Robin goes Canada

My trip started on the 17th April at roughly 11am at Hannover Airport, Germany. My flight to Frankfurt to me almost one hour. In Frankfurt I met the rest of my travel mates, and we waited for our Lufthansa jet that would take us to Canada.

As we arrived in Toronto, more precisely the airport with the cryptic code 'YYZ', aKa Lester B. Pearson International in Missisauga, we went through the immigration process like a light beam thru open space, maybe a little bit to fast. Or I would have been able to correct the error in my work permit right away, what took me almost one month to do afterwards. As we arrived at the hostel (@ church and king; toronto@hihostels.com), we brought our baggage into our room and started exploring the city right away.

The next days we visited the hockey hall of fame ($17> HHOF.com), the Air Canada Center,

CN Tower ($44), China Town and the beautiful Toronto Islands ($7 for the ferry). Later, after we had splitter up, me and the half that stayed with me, travelled to Niagara Falls (> ca.megabus.com).

Badly, there was still ice in the Niagara River, and so the 'maid-of-the-mist' boats weren't crazing by then. But we had loads of fun anyways, with for example laser tag. I also had a two hour visit in the states. There I discovered the mistake in my work permit.

Back in Toronto, I applied for a correction, and after a month of back and forth, I had my new, corrected work permit in my passport.

Even before I had my new work permit, I travelled via Ottawa (> greyhound.com; ottawa.com), where I stayed at the Ottawa Backpackers Inn, to Forest (near London, ON) to WWOOF. I had a great time in Forest, and it made me sad to leave for Kitchener, where I had a shitty time. Plus, I had to pay an extra of $53.91 for my 50lbs trolley, what was TOTALLY FINE on board of the AIRPLANE, on my travel with Via Rail Canada (> via.ca).

So I left for Algonquin Park, where I worked as dishwasher in Arowhon Pines (I had a previous dishwashing job in T.O., but that didn't worked out well). I liked it there, made some friends, some money and learned to canoe.

In late August I left for Toronto, but thru a lack of free hostels I travelled on to Montreal. I'm not regretting that step at all. On the 30. August was back in Toronto, and for the same reasons travelled on to Ottawa, where I also ordered my new backpack (> mec.ca).

On the 3rd September, I finally made it back to Toronto, luckily I had a hostel reservation made in April, to volunteer for TIFF (> tiff.net; tiff.net/volunteer). I was lucky to see Al Pacino, Bill Murray, Naomi Watts, Melissa McCarthey and a bunch of good films for free. I spend most of my time volunteering at Scotiabank Theatre or TIFF Bell Lightbox. But I also volunteered 20 minutes at the Princess of Wales theatre, where I saw most of the above mentioned celebrities.

From Toronto I travelled back to Niagara Falls, where, due to the lack of ice in the river, I was finally able to take a boat tour into the falls ($22;> hornblowercruises.com; video > http://youtu.be/NtOO4_VYdZI)

After two days I went on back to Forest, with Via Rail, and, probably due to the fact that I now had a backpack, everything was just fine. No extra charges this time. I went back to Arowhon Pines (> Arowhon.ca) then, to fulfill my contract by stacking firewood.

From there (on the 14th October) I went to Kitchener with two friends. We rented an apartment (what I had done in Toronto before) through AirBnB (> airbnb.com). We had to use the account of my friend, because my $100 coupon was only for first time bookings. We had a great time, and lots of crazy stuff happened, for example the atm at Concordia Club ran dry and the beer was crazy expensive.

Since then I'm with my friend in Kitchener. Next week I'm going to take the bus (yes, the bus!!!) to Vancouver, what will take me 3 days, before I start into my new dishwashing job in Blue River, BC at MWHS (wiegele.com).

Places I've been:

Toronto, ON

Niagara Falls, ON

Niagara Falls, NY, USA

Ottawa, ON

Forest, ON

Sarnia, ON

Kitchener, ON

Huntsville, ON

Algonquin Park, ON

Montreal, QC

London, ON