[Mota]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

We're about halfway through our trip and right now back in the US for a brief stay in Lake Placid. A few observations from our time so far in Canada (mainly Niagara, Toronto and Ottawa):

- We happened to be in Toronto during pride weekend. Very cool. The whole vibe was positive and pretty much everyone took part. Strange to see, honestly. The weirdest sight for me was a white dude driving a big ass pickup truck with pride flags sticking out of his doors like you'd see on a CFB weekend.

- It is really striking when you've lived in the south and small cities for so long how diverse other places can be. Again, very cool.

- Went to the Friday Jays/A's game and the A's won. So we saw a pretty rare feat. Rogers Centre was cool.

- The MPH/Km thing is a mindfuck. I missed 2 exits simply because the baked-in timing in my head when seeing, say, 4.6 left made me think in terms of miles not kilometers and I zoomed right past. It's like if they suddenly made FB broadcast commercials half as long and my innate ability to know exactly when to turn a game back on as the commercials end has been thrown into chaos.

- Also, the speed limits are too slow. There were whole stretches of nothing for dozens of kilometers and it was still 100 KPH. When there's nothing but a Tim Hortons every 30 kilometers, you should be able to drive faster than 63 MPH.

- We didn't spend much time in Ottawa but it was very smoky on Sunday night when we got in. We drove around a bit on Monday morning before heading south. Parliament buildings and the arboretum/Hog's Back Falls we're cool.

- We stopped for lunch in Cornwall just before the border. Decided to go into a Walmart. Holy shit! It was like being in Jungle Jim's there was so much cool stuff we don't get in the US. We walked out with half a dozen boxes of cereal we had never seen (different flavors of cheerios and oatmeal crisp). They had Honeycomb and Sugar Smacks which I swear we haven't seen in the US in 30 years. They had Oh Henry and Mars bars - MIA in the US for years. We were like kids in a candy store.

- It took about 3 minutes to get through Canada customs and 10 minutes getting back into the US. Dude couldn't figure out our license plate (my wife has a specialty KY breast cancer awareness plate) and then started grilling us about where we'd been and where we were going. He finally let us go. It was weird.

We're going to get out and enjoy the mountains here while we can. It's supposed to rain for days but it's clear this morning. Tomorrow headed back into Canada to Montreal and then Quebec city.

That's cool! Glad you had a good time. In Quebec City, make sure to walk through the fort at the St. Laurence River junction. It was protecting Canada from invaders back in the 1700's. But there's a ton of shops to walk down after you've gone to the fort. I spent a nice afternoon there a few years back.

We feel the same way when we go into the US, I went to buy some alcohol and there were so many different choices! And you can pretty much only buy alcohol at LCBO locations, so just going to a store was very different. I think for candy, I saw Payola and Three Musketeers in the USA, and we don't have those at all.

100km speed limit is pretty slow, but you can really go up to 120km before worrying about getting a ticket. Don't be obvious about it, but traffic always flows faster than the speed limit here.