Postcards From Myself

A few years ago I went up to Toronto on a business trip. I really wasn’t sure what to expect because I had never been to Canada, and all of the big cities I was familiar with were typical US metropolises like New York, Atlanta, Dallas and the like. I was totally unprepared for the sprawling yet clean nature of Toronto.

I rented a car and cruised the area when I wasn’t in meetings, and found an area as diverse as the people there. From the high rises of downtown to the beautiful vineyards farther out near Niagara, the Toronto area had amazing contrasts.

The biggest surprise to me though, other than how clean the entire city was, had to have been the Toronto harbor. I really had never realized that not only did Toronto have a significant waterfront, but that it would be big enough for you to take a Toronto harbor cruise! I thought that harbor cruises and dinner cruises were the sole territory of place like, well like Charleston and San Francisco – places on the ocean! I never knew that when people talked of the great lakes, they really were Great Lakes.

I remember taking a ferry out to Toronto Island and the Toronto Island State Park. It was a beautiful area. I wander out there for hours amazed at the small island and all of the resources, including a clothing optional beach, that were available. Unfortunately I was there just into the off season so there weren’t as many facilities open and the flowers weren’t in bloom, but it was still an amazing place and so convenient to the downtown area.

While in Toronto I also ate at some excellent restaurants, browsed some well stocked book stored, and even took in the Broadway troupe showing of The Lion King. Oh, and of course, being a train person I marveled at the streetcars. Man I love those things. Never did get to take a full Toronto Cruise, but I would love to go back and do so.

Just thought I would pass on those thoughts. I hopefully will be traveling a bit more this year, and I was thinking about places that take you pleasantly by surprise. Toronto was certainly one of those.

I have no idea why, but there is something about the holiday season that always makes me wistful to be in London. The really odd thing is that I have only been there once and that was in the Spring, so I have absolutely no idea what London is actually like in December. But I want to be there none-the-less.

Maybe it is from seeing and reading Dickens’ A Christmas Carol too many times. Or maybe it is my love of trains and model railways that seems to be easier to exercise this time of year. I have visions of shop windows, or at least Hamleys or Harrods, filled with toy steam trains, big dolls, and overstuffed teddy bears. By the way, if you are a toy fan and ever get the chance to visit Hamleys, you absolutely must. Floor upon floor upon floor of every type, size, and age toy you can imagine.

For now, at least, I will remain here in Charleston though. That is really not so bad seeing as the weather is mild, my family is here, and the Charleston Place Hotel downtown has a great train setup. What is more, my son is starting to show a real interest in model trains, so maybe sometime in the future we will be able to bring them out more than just the few weeks around the holidays.

Still though, it would be nice to be in London. To take the tube into the city from a nice bed and breakfast. To stroll the streets and take in the sites and sounds. And of course, to visit the toy stores.

OK, I am sorry to all you people who love the winter and skiing and the skating and the thrashing around in the snow, but it is cold. I live here in the, usually, sunny South for a reason. I don’t do cold well. When I was a kid I went with a church group on a retreat to go skiing in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. That didn’t last long. First the van broke down on the way up, and then I nearly killed a small child on the bunny slope. Needless to say I gave up, went inside the lodge, enjoyed myself in front of the fire, and was still able to watch the snow patrol carrying foolish victims down the slopes.

I have friend who is going out to Lake Tahoe skiing, and he told me the place he is going is called Ski Heavenly. It looks pretty cool. (Get it? Cool?) You can do the Lake Tahoe casino thing, all the normal winter activities, and even some adult nightlife activities. Of course the problem for me is that at the moment it shows the temperature as a mere 38 degrees! Good thing they have some nice lodging and shops. They also look like they have snowboarding – which some places do not. Though the buddy going there isn’t a boarder, I have a different friend who is. No, I still don’t know why, but Tammy is a great person so snow boarding must not be that bad.

Of all the things that might appeal to me, the Lake Tahoe hiking is the close. Like I said, i am not much of a cold climate person, but it looks like even in the warmer months there is some good scenery for those who chose to hike, not slide. I really do enjoy a good hike in the mountains when the weather is in the 50s or 60s. Please though, not any colder than that.

So, for the winter time, you go ahead and ski, or skate, or take sleigh rides. I will stay in the lodge all warm and snug and make friends with the snow bunnies. And another hot buttered rum.

I am hopeless, I admit it. I am glued to my iPhone and my laptop. So when I head out to eat, especially for lunch during the work week, I often judge where I am going by the availability of free wi-fi. I know fast food places like Chic-Fil-A, McDonald’s and Moe’s have free wireless. There are also some middle of the road places around that offer it too. But sometimes I just can’t figure out which ones do or don’t. And when I am on the road I have an even harder time and those are the times when it may be even more important to me.

In the same way that you used to be able to look up on many review sites whether there was smoking or not, I wish that review sites would show whether or not a place has wireless. I love UrbanSpoon on both the web and my iPhone. It is a great reference to have and I hope they spread to more cities. But I also want them to include a denotation of wireless. Since they have some a great iPhone app you would expect Internet connectivity to be important to them.

And it should also work in reverse. It would be great when you are planning a date or romantic evening with the spouse to know you can go somewhere without the threat of typing. Even would work for when you just have a headache. And even better, what about no-cell phone establishments? There have been many times that I would have chosen one restaurant over the one next to it if I had known I would have been safe from loud-mouthed people with bluetooth headsets.

So what do you think? Do you make you lunch plans based on food, price, or Internet connectivity?

Is it happy Columbus Day? Or happy destruction of Native American culture day? Or perhaps happy European imperialism day? However you see the arrival of Columbus in the Americas, most people agree that it changed the face of the world for ever. For better or for worse, it changed how people saw the world – from both sides.

So, take this time to ponder some of these questions. Noble explorers or greedy conquerors? How did this play out through history, and how do we still exemplify the best and the worst of this in our works today. Do we seek to find new cultures and learn from them? Or do we try to spread our own ways and wipe out existing cultures? Are we more interested in exploration or expansion?