April is a good time for a main holiday. You get to see lots in a reasonable climate, without being surrounded by irritating tourists the whole time (more on them later). This is the second year I’ve gone for a week-long city break over Easter – although this one had a little detour in the middle. And they’re definitely the way to see things. I was a bit worried about the weather before we left. Canada has had a really long winter apparently, and it was hovering around freezing point. Luckily, it seemed to warm up a bit just before we arrived, making it perfect weather to explore a lot. So come with me as we go through adventures in glass-walking, air guitar, making ourselves understood, and taking gibberish – both while awake and asleep…

It’s always a good thing when a holiday starts even earlier than planned. So it was when Iain and I headed off to Edinburgh the Friday three days before we flew off to Canada, to be tourists in our own capital city. After munching our way through an entire meat loaf (the food, not the exceptionally large singer) it was, of course, time to hit the bars for a few drinks. The plan was to stay up late on Friday night so we’d be tired on Saturday, go to bed early, do the same on Sunday and be adjusted to Toronto time before we even got there. We certainly managed the first bit OK. A couple of hours in Whistle Binkies listening to some guy kill classic rock tunes (Losing My Religion was a particular favourite) with Iain and Kev (singer with Stocious, they’ll crop up more later on), followed by Iain and Suja, engineer and pal of Iain. Obviously. I don’t know anyone in Edinburgh, really.

From there, on to the Southsider for some pool (I had four or five good shots then sucked) and to a hip-hop club called Medina with Iain, Suja and Will – who seems to know everyone in every bar in Edinburgh so got us in free. I remember some very bad dancing on my part, but then I’d expect nothing less.

Saturday was our main tourist day and we spent much of it looking round Edinburgh Castle. Iain wasn’t feeling his strongest at this point (ahem) but we still saw loads of it and got utterly soaked by the wonderful Scottish weather. A quick Wetherspoons lunch later and we walked down the Royal Mile and looked at the Toy Museum (cool) before getting completely soaked again as we walked through Holyrood Park. Back to Suja’s for a quick drying off session courtesy of a hairdryer and dinner before we went to the cinema to watch Starsky and Hutch. 70s kitsch a-go-go! Unfortunately, the “going to bed early” plan fell over, as we ended up sitting chatting and listening to music ‘til 4am. Whoops.

Sunday was a quiet day, seeing us simply travelling over to Glasgow (by train, I won, woohoo) and meeting Scott who kindly offered us a place to stay for the night (thank you, kind innkeep). Watched lots of “America’s Craziest Car Chases” with Scott’s flatmate Daniel. Awful show, but quite amusing. Then went to bed at the relatively sensible midnight.

Up five hours later and the holiday proper got underway, as we got to the airport. At 6am. Yuck. Flight was good, Air Transat were much better than I feared they might be. Comfy seats, half-decent TV shows (though the films, Cheaper By The Dozen and, erm, Mona Lisa Smile I think, were awful), friendly staff and edible meals. Irritating family across the aisle though. Dad spent all the time possible chatting on his mobile then they complained because they weren’t clever enough to have booked their three seats along with two for some other family members who were joining them at Manchester (oh, the flight went via Manchester). Air stewardess asked us to move. We said we preferred our seats (partly true, partly just ‘cos the guy was annoying us). They also complained at length during our hour-long walk around Manchester Airport to clear security. Slightly pointless, but hey, put in the time and got us some exercise… I was rather pleased when they disappeared when we got to Toronto (guy got another important phone call he just had to take, he was obviously something very important in the world of being a knobjockey).

Oh yay, we’re in Toronto! A quick bus ride and we’re the only people to get off at our hotel. Dunno why, it was perfect. Comfortable, reasonably sized, efficient and central – ideal really. We headed off for a quick look around the city. Took in the CN Tower for the first time – hey, it’s big! – before going out for a delicious Italian meal at this cool restaurant called “Kit Kat”. Came back to hotel – the Bond Place – and went to bed. It was about 3am UK time by this point, I think we were due a rest…

Tuesday was the big tourist day. And if you’re tourists in Toronto, the first place you go is, yes, you’ve guessed it – straight back to the CN Tower. I’d fully agree with the guide book’s recommendation to get there early. We were there about 11 and barely had to queue which was ideal. Saw lots of Toronto from the top down, lay doing air guitar on the glass floor in our Stocious t-shirts and messed up the restaurant so we could get particular pictures. Oops. Tried to do the Skydome tour for the first time (it’s the big baseball stadium), decided to go for lunch instead. We also took in the CBC Museum (lots of stuff about how TV used to be made) and walked out to the Flatiron building. The guide book said it was worth looking at the back of the building to try and figure out which windows were real and which were painted on. In fact, it was rubbish. Didn’t even bother taking a picture. Dinner came courtesy of the Bombay Palace, a brilliant Indian restaurant near where we were staying. Had something very unusual as did Iain. I can’t remember the names of either.

On Wednesday, it was time for the other massive tourist attraction – Niagara Falls. The travel lot had arranged transfers, we just had to phone for them. Had arranged to get the bus down, under the impression they would all be almost full. Nope. Van turns up with driver to take just the two of us on the, erm, 90-minute trip. It was basically like getting a free taxi there. Checked into the rather classy Brock Plaza Hotel – complete with view of the falls from our room – then went to check out the real thing. Had the wonderful idea of going on the “Maid of the Mist” boats – except they weren’t running. How rude of them. Went down through the cliffs instead to get behind the falls which was still really impressive, and got utterly soaked (VID from behind falls). We also ended up going up to the completely pointless board showing a picture of the falls (VID of Iain). The evening saw us skip the “eminently missable” Ripley’s Believe It Or Not show on the horrible tourist strip of Clifton Hill, just next to the falls, and instead go for a fantastic steak dinner at a place called Remington’s of Montana (not to be confused with Remington’s Men of Steel, a Toronto gay club. Apparently, I wouldn’t know). I obviously didn’t drink most of a carafe of wine and then spill the remaining contents all over Iain’s side of the table. Oh no. Why would I do that? We also wandered through the casino. I lost a total of 25 cents, and that was because the machine ate it. Stupid thing.

Back to Toronto on Thursday, and this time there were just the two of us on a 30-seater bus. Can’t ask for much more than that really. After getting back, we went on a two-hour round trip, involving subways and a long walk, to get to the junction of Jane St and St Clair Ave. A woman in the Barenaked Ladies song “Jane” is named after this, so we (OK, I) thought it might be worth the trip. It really wasn’t, it was the world’s most boring intersection. Couple of houses on one side, a mechanic’s on another corner, and a massive road running behind us. After returning, we decided to go to the Air Canada Centre, home of the Toronto Maple Leafs ice hockey team, to see if we could get tickets for the first game of the playoffs against the Ottawa Senators. The tout we spoke to said he could get us cheap tickets for the excellent price of $300 (Canadian, that’s about £130). We offered him $35. He just walked off in disgust. Eek. Instead, we went for about the only disappointing meal we had the whole time, courtesy of the Happy Seven Chinese in Chinatown. Food was OK, but nothing special. We then went back to watch the game on TV along with comments from “The Colonel”. The Leafs lost, 4-2. The Colonel is this old coach, Don Cherry, who provides insight into the game on CBC. Well, actually he generally just yells nonsense.

Friday was our day to “do” uptown which was lucky as almost everything downtown was shut for Good Friday. We saw the Parliament, the university, the museum and then headed into Cabbagetown – yes, just for the name. That took about two hours, so we went for a nice lunch at the wonderfully-named “Pickle Barrel” – hey, it was open – then just wandered. Tried going to the Skydome again but discovered they’d cancelled the 3pm tour ‘cos of the holiday. Ah well, there’s always Sunday. In the evening we went to see the Jim Carrey film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. It was quite odd. I enjoyed it, Iain went off it the more he thought about it. An early night, after we gave up on watching the Calgary Flames beat the Vancouver Canucks, was brought to an abrupt end as the fire alarm went off at, erm, 12.30am. Five minutes later, after I’d decided it wasn’t going to stop, I woke Iain (by screaming at him), we got dressed, he put in contact lenses (can you sense the urgency?) and we wandered downstairs. We were still nowhere near last out either. Ten minutes later we got back in and watched the end of the hockey (it finished 2-1 to the Flames, I well love ice hockey now).

Saturday saw us take a venture into Tim Horton’s for a lovely breakfast of a muffin (me) and six donuts (Iain). Yum. We went across to the islands, which are just off the south of the mainland city but officially still a part of it. It’s really quite odd, it’s like a small community of its own. Would be horrible with lots of tourists, but as it was we walked the five-to-ten-mile loop (we took a lot of detours) barely seeing a soul. Did mean almost all the food places were shut though, so we went to this place called the Rectory Café for a meal. It was delicious, a good end to lots of nice food, although Iain was a tad disappointed when his Spruce Beer turned out to be, erm, not real beer. Headed back across and walked past the ACC again, just as the game was starting. Got a tout down to $50 each for tickets, but it was still too much so we went and watched the Leafs level the series with a 2-0 win on TV instead. Plus we got the Colonel that way.

Sunday, and the final day, for which I had nothing planned at all. No worries, we’ll just go put in time in the Eaton Centre (massive shopping complex just across from where we were staying). Any other Sunday this would have been fine; but Easter Sunday, everything was shut. Seriously. There were about three shops open in the entire place. So we wandered to the Skydome again. No tours because of Easter. Grr. Generally wandered for a while, ending up sitting in Nathan Philips Square by City Hall, drinking Starbucks coffee and watching lots of kids be much better at skateboarding than I am (surprise). Our bus back to the airport had to pick up other people (shock!) but we were still there in loads of time, had an uneventful flight back (except for forgetting to ask the Canadian girl sitting next to us how to pronounce Yonge, the name of the main street – we’re going with Yong), sat next to the toilets because I’m too much of a retard to figure out that row 30 are, erm, the seats right next to the toilets. Parents dropped off Iain back in Edinburgh then headed back to Dumfries where I managed to somehow not be tired ‘til 10.30pm, meaning I’d been up for around about 32 hours without a sleep.

And that’s about it. I’ve probably forgotten some stuff, so if you have anything to add Iain, please send it over – for now, that’s over 2000 words so I will simply close by saying: Toronto is a very cool place and well worth a visit.