that is what we did. Welcome to Colorado!

Misty mountains

At the (real) summit

Once reunited in Denver, we drove (by which I mean ‘Jason drove’) to Boulder on Saturday morning and then selected a ‘medium+’ hike up Mount Sanitas for a decent morning walk. (The city of Boulder bothered me for a bit because I couldn’t work out why I would have heard of it before, until I realised it is the same Boulder which rhymes with ‘shoulder’ in the Chainsmokers song.)

Once Mount Sanitas had been suitably ascended we moved on to the Red Rock Amphitheatre, which seems like a nice place to see a concert, before enjoying some of Denver’s craft beer and the company of Jason’s friend Raj. Had I wanted to enjoy some of Denver’s other highlights (bad cannabis puns are obligatory!) then that would have been very easy too, as weed shops are just about everywhere. (And for fans of intricate local tax policies, fear not, they cater for you too.)

The stage at the Red Rock Amphitheatre

On Sunday I roamed the city by myself taking in the semi-pedestrianised downtown LoDo area, a great creole breakfast place, the Coors Field baseball stadium, a nice city park and a full three branches of the Tattered Cover bookshop. This makes a truly excellent place to sit with a cup of tea, amongst all of the beautiful books, and read a Kindle.

I also went to the Botanic Gardens, where I learnt all about trichomes (i.e. hairy leaves) from a patient woman at the Science Chats table within the Science Pyramid. Full credit to the Botanic Gardens for being enthusiastic about their Science, but I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for the person who ends up taking the Sunday morning slot on the Science Chats rota. So that her teaching doesn’t go to waste, let me assure you that most plants have surprisingly hairy leaves, and that looking at them under a microscope is cool.

I wouldn’t say the Botantical Gardens was ‘in season’, but this was pretty

LoDo, Denver

Travel by train! Admittedly only a train to the airport, but still.

Finally, I wanted to lavish praise on the city of Denver for connecting their faraway airport to the centre of the city via a fast and frequent train ride costing $9. Good job!

I made it to Florida!

Blending in

OK, so I made it to Florida in 1993. But that doesn’t count for the purpose of my scratch map since I wasn’t blogging anything at the time, and my main memory is getting yelled at by my parents just because I tried to stick my hairbush into the electrical socket. So last week I tried again, visiting Randi’s cousins in the Miami area. Special thanks to Sandy, Corey, Logan and Landon for hosting us, especially as their back garden looks like this:

Not too shabby

Also pretty nice at sunset

As always, places which are luxurious to visit do not always make for practical living. On the first day we lazed by the pool until lunchtime when we decided to pop out for a bite. The nearest restaurant was an hour’s walk away, during which we saw precisely zero other people on the pavement. (To be fair, at least there was pavement the whole way… I’m looking at you, Skokie.) On the way back, the security guard at the entrance to the estate looked astonished that anyone might turn up on foot, waving us through the gate built for cars with the uncertain salutation to “walk safely, I guess…?”.

I call it the milk test: never live anywhere which isn’t a 10 minute walk away from a shop selling milk.

At the beach

The next day we hung out in Miami Beach, which is technically a different ‘city’ to Miami but is (a) just over the bridge (b) probably what most tourists think is Miami anyway. Unsurprising it is warm, sunny and wonderful to walk down the public beach, admire the historic art deco hotels and wash down Cuban food with a pitcher of sangria. Much more surprisingly, but somehow even better, is the fact that the city is dotted with free public suncream dispensers! Suddenly this seems like the most obvious thing in the world, and I am surprised I have never seen it before.

Miami, you’ve impressed me with your public health programme.

Free suncream!

The Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach

More soberingly, we also visited the city’s Holocaust Memorial. There isn’t much to say abut this other than it’s worth seeing if you are ever in the area. (Especially if you have a job in the Trump administration.)

Later, we briefly stopped by Miami-proper to visit the Wynwood Walls before going home. On Saturday, it was time for a brand new American experience: the high school ‘track meet’. I’m starting to doubt myself, but I’m pretty sure this is not the norm for the UK. I mean, sure, there was a low-key school football team and I’m sure some of their parents and friends turned up for matches. But this is a different level of school pride, which is both kinda nice and rather strange. (Doesn’t school stop at the weekends?) Either way, we got to see Landon’s relay team triumph in their race (go Sharks!) before recuperating from all of this vicarious exercise at the beach club.

Automation in action

Sportz

More sportz

The Cat in the Hat

Wait, who is that adorable child up above? She is Randi’s newest cousin, and reason enough to visit. As a bonus we got to spend our final day with her and her dad Greg at a free Dr. Seuss festival, hanging out with the Cat in the Hat, Thing 1 and Thing 2. I’ll be honest: as a child, I wasn’t a fan of their anarchic ways, and was very much on the side of the law-abiding fish instead. But I suspect we have both mellowed over time, especially now that the Cat in the Hat has all of these public appearances to make.

Florida = done. Again.

For my traditional (?) post-Thanksgiving trip with Randi this year, we went to Charleston, South Carolina.

Charleston really is beautiful

Charleston really is a beautiful city, and such a joy to walk around – not just because the sun was out. Our AirBnb was a 40 minute walk from the centre of downtown, through mostly quiet, residential streets, but all along the way we passed local shops and bars and restaurants and people. The contrast with some of the Midwestern cities I’ve visited recently is obvious. And sure, Charleston is a tourist destination: an old city steeped in American history and blessed by a core of old money and narrow, pre-car streets. It is supposed to be nice. But it really does live up to it.

Rainbow road

The best decision we made was to take a walking tour, led by Scott and highly recommended. He gave a great introduction to the city’s history – from its founding as an English colony to the place where the first shots in the Civil War were fired – and didn’t shy away from the story of the native Americans, or enslaved African Americans, which are a fundamental part of it.

We also ate at slightly-pricey-but-delicious restaurants (many thanks to Cecelia for recommending The Hominy Grill, which we visited twice) including honey-coated crawfish hushpuppies, amazing crab cakes and southern fried chicken. And on Friday night we enjoyed the Que d’Keys Duelling Piano Bar – highlights include a reluctant Miley Cyrus cover and discovering that the woman behind the bar was from Bury St Edmunds. (It was also the first and only time that my ride home has been in a pickup truck.)

The sabal palmetto trees are everywhere

But we also wanted to visit a former plantation, eventually deciding on Middleton Place. This is where my feelings are mixed, and I still don’t exactly know what to make of it. Because I cannot imagine a plantation as being about anything other than slavery. That’s the purpose of preserving it as a historic site: to ensure the past is not forgotten, and provide a place where it is talked about, especially with children. Maybe that’s a bad starting point, and it’s just a way to compartmentalise the past and keep it out of mind beyond certain designated places.

Either way, this is clearly not what the owners of Middleton Place think they are doing. As you would expect from the former gardens of very rich people, the landscape is beautiful, and seems to be why people come. We had to assemble at #22 on the map for the slavery-focused tour, and while it’s hard to articulate exactly what was wrong, it just didn’t do justice to how sober the subject should be. It was more of a historical curiosity, safely removed from the present day. No slave cabins have actually survived: #22 on the map was, in fact, constructed after the Civil War for returning slaves coming to work as sharecroppers. This would have been a good opportunity to talk about the legacy of slavery after 1865, but we didn’t. And starting a tour by saying that slavery “has existed for millennia” and “is not just a Southern institution” is not the best way of taking on the responsibility for telling this particular chapter of human history.

I don’t want to suggest that our guide was an apologist for slavery. She wasn’t. She described what happened and answered questions honestly and it could have been a lot, lot worse. But it also could have been better.

Don’t walk down this path. Trust us.

After the tour, we walked down this narrow strip of land – which we probably weren’t supposed to – and Randi almost got eaten by an alligator. So there’s that.

The remains of Fort Sumter

Holding the fort

For our final day in Charleston, we visited Fort Sumter. History lesson: South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union at the start of the Civil War, and later fired the first shot at Fort Sumter where the US Army had hunkered down. Built to withstand the British navy coming from the sea, it wasn’t really designed for an attack in the other direction and they eventually surrendered. Only the base of the structure remains today, but it is a good place to sit and look back at Charleston over the water and be alternately grateful and afraid.

In the observation car on board the (nine hour) Amtrak ride from Chicago to Omaha, Randi and I encountered Henry: a young British tourist on his way from New York to California. Because of course he was. No matter how many times you remind us how ginormous the US is, we’re constitutionally inclined to seek out the railways to get from A to B. And if you have the time to spare, it’s still the most rewarding strategy. Nine hours pass very quickly when you have that much legroom, a half-bottle of wine and a table from which to watch the Midwest roll by.

I won’t even pretend that we were going to Omaha for any reason other than reaching another state. But it’s a strange place. Omaha is the largest city in Nebraska – and by ‘largest city’, I mean it’s around 400,000 people, with 1.3 million in the Greater Omaha area, against a state population of 1.9 million in total. So most Nebraskans are here.

They just don’t come out very much.

I’ve been to ghostly city centres before – St. Louis comes to mind – with an eerie emptiness at the downtown core. But that’s because they’ve been depopulated by suburbanisation. Omaha feels different. There were some unattractive stretches, but on the whole everything was perfectly pleasant. It wasn’t run-down. There were restaurants and bars, and – as you’d hope – they looked pretty busy on a Saturday night. There just didn’t seem to be anybody on the streets between the restaurants and the bars. Short of apparition or an extensive floo network, I assume the mystery is explained by lots of very direct car journeys from home to work to play. It’s a shame.

Fair play: it’s a tall fountain

The border

A red telephone box in the Old Market

Winning!

Blessed with great weather, we bucked this custom by walking around a lot, but we settled into a wonderful bar in time to watch the Cubs advance to the World Series. (To the uninitiated, this a Big Deal. They haven’t got this far since 1945, and if they won, it would be the first victory since 1908.) Despite being two states over, Omaha turns out to be a hotbed of Cubs fans and the atmosphere was perfect for the occasion.

Special thanks to Cory, an amiable bloke who joined us at the bar and answered many of my remaining Nebraskan questions. (The quintessential activity is pheasant shooting, apparently. British readers might note that, even here, I still get asked in cabs about Brexit.)

The moment the Cubs made it through to the World Series

The latest in my ‘posing with Presidents’ limited edition art series

Other adventures in Omaha included adding predictive post-it notes to Gerald Ford’s birthplace, wandering around the ‘Heartland of America’ park, learning about Prohibition and railway history at the Durham Museum and taking advantage of the bike rental scheme by the riverfront. Although technically most of the actual biking was in Iowa since the Nebraskan trails were still mostly in ‘proposal’ stage on the map. (This was also where my shoelace became unfortunately entwined with the bike, and Randi had to beseech some strangers for a fearsome-looking pocketknife to set it free. Guns don’t save people, pocketknives do.)

We improved it

Technically Iowa

That’s pretty much it for our weekend in the country’s only unicameral state. But we have been busy in Chicago too, including grinning and bearing through the final Presidential debate, phonebanking into Nevada (ten minutes of conversation with one wavering Republican woman made her feel, and I quote, “a lot more confident” about voting for Hillary – probably the first and only time I’ve had this effect on anyone) and playing Betrayal at House on the Hill with Chloe. This is a fun board game where one player suddenly turns hellish defector halfway through, and came highly recommended by Katie.

We also saw two more plays! Merge, by New Colony at the Den (which, I think it’s fair to say, is our favourite theatre here) told the story of the rise and fall of gaming company Atari. It’s the kind of thing I would happily read a book about, so seeing it on stage instead – at a breathless, quirky pace – was an enjoyable alternative. And then The City of Conversation (directed by Marti who is most definitely our favourite director, anywhere) showcased the decline of a Washington political elite through the Carter, Reagan and Obama years. The lead character, socialite Hester Ferris, was particularly well played and the entire production was well worth the trek up to the treacherous ‘pavements optional’ land of Skokie. Doubly so, because we also got to have lunch with Robert and Grace beforehand, who joined us in glaring awkwardly at the one person who voted for Reagan in the pre-show Carter vs. Reagan vs. Obama poll.