Considering we were slightly worse for wear after our ‘festival’ night out, nothing our daily ‘berrocca’ couldn’t put right, we’d both slept well and were up, washed, dressed and out walking by 7.20am. It was much cooler this morning and the breeze was lovely, perfect conditions for a good brisk walk. We decided to go a different route today and ended up walking to the cultural district and then made our way to the harbour (the waterfront in Canadian speak) where we found ‘Sprout’, a very nice cafe come bakery where we stopped for coffee. It was our most expensive coffee to date at $11.60 for two, why it was this expensive we don’t know as our previous coffees have been in the $8-$10 dollar price range. We sat outside under the morning sun and attempted a de-brief of the previous evenings proceedings but Maice seemed to be having an issue with her voice-box this morning emitting some very strange guttural sounds to the extent she couldn’t be heard (does have it’s advantages). We concluded it must have been due to a) all that singing she was doing last night or b) trying to have a conversation by yelling and shouting so loud so as to be heard over the music. Whatever it was she sounded like she’d just smoked a full pack of cigarettes!!! Of course it could have been due to the amount of cannabis inhaled from the surrounding people who were ‘smoking’ all around us, it now being legalised here in Canada, to the extent that an extensive number of ‘Dutch Love’ cafes have sprung up all over Canada serving coffee and ‘cookies’!!
Since I’ve been here I’ve noticed that there is a language barrier with some words and phrases I use which the Canadians I’ve met don’t seem to understand. For instance; in a cafe I’ll ask where the toilets are and I’ll get a blank look, that’s because they’re called ‘washrooms’. A shopping mall is equivalent to our shopping centres where you access the shops by going inside the centre. A strip mall is equivalent to our parade of shops and are accessible from the street. A duplex is what we call a semi-detached house. They call meat and fish protein. So when we ordered the double cheese nachos last night we were asked ‘d’you want protein with that?’. It seems that whenever you ask for a vegetarian dish you get asked that very question protein!
After brunch we set off to the liquor store as we needed to replenish the stocks in Myrna’s fridge and ‘treasure’ chest. Whether the Drivers were still on strike I’m not sure but we managed to come away with eight bottles of wine and Prosecco and eight tins of Caesar. Should see us nicely through the coming week! Next stop was the supermarket which is not a supermarket over here but a grocery store where we replenished the shelves in the fridge/freezer which hopefully should last us a few more days.
Back home Myrna and I had a short siesta before we all headed off to the local movie theatre (the cinema to you and me) to watch Bullit Train. We wouldn’t want to fall asleep during the film, now would we? I mean how embarrassing would that be! We couldn’t believe how cheap the tickets were when we booked them; just $3 per person, that’s £1.98 in pounds. A bargain! Usually they cost over $10 so we couldn’t understand why they were so cheap. Had they got it wrong and thought we were children (going to see Bullit Train!!) or had they only charged us for one person, although the email receipt did say three adults? It had even been a topic of conversation at Aunt Carole’s but no-one there knew why they were so cheap. It fell to the cashier at the grocery store to tell us. Making conversation with us he asked what we had planned for the rest of the day and when we told him we were off to the movie theatre he said ‘That’s great. Today is National Movie Theatre day in Canada and it only costs $3 to see a movie’. So there you have it. The riddle has been solved!
Well, what an amazing cinecomplex this is. You don’t sit on seats here, you sit on reclining seats that turn into a bed. I kid you not. Honestly, I could compare it to the First Class or Club Class seating arrangements on an aircraft, okay, maybe a slight exaggeration but once sat down, we reclined and were horizontal for the whole of the film. It was so comfortable you can see how easy it would be to fall asleep. Maice and I thoroughly enjoyed the film albeit it was extremely violent and full of blood and gore but the plus side was that it was very funny and very entertaining. Of course Myrna wouldn’t know anything about the film because after five minutes of being in a horizontal position she fell asleep and didn’t wake up until the final ten minutes! Four times I had to nudge her, yes, four times to wake her up when her snoring got so loud. Honestly, you just can’t take her anywhere!!
When we got home we cracked open a bottle of Prosecco but the excitement of the film obviously made us tired. It’s been a lovely day and sleep was calling us so without further ado we headed off to bed, looking forward to what Day 7 would bring!
See you all tomorrow….
M&A
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