Our route

Here's our planned route - contacts/advice for all destinations welcome! Or why not come & meet us somewhere ;-)

Feb/March - Ukraine to Istanbul, via Moldova (& Transnitria)/Romania/Serbia/Bulgaria (Lisa); south France to Istanbul, via Slovenia/Italy/Greece (Chris)
April - Istanbul, Jordan & Israel
late April/May - north India to Nepal, overland
June/July - Hong Kong, Thailand/Cambodia/Vietnam (Hanoi)/South Korea/Japan
August - Hawaii & California
September/October - central America - Panama to Guatemala, overland
late October - arrive in Canada (Uxbridge, ON)

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Canadian National Exhibition - let's go to The Ex!

We had such a good time at the CNE (also known as "The Ex") yesterday that it was worth dusting off the blog to write about it!

We were volunteering to represent Uxbridge - although our booth turned out to be focused on the York Durham Heritage Railway, so we were a bit out of our depth - for a 1/2 day.  We decided to take the early shift and to travel down by bus so that we could make the most of what the CNE has to offer.

The 6 hours spent in our booth went very quickly, particularly thanks to the challenges of caring for our loaner plants and model train; the latter had a tendency to be derailed by little hands when you turned away for a millisecond.  We met all kinds of interesting people including our co-volunteer Paul, who is the "souvenir vendor" on our popular tourist train (over 10,000 riders last summer!).

Once our shift was over we wandered past our neighbouring rock-balancing booth (very talented guy!) to check out the competitive vegetables and flowers (theme of the day - chrysanthemums and dahlias).  The giant leeks were particularly impressive, as were the prolific squashes from one contributor.


The rest of our building (Direct Energy Center) was quite shopping-oriented, but we are not in the market for a hot tub or a giant TV so we just enjoyed some great samples from Mountainoak Cheese, bought a couple of Game of Thrones-themed t-shirts, and hightailed it to outdoors to check out all the weird and wonderful things out there - such as deep-fried butter!


We had some free samples of Iƶgo (fig & date probiotic - getting our stomachs ready for the assault ahead), sat in some fun chairs painted by students, chatted to the guy doing 3-D photography, ogled the army guys in uniform (Lisa) and marvelled at all the things one could see and do - with an inexhaustible supply of cash, that is.  There were tons of rides, midway games, mix-your-own slushies, poutine variants....the list could go on and on.  We were satisfied just to people-watch and sip on a delicious frozen hot chocolate.

We found ourselves at a building labelled Arts & Crafts, which turned out to be the highlight of our day.  There were lots of vendors (one of the complaints about the modern-day CNE) but also some interesting displays about superstitions, bridesmaid dresses, and a few other bits.  The origami skyline of Toronto was incredible, especially the large buildings such as City Hall.  And we found a new game - uPSet - which the inventor himself taught us how to play!  It was a tight game but Chris won (beginner's luck?) and we were sold on the idea - we bought a signed copy of the game for the family to enjoy at our Thanksgiving &
Christmas get-togethers.

We finally made our way out of Arts & Crafts towards the bandshell, where Theory of a Deadman were playing to a small but enthusiastic crowd.  We arrived just in time for a song entitled "The Bitch Came Back" and were amused to see some young fans dancing with their parents to what were definitely not PG-rated lyrics.

We made our way past the Ribfest booths (selling all manner of carnivorous delights) to the beer garden, where Lisa perched on the back of some garden furniture while we sipped some hard-earned beverages.  Our enjoyment of the band and the atmosphere was somewhat subdued by the conflict between some seated patrons vs some new arrivals.  Unfortunately for the latter they had done very well at the midway and their collection of giant stuffed animals was accused of blocking the view of the seated fans.  Frankly, if you're that much of a fan then you should probably be standing, dancing, and generally jumping around well above the stuffed animal sightline...but we stayed out of it  ;-)

Bacon, ice cream, chilli peppers,
Nutella - in a cone, of course...?
After 30 minutes or so we decided it was high time to hit the famous Food Building to check out the offerings for dinner.  Although it certainly resembled a large-scale version of a shopping mall food court, there were some special attractions that made it worthwhile to fully circumnavigate the building.  A few of the highlights have been captured in the photos below:








It was a tough decision but Lisa settled on a pulled pork and perogy sandwich (on a delicious pretzel bun) and Chris enjoyed two Lebanese pita sandwiches - halloumi & tomato and marinated turkey.  We finished off our meal with a very dark and roasty coffee from Hula Girl.  If only we had second - and possibly third - stomachs there are so many more things we would have liked to try!  Although we're not sure we're keen on the bacon & Nutella focus of many booths...a bit weird...?

Exhausted, we made our way to the GO train station attached to the Ex and scooted along one stop to Union Station.  Too bad it was an hour and a half until the next bus to Uxbridge - but it could've been worse, as this was the last bus of the day and we didn't fancy an unplanned overnight stopover in the GO bus station!