Day 8: Leaving for pickup

Today was a relaxed day. I did a little bit of work today. I love that I can use some incredible technology to allow me to do my work from a distance. By 10am this morning I had conversations with Adnan in Pakistan, Matijs in Holland, Melanie in Calgary and Deb in Toronto.

I dropped of my suitcase at the B&B where I'll be staying over the next week with Seth. Then I met up for lunch and a tour of little Italy with Alicia, the beautiful and crazy fire-dancing Mexican choclatier. I'lll throw the names of the restaurants in here later.

We had lunch at Pizza Neopolitan. We had a traditional Italian style pizza. Quite tasty.

Afterwards we had a gelato and expresso at another place with a great deal of character - I think it was called Cafe Italia. It's the Italian equivalent of a geasy spoon. Obviously nothing had been changed in 40 years. It was a breakfast/lunch place run by Momma. The fozball table was an unusual fixture in the dining room. And an odd collection of sports photos, articles and artwork filled the walls. Most interesting was the oil of the soccer goalie that was centered nicely below a modest, but sparkling cross.

The thing that told you that you were not in just any diner was the shampoos, shaving cream and shaving brushes for sale behind the dinning counter right beside the shelves holding the open jars of jam and nutella.

Alicia was nice enough to hang out with me while I waited for the train back to Toronto. We sat in a park close to the station. It was a hot humid day and Alicia was a little overdressed for the weather. So we didn't mind when the odd drop started sprinkling down from the clouds. At one point I looked up the street and it looked like a wall of water just 100m away and I mentioned to Alicia how odd it was that it looked like water was teaming down and we weren't getting wet under the tree. Within seconds however that wall of water moved down the street and we got soaked instantly. It was quite refreshing though.

Now I'm on the train home to Toronto to get Seth. (I'm very excited to bring him to Montreal.) This is a really nice VIA train. Wide comfortable seats. There are only three seats across instead of the usual four. And they are actually quite comfortable. As I look out the window, the sun is going down and long thin pink and purple clouds are drifting across a blue sky while the mist rises from the forest clearings. I love travelling by train and am surprised that more people don't do it.