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With guest appearance of Maria Wiberg in yellow.
 Maria and I stopped in at the library for a check of
our e-mails, then we walked over to the lake. We rented a canoe. This was my very first
time canoeing. Maria got in first and when I stepped in I felt the canoe dip down in the
water as I settled in. I was a little nervous, but I felt better knowing that Maria had
done this before. She sat in the back of the boat. We set off, paddling. Maria showed me how to hold the paddle.
It didn't take much
instruction, she got the hang of it immediately.
The scenery was beautiful, it was unfortunate that there were landscapers at one park
along the way, their noise was a little disruptive. We kept paddling past them, passing
under a few bridges. I thought the bridge was so low I said to Maria "Are you sure
we're gonna fit under here?" She laughed, I had to duck down a little. We saw a lot
of ducks and we had some excitement on the river when we came across a family of swans. We
got a little too close and one of the swans hissed at us. I was sure it was going to
attack us, fortunately we had our paddles! We carefully rowed way, making a getaway.
We
were able to row up to an old rail road bridge then we had to turn around. On the way back
we would paddle then stop for a few moments and then start paddling again. Going
up river, against the current is always the hardest. Well we came up
to a bridge and as we were passing I had stopped rowing, I figured the current would carry
us underneath it. Maria yelled "Don't stop!" we ended up hitting the bridge.
Boy did we ever, the whole canoe swung around when she stopped. We
had to turn around and go back under, this time I kept on paddling until we were safely
past the bridge. We did get close to shore at one point and two guys asked us for a ride,
too bad there was no room in the canoe for them.
 We did have to work a little harder to get back to
the canoe rental area. A wind had whipped up and was blowing against us. We finally did
make it back, safely. We discovered that Laura had been concerned about us, she had the
guy at the rental place ask a ferry if they had seen us and then he also drove up the
river and spotted us. There was a moment or two there when I wondered if
we would make it back in time, we only had an hour, that was some impressive paddling we did there.
After the canoe ride we went back to the B&B to
get ready for the evening's performance of Three Musketeers at 8pm.
Maria had found out that two Scott Wentworth fans
were in town and we arranged to have dinner with them. They had seen several plays while
in town. It turned out we were all seeing the same play that evening, in fact they were
sitting right in front of us. That's some freaky coincidence, eh?
THREE MUSKETEERS This play was so much fun, Kate
Trotter played Milady de Winter. She played such an evil character, she had
this wicked laugh
that sent shivers down your spine. D'Artagnan was played by an actor I had never seen
before. His name is Graham Abbey, he played the role with wonderful playful wit.He
sure made an impression on you, Linda, hehe.
There were plenty of swordfights and one scene that
caught my eye was the bedroom scene between Kate and Graham, they were in bed together. He
had no shirt on and Kate was smoking a cigarette.
Later in the action Kate's character is caught by
the three musketeers, she tries to fight them off. She's wearing leather and has two whips
in her hands, she really knows how to handle those whips.
This is one play I could see again.
 Today we went to see the matinee performance of
Hamlet, starring Paul Gross as Hamlet. Paul used to star in Due South TV show. The play
was three and a half hours long. Paul did a great job as Hamlet. There was a sword duel
and Paul portrayed Hamlet so well, he brought a lot of the tragedy and even put some humor
into the role.
 Afterwards we went to the stage door to wait for
Paul Gross to come out. He looked so good, he had on some sunglasses. He stopped and
graciously signed autographs and posed for pictures. Maria was so excited to meet him she
was shaking a little. She had her picture taken with him. I
believe I remember I wasn't the only one shaking. I am amazed this picture
turned out as good as it did, hehe.
  After the play we left Stratford for Toronto. Maria
was driving and as we got closer to the city the highway (401) got bigger, it turned into
a 16 lane highway. Maria was shocked to see such a big road. Laura and I were a bit
surprised too. I'd never seen a roadway so big. When we got to Toronto we spotted the CN
tower Laura took some pics of it. Then we got off the hwy at the Spadina exit and went
North straight through Chinatown. We spotted Caine's Kwoon. We kept going until we arrived
at the Casa Loma Inn, our home in Toronto for the next couple of days. We spent the night
relaxing, Laura put on some TV and Maria got online. I sat and watched some TV and also
went online for a bit, then we turned in.
 We slept in late this morning, then we went out for
brunch at a coffee bar. We have a kitchen in our room, so we went shopping for breakfast.
After breakfast we decided to go to Chinatown, we bought a day pass for $7 which would
allow us to ride the trams or subways all day for one price. We had trouble getting off at
one of the stations, the doors closed right on Laura when she wanted to get off. You have
to be ready to get off, you can't dawdle. A
commuter's nightmare! With all those people I'm amazed we got off at all.
 We spotted so many areas where fu was
filmed without even looking at the two fu location lists we had brought. We saw Wolf's alley.
YES, I did remember how to find it
without looking at the map or the locations lists. I know how to find my
Wolfie, hehe. We took pictures of the alley
and the sewer grill where Caine dumps the grenade down.  That
is one pics that my family did NOT understand. "Why did you take a pic
of a sewer drain?" they asked. I just smiled, they'll never understand
the excitement of location hunting. And the revelation that it was different
from the episode made me NEED a pic of a sewer drain. Hmnm, wonder if that
urge will come again, hehe?
 We saw the alley where Caine
collapsed in Initiation and Caine's kwoon. We stopped to eat lunch at one of the Chinese
restaurants in Chinatown. I was on a quest to find a Jade Buddha, but I couldn't find one
made of jade so I bought one made of a reddish wood.
 We went back to the B&B and changed and headed
for the harbour front to see the fireworks. July 1st is Canada Day. We took a subway to a
tram and took that down to the water. The fireworks were beautiful. It was a shame that we
couldn't get closer, there were some trees in the way. We were able to see the bigger
fireworks. The fireworks started at 10:30 and they lasted half an hour. Afterwards we left
the harbour and walked towards the skydome. We stopped at Planet Hollywood at the base of
the CN tower. We had to wait a while to get seated. On the walls of the restaurant were
screens that showed all kinds of movie clips. It was a good way to pass the time while
waiting for your food. First
restaurant I've been to where the decor competes with your company for your
attention, and almost win.
I had a turkey club, which was pretty good. Laura
had a penne pasta dish, that had a little spice to it. Maria had a Thai chicken she said
was not spicy enough. Did you ever
hear me complain that was too spicey?
We went on a tram to get home. We arrived back at
our inn at 2am.
  Today we ventured to Casa Loma, a huge castle high
on a hill overlooking Toronto. Many episodes of Fu were filmed there. So
were also Forever Knight, X-men, and I'm sure lots of other shows. A
very impressive building.
   We saw the
library where Enter the Tiger was filmed, the stables used in Illusion, areas that were
used in Tournament and the dark tunnels and hallways and stairways that were used in
Brotherhood of the Bell.
It was a lot of fun being able to visit these fu
sites and try to imagine what it was like when they filmed the episodes. Where the cameras
were set up to shoot each scenes.Even
if this had not been a location on our list, it would have been a
great place to visit.
 After Casa Loma we headed South on Spadina then
weaved our way down the side streets of Chinatown towards the CN tower.
On the way, we decided to try looking for the Ancient's house,
the fu sites lists had two different streets listed. I took pics of both houses. I think I
got a picture of the right house. Good
thing we had a map for this, you do NOT want to try finding the right way
through the one way streets of Chinatown without one! And even with a map we
had to circle the blocks several times before we got to the right number.
"Down Huron, left on Baldwin, down Beverly, right on Darcy, ops, we
don't get to the numbers we need, up Huron, left on Baldwin, down Beverly,
right on Dundas, up Spadina, right back onto the right part of
Darcy...confusing? OH YEAH!
 We finally parked the car and headed to the CN
tower. You can spot this landmark very easily, it is the world's tallest tower.
We had to wait on a long line for about an hour
before a glass elevator took us up to the top. The trip took 58 seconds. We reached the
lookout area, the views from up there are spectacular. I hadn't been that high up since
Maria and I were up in the Empire State building and we couldn't see much of anything
cause it became foggy at the top. This
was higher, Linda, or it wouldn't have been the worlds highest, hehe.
  The CN tower has a glass floor area, panels of glass
you can stand on and look straight down to the ground. It was wild to stand on it. You
can't be afraid of heights when you do that. I laid down on the glass floor and Maria took
a picture of me.
 We took another elevator up to the sky pod, aka the
observation deck. Up here you could see an even better view. I spotted Spadina (Chinatown)
and looked out over the water, I took pictures of the skydome and spotted Peter's
apartment building!
 We went back down to the lookout area and had dinner
in one of the restaurants, we had a window seat and could see the sun setting.
We visited the gift shop on the ground floor and
then headed home for some CP TV! The Waiting Game was on at 9pm and we got home in time to
see Adrian.
Maria went online and I also checked my e-mail on
the laptop. I asked her about something on the computer and she fell off her chair. We all
started laughing, once we found out she had not been hurt. The
chair just slipped out from under me, and I ended up in a surprised heap on
the floor. Made me laugh so hard I couldn't get a word out for over a minute
to calm their worried faces. Talk about being floored by a question, hehe
  
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