Toronto Calling - Football Awards, customs and soccerdomes.

Having packed (with the 'help' of Sonny throwing my stuff around) and checked-in the night before, I headed off to the Airport at about 6:15am on the Thursday morning. Quite the long journey was ahead but it proved to be uncharacteristically uneventful - mainly due to the metro being full of zombies at that time of the morning, as opposed to the messes and parades of madness that usually frequent it. My flight to Amsterdam was brief but i did at least get the opportunity to pick up two bargain bottles of 1 litre vodka for £18 and a couple of books for Alfie before leaving the UK. I also enjoyed my first experience of the Star Trek like body scanners once in Schiphol. Another passenger didn't find them quite as entertaining, she was wearing a tea cosy like hat and point blank refused to take it off to enter the booth, it just wasn't happening under any circumstances. The staff eventually caved and let her off but I really wanted to see what monstrosity was hiding under there. Disappointing.

My flight to Toronto was about 8 hours long and I was flying with KLM. Now I used to be the worst traveller in the world, i had to wear pathetic wristbands, take tablets (my parents once hid some in my munch bunch as a child, since i could never swallow the fuckers) and I still couldn't even make it to the Metro Centre without being ill. Thankfully, I somehow managed to finally grow out of all that at 25 and travelling by air has been completely fine since. Well this flight certainly changed all that, biggest pile of wank ever. The plane was ridiculously over packed, I couldn't extend my legs, the service was ridiculously slow, they'd ran out of half the food by the time they got to me, and when they did, I had to attempt to eat as if was dancing the robot by tucking my elbows in, just so i didn't keep hitting the Russian sitting next to me. To top it all off my TV didn't work either, so I had to somehow entertain myself for the next 8 hours. Class. I told the flight attendent about the TV and she responded with 'Okay, you need to find out what's wrong with it and then tell me!'. I couldn't handle an argument, so just let them get on with it. Plus she reminded me of an old school dinner lady who'd put anyone on the feared 'Wall' if they spoke out of turn, and it wasn't too long before I was arriving in Toronto.
Customs was a treat as ever, I honestly think the job of the officers there is to try and get a reaction out of you by being complete and utter arseholes. I know what these people are always like, so i decided to be extra nice and polite from the off but the woman was still instantly agressive and patronising as ever -  'How long are you staying here for?......Because you didn't fill the box in stupid. Where you staying? Toronto? That's a big place, be more specific, it's like telling me yo live in London. You don't have a return ticket to show me? You are going home, aren't you? Show me your itinerary then. What do you do in England? Taxman? Big deal' and so on and so on. I literally had to become a different person for five minutes or i'd have went mental. Fortunately, this discussion didn't quite reach the length of the 'You've put English, but you're British' argument that a customs officer had with my Dad in Florida and I was soon through immigration to be greeted by Alfie and then on the bus into the city.
I'd been up for the best part of 24 hours by the time i got to Alfie's rather nice apartment, so didn't do much on the Thursday evening.  We had bit of a walk round the city and grabbed some rather ace Fish & Chips, but saved the proper tour for the next day.
The city itself is pretty amazing and instantly loveable, it takes the best bits of England but gets rid of all the crap. No charvers, no dirty high rise buildings looming over constantly, no overcrowding and just an abundance of really cool shops, restaurants and bars on every street. All in walking distance too. You really could just live on one street it's that good. I've not had the chance to pop into most of the places but Analogue Gallery will take some beating, I literally wanted to buy every single thing in there. We set off out around 11 and were lucky to stumble across the remembrance service and fly over at the City Hall building, t'was done very respectfully and the gathering crowd even heartily sang the Canadian National Anthem at the end. After a walk around the City we stopped off for some highly recommended Chinese Dumplings at Mother Dumplings, this again was a first for me and it was absolutely incredible, and reasonably priced too. Definitely worth hunting out if you're . I still can't use chopsticks though.

Alfie had a 6-aside match on the evening in a really cool soccer dome, it was basically two astro turf pitches with a huge inflatable dome over it, given it an outdoor effect but still sheltered from the harsh weather of winter here. It even had a large scoreboard and miltant referee with ridiculous ponytail for exra authenticity too. The match finished 2-2, and as usual, the place was full of Irish. They really can't be many people left in that country, you can't go anywhere without meeting a squadron of them. We got a lift off a Canadian back and it was yet another first for me in that nobody prior had ever attempted to shake my hand without actually looking at me. He ended up slapping my wrist as clearly I wasn't cool enough to know what the fuck he was doing and it turned into a massive fail. Very English

Katie was back from Minneapolis on our return to the flat, complete with two ridiculous 1500 calorie biscuits, we decided it was best to tackle these beasts when drunk and as per the rules of staying with the Atkinson's - I had to watch the latest reality phenomenon. At least X factor US has people who can actually sing though and in Astro, probably the coolest kid in the world. The boy has skills.
We headed off to wach the England game on the Saturday in yet another brilliant place called the Queen and Beaver, very English decor but quiet and some top notch nostalgic memorabilia including some amazing Football Mundial models. Oh and once again, amazing food too. Alfie had his 'Football Awards' dinner on the night, so we went along to meet the rest of the team at the Real Sports Bar. He'd mentioned it a lot in talking and it certainly didn't disappoint. A huge place with about 100 HD TV screens all over, even in the toilets, showing different sports and the largest HD screen in North America as the centrepiece. Amazing. I could easily never leave the place on a weekend.
The dinner itself was held on a ferry, it pretty much kept going round the lake in a circle, but the view of the City, Rogers Centre and CN Tower was still pretty ethereal, even if it was just going round and round. Once again, plenty of Irish there, with everyone taking the event more seriously than anything I do in my own life, but it was all good harmless fun and Alfie's teammates were all good craic. The presentations even came with medals and trophies, this amused me endlessly but it really was a good laugh. There was a short 'casino' on afterward and since neither me nor Alfie have any interest in these things we decided to just pass our chips onto James, who had previously decreed 'i'm a lucky bastard and will probably win'; he managed to convince the table to go all in on the last hand and that's exactly just what happened. From there we headed off to a bar to watch the Pacquiao- Marquez fight, unfortunately the first bar absolutely stunk of puke but the great thing about here is that there's always another one next door so we weren't walking about too long. I thought the fight was a draw, for what it's worth. T'was a rather good night indeed.
Sunday was a purely lazy day, having spent the best part of 14 hours drinking on the Saturday I was too wrecked to do anything of great note, but I did tag along to witness Alfie and Katie rock climbing at the again rather impressive Joe Rockheads. I had zero faith in my ability to climb even the baby walls, so limited my own involvement to a strictly observational role, plus i don't think my massive feet are made for such nimble things, but Alfie and Katie both were very good, quickly scaling up the various climbing walls. The two of them claim to be naturally brilliant climbers so it's just as well, it all looks bloody knackering to me mind.

All in all my first impressions of Toronto are incredibly high and I don't think i could say enough good things to be honest. I definitely could live here.

Song for the Day - The Coolest kid in the World