Wednesday and Thursday - Train trip back to Toronto

Note - I didn't get to an Internet Cafe while I was in Toronto, so I wrote these last entries up and am posting them now --

Wednesday and Thursday - Halifax to Toronto

I met some interesting people on the train back to Toronto - at lunch, I sat with a woman who teaches English at a college in Nova Scotia. At dinner, I sat with two women - a psychologist with student services at a Cape Breton university and another woman who was returning from a trip to Nova Scotia she made to clean out her mother's house (her mother died several months ago and they are getting the house ready to sell).

I spent a lot of time up in the dome car in the late afternoon and after dinner - the scenery was prime moose territory, with lots of trees, bogs, marshes, lakes and fields, but the only wildlife I saw on this train trip was a mother duckling and her babies and a beaver dam. Not even a deer.

I slept better on this trip - had earplugs to block out the annoying squeak.

On the train, I read True North by Jill Ker Conway. This is an excellent memoir by the author of The Road from Coorain, which was about her childhood in Australia, on a drought-striken sheep station and in Sydney. True North is about her graduate studies in history at Harvard, her marriage to John Conway, and their move to Toronto. The memoir covers up to her becoming the first woman president to Smith College. If you haven't read The Road from Coorain, I heartily recommend you read that, followed by True North. They are both excellent.

I made it into Toronto around 3:30 PM and checked into my B&B. Pimblett's is the most electic of the three I've stayed in this trip. The owner is from England originally; I am staying the library, which is full of bookshelves, a comfortable bed, and several huge pieces of furniture. I do have my own bath, with a jacuzzi. The place comes with a dog - a friendly, fat Doberman named Bertie. They've changed their website since I booked my trip - there was no reference to Fawlty Towers when I first looked.

The B&B is close to the streetcar, so I can get around Toronto well. It is in Old Cabbagetown, a Toronto neighborhood near downtown.