248 mi, 4:21 hrs
Crossing into Canada at Sarnia
We had been concerned about crossing the border—that there might be a long wait or a lot of questions—but it was quite routine, like paying a toll.
The first thing we did after entering Canada at the town of Sarnia was to seek out a store where we could change out the sim card on the iPad for one that would enable us to get a data plan for Canada so that we could continue to use the mapping application. Dan had researched a Bell System store from home, and even confirmed with a sales person on the phone that it would be possible to do this. The desk clerk at our Hotel in Flint had printed Google maps of Sarnia, and we found the shopping mall and the store easily enough. The sales person was in the midst of making the charge, filling out the form on the computer, when she asked us for our Canadian ID. Huh? You can't get a data plan in Canada without Canadian ID. Dan spent a half hour talking on the store phone to their management; I asked at a competitor's store. No system will sell you a data plan for your iPad because "we can't send bills outside the country." Huh?
As we continued on our way, with nothing much to look at on a gray day but the familiar corn fields interrupted by strips of trees, Dan and I obsessed over the irrationality of the whole deal. You can pay for a hotel or a car rental with a VISA card without having to have a Canadian ID, but you can't get a sim card.
So the driving went along okay until about Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto, where the freeway was jammed and moved slowly. After that we got a little break, but near the airport traffic slowed to a crawl. After about 45 minutes of this, a highway sign warned of slow traffic ahead. I began looking for alternate routes. The mapping app on the iPad still shows the map and, very important, the little blue ball that shows our location is still following our movements. With that I guided Dan down to a parallel state highway, Bloor Street, which is not a highway but a stop and go street that we drove for at least an hour. The advantage was that it gave a close-up look at many neighborhoods of Toronto. It was like a long boulevard in Brooklyn or Los Angeles, most of the way lined with tacky little businesses, that will someday be gentrified into sterile strip malls. The street was jammed with cars as well as pedestrians and bicyclists who wandered across the street wherever they chose. Dan enjoyed the ever-changing and sometimes amazing scene despite the tedious stop and go.
Although it is a Best Western, our hotel is a high-rise building on a high-traffic street, and the elevator is slow, so the process of parking and getting our copious baggage upstairs was a little tense and confusing. Our 18th floor room is really a luxury deal. Dan decided to pay extra for a room with a view, and what a view: the CN Tower, high-rise apartment buildings, glass tower office buildings, and on the horizon beyond, a silver band that looks like the ocean but is actually Lake Ontario.
The hotel restaurant looked trendy and expensive, so Dan went out exploring the neighborhood. Our location is very metropolitan, like Manhattan. A few doors down was a Greek place, several steps below street level, where he got a meal that was simple and cheap. I made a separate exploration and discovered a lovely park, called Allen Gardens, where people were walking their dogs in the evening light. I passed a Starbucks that I planned to patronize the following morning, and then found a huge supermarket called Loblaws that had an incredible array of fresh fruit and raw veggies, cut up and packaged in individual portions; I picked up a snack and took it back to the hotel.
