We decided to end our stay in Toronto with a traditional Canadian meal. So we took the subway down to Chinatown.

There were a thousand Chinese restaurants within a few blocks and we didn’t know one from another, so we came up with a brilliant plan — we stopped at the only non-Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood and asked the host to recommend his favorite Chinese dining spot. He pointed across the street to Best of China.

I was a bit leery because there’s a donut shop in the town in which we live that is called Best Donuts. One would think that after a lifetime in advertising I would have become innured to the power of suggestion, but, no, I’m just as big a sucker as anyone else. I drove by Best Donuts every day on my way to the gym and thought, “Damn, those donuts must be good if they’re willing to name the place Best Donuts.” Finally, Jamie was out of town one day and I found myself unable to resist the sweet, sweet siren call of Best Donuts. I stopped in and ordered one glazed twist and one white cake with chocolate icing.

I was drooling before I got them back out to my car. Oh, how I looked forward to biting into the smooth, velvety goodness of the best donuts EVER. I had beaten myself up pyschologically for so long by denying myself the pleasure of these gastronomic delights.

But, alas, I was disappointed. Sorely disappointed. Those donuts were not the best I’d ever tasted. Don’t get me wrong because I’m not saying they were bad. Hardly. They were average, maybe even better than average. BUT THEY WERE NOT THE BEST DONUTS.

In advertising, we’re taught not to overpromise. We learn that the fastest way to kill a bad product is to do good advertising for it. Good advertising will drive customers to try the product and when they are disappointed by it, they will not buy it again. Neither will their friends. Before long, no one will buy it and the product’s failure can be laid directly at the feet of good advertising that overpromised and a bad product that underdelivered.

But back to Toronto’s Chinatown where Jamie and I are standing on the street looking at the menu posted in the front window of the Best of China restaurant and all I can think of is Best Donuts and wonder if I will really experience the best Chinese food if I step inside or if I will again be disappointed.

Jamie finally said, “What the hell. Why not?” With that decisive statement, we walked in and a middle-aged Chinese woman waved her hand dismissively, indicating that we could sit anywhere we wanted in the nearly empty restaurant. We chose a table near the front window and I moved one chair so that we could sit side-by-side and watch the passing parade out the front window.

The same Chinese woman eventually brought us menus. She did not seem happy that I had moved the chair.

Jamie and I continued to pore over the menus and we had a couple questions before ordering.

Jim: What’s in the General Tao Chicken?
Waitress: (Loud and angry) Chicken!
Jim: Yes, well, I assume there’s chicken in the General Tao chicken. But what else is in it?
Waitress: (Louder and angrier) Look at picture!
Jim: (Looks at photo on menu, which reveals nothing except that the General Tao Chicken is red) Very pretty. But what’s in it?
Waitress: (Even louder and even angrier) It got sauce! Very spicy sauce!
Jim: In that case, we’ll take the sweet and sour chicken.
Waitress: (walks off muttering in Chinese) Stupid Americans don’t know General Tao Chicken contain chicken!

We don’t speak Chinese, so we can’t swear that those were her exact words, but we suspect they’re pretty close.

When the waitress came back with our Crunchy Shrimp Spring Roll appetizer, she tossed it angrily onto the table, spit out the words, “Yummy, yummy!” and walked away.

A few minutes later when she returned with our Sweet and Sour Chicken and Supreme Fried Rice, I made a point of asking her name and making introductions and then asking if I could take a photo of her with the food.

Mae did a 180 fast enough to give herself whiplash, and became the sweetest little woman ever. A huge smile spread across her face and she sat down and posed with Jamie and our lunch. Then she insisted that I sit down with Jamie while she took photos of us.

The sweet and sour chicken was excellent. And it turns out that the sour waitress was pretty sweet, too.

The only problem was that Jamie and I must have taken each other’s fortune cookies by mistake.

Her fortune said, “Others appreciate your good sense of humor.” Mine said, “You tend to be contemplative and analytical by nature.”

In the end, I cannot honestly say that Best of China offered the best Chinese food I’ve ever tasted. But for reasons I can neither understand nor explain, I loved Best of China as much as I was disappointed in Best Donuts.

The CN Tower is, as far as we can tell, the pride of Canada. Oh, sure, the folks in Vancouver are proud of their little tower, but it’s a mere 553 feet high. Everyone else in Canada says, “Oh, if you’re in Toronto, you must go to the top of the CN Tower.”

That’s my right index finger pointing to the 1815 foot tall tower. And due to my irrational fear of heights, that’s the closest we’ll be getting to it.

Wikipedia says, “In 1995, the CN Tower was declared one of the modern Seven Wonders of the World by the American Society of Civil Engineers. It also belongs to the World Federation of Great Towers, where it holds second-place ranking.”

Imagine that. Who even knew there was a World Federation of Great Towers? I wonder if there’s a World Federation of Mediocre Towers.

The CN Tower’s observation deck is so high that while standing on it, you can see all the way across Lake Ontario to Rochester, New York. I have been to Rochester, and you may take my word for it, it looks better from 100 miles away.

The floor of the observation deck is made of glass. Let me repeat that for those of you who, like me, are afraid of heights. 1122 feet above the street is an observation deck with a glass floor, where you can look straight down into the depths of hell. At least that’s what it would feel like to me.

Why didn’t I attempt to conquor my fear and go up to the Tower? Consider it the height of cowardice.

What’s not to love? The scenery is spectacular. The people are almost as friendly as those in McKinney, Texas (although they do not wave at strangers and say, “Hi, y’all” like McKinney-ites). The cities are clean. The skies are blue. And the weather is fabulous (it climbed to 85 degrees today and the Canadians are all sweating and complaining, but Jamie and I keep saying it’s like a lovely Spring day in McKinney).

This photo says it all. If Canada was a woman, I’d ask her out, whisper sweet nothings in her ear, spend the night with her, and do the walk of shame the next day. After all, we’re moving on to Iceland.

We love it when readers leave comments on our articles. They are often funny and insightful and just plain interesting.

But then there are the very strange spam comments we get. Hundreds of them each day. You never see them because I have the blog set up so that I have to approve all comments. Otherwise, JimandJamie.com would be overwhelmed with these nonsense comments.

The odd thing is, I don’t understand the purpose of the spam comments. I could understand if the spam tried to get readers to click over to another site, but most of our spam comments don’t do that. There are often no links to other sites, and many times no other sites are even mentioned. Most of it is clearly written by non-English speakers.

I don’t have another story to post tonight, so I’m going to show you some of the odder ones:

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See?

Other than the comment about the amazing writing, none of it makes sense.

The good news? The scenery is spectacular between Vancouver and Toronto. The bad news? It’s virtually impossible to capture any of it from a speeding train. In other words, I grabbed all these images off the internet.

The train enters the Rockies almost as soon as it leaves the station in Vancouver.

Canada’s the same size as the United States — more or less — but has only 35 million people. By way of comparison, California has 38 million and Texas has 27 million. Other than passing through a few large cities (Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Saskatoon), the train courses through a few small towns, villages really, each day.

Whole lot o’ rivers out here. And that means a whole lot of bridges. I’m always amazed when I see structures like this out in the middle of nowhere.

All of a sudden you realize the mountains have been left behind and replaced by millions of acres of wheat fields.

Have you ever heard of the Canadian Shield? We hadn’t. Apparently, the province of Ontario is covered by a thick layer of rock and very little top soil. That means the forest thins out, but the landscape is dotted with thousands of reflective lakes.

What we looked like when we arrived in Toronto.

What we looked like when we arrived in Beijing.

This train trip had a bit of an inauspicious beginning with the missing bed fiasco, but all has turned out well. Really well.

After we got settled in, a steward came by our cabin and invited us to the observation car for champagne and canapés. Really. Champagne and canapés aboard a train. This, we thought, may actually live up to the hype.

It also prompted us to begin thinking about the differences in service between the Canadian Pacific train and the Trans-Siberian Express. They couldn’t be more stark despite the fact that First Class tickets on the two trains were roughly equivalent in price.

The Canadian dining car – Oh, my god. Crisp, clean tablecloths changed between each service. Fine china. Silverware. A truly delicious selection of meals. Service at your table. “Would you care for anything else, sir?” And daily breakfast, lunch and dinner are included in the price of our First Class tickets.
The Russian dining car – We were expecting finery fit for a czar. What we got instead was formica from my parents’ 1950s kitchen and a matching menu. Not to mention plastic plates and aluminum eating utensils that looked like they had been used to tunnel out of a gulag. And, of course, ZERO meals were included in the price of the tickets.

Canadian food – For dinner tonight, I had roasted duck and Jamie had glazed salmon. Three meals a day and every one a gourmet delight. We may gain five pounds before we reach Toronto.
Russian food – On our first morning I ordered oatmeal. The surly Russian woman who served as cook, waitress and cashier would not allow me to have it because it was reserved for children. I pointed out that there were no children on the train, but she didn’t care. I then tried to order yogurt, but she said that was impossible because it had not been delivered before the train left Moscow. To make matters worse, she looked like Nikita Khrushchev and was even more bellicose.

Canadian service – Incredible. If you want it, they’ll bring it to you. A friendly server passes through the observation car with platters of canapés. Another passes through with your choice of champagne or apple juice. They’re all wearing crisp, clean uniforms and big, broad smiles.
Russian service – The closest the staff came to service when they point to their watches and grunted out a gruff, “Get on train” when it was time to leave a station.

The Canadian cabin – We have a sink with hot and cold running water. A three-way mirror. An in-cabin water closet. Multiple electrical sockets. A bed with a real, 6-inch thick mattress. Soft sheets. Soft, warm, comfortable blankets. A fan.
The Russian cabin – Cramped. No sink. No toilet. No power outlet. Two fold-down beds with about an inch of foam rubber for a mattress. We each got one scratchy blanket. But as a special bonus, the Russians provided a television set that didn’t work.

The Canadian “facilities” – Not only does our cabin have hot and cold running water and a toilet, but a full shower is located right outside our door. Sure, it’s shared between all the guests in our car, but that’s a small enough sacrifice to make in return for being squeaky clean every day.
The Russian “facilities” – Hahahahahahahaha, that’s a good one. Our cabin had no toilet, no hot water, no cold water, and no sink. There was one communal toilet down at the end of our car, but no shower. Let me repeat that in case you didn’t get it the first time: No shower. During the seven nights it took to get from Moscow to Beijing, we were somehow transformed from looking like a prosperous 21st century couple into immigrants at Ellis Island.

Information aboard the Canadian train – First thing we found in our Canadian Pacific cabin: A little map with a bit of information on each stop we’ll be making. As I’m writing this a pleasant female voice just announced that we were pulling off on a siding to allow a freight train to pass and that if we looked out to our right we would see Pyramid Falls. The train even slowed down and crawled past the falls so everyone could take photos.
Information aboard the Russian train – We groused that no information was available aboard the Russian train. How difficult would it have been to print up a little map with a bit of information about each stop? Or each point of interest? There was nothing. Nor were there any announcements except for the names of each station just before our arrival. The train spent hours clanking its way around Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest fresh water lake, but no mention was made of it.

Entertainment aboard the Canadian train – There’s a reason the train has a special car referred to as “the entertainment car”. It’s because they have actual entertainers aboard. Today we had a singer and guitar player who actually weren’t too bad. They also show nightly movies.
Entertainment aboard the Russian train – Sit in your cabin and wait until the next station, where you get to mill around on the platform waiting for the signal to reboard. Or you can stare at the inoperable television in hopes that it will miraculously spring back to life and pick up a signal from some distant Siberian TV station. Good luck with that. Hope you brought an iPad full of books, because seven days and nights is a long time.

The staff aboard the Canadian train – Pleasant. Personable. Helpful. Respectful. Often hilarious. Everything you could ever want.
The staff aboard the Russian train – When the train gets to the Chinese border, the Russian crew is replaced by a Chinese crew, which leaves the Russians with nothing to do for the next two days. Throughout our last night on the train, the Russian crew partied in an empty cabin two doors down from ours. They screamed. They yelled. They laughed at the top of their lungs. They were clearly drunk. And I’m not exaggerating when I say throughout the night. I’m a pretty easy going guy, and I put up with it until two in the morning. Then I put on my pants, walked into that cabin and screamed, “Shut up. Be quiet. Go away.” and I motioned to them to leave. They didn’t. They continued their party with no regard nor consideration for the paying passengers.

Socializing aboard the Canadian train – There are multiple observation cars where sophisticated bon vivants (like us) from around the world chat with each other. This morning I spent an hour talking to the guide of a Smithsonian Institute tour group. Our dining companion at breakfast was a Chinese Phd candidate studying business and engineering at Cambridge (hi, Shin). At lunch (and several other meals) it was a Toronto attorney and his marketing executive wife (hi, Peter and Jane). At dinner it was two young Chinese girls studying business in Vancouver (hi, Ivy and Allison). We also dined a with the Chair of the Business School at the University of Western Australia and his wife, an international business consultant (hi, Dave and Patricia). By the way, guys, please let me know if I got any of your titles or job descriptions wrong.
Socializing aboard the Russian train – As the Russians say, “Nyet” (no). There was no observation car, no activities car, no entertainment car. That means everyone was basically restricted to sitting all day in their cabins or standing in the aisle. We did meet a delightful German couple (Hi, Lars and Denise) with whom we socialized on the platform at every stop and a young Russian couple who took us to lunch at one extended stop. But that was it. Most of the Russian passengers seemed content to sit in their cabins with the doors closed all day every day. (It should be noted that Lars and Denise, our German friends, conceived their son during this trip, so they were apparently more social than most aboard the Russian train.)

We’d barely been on the Canadian Pacific train for 24 hours when we started making plans to come back and do it again.

When we finished the Trans-Siberian train we agreed that it was a once in a lifetime experience. And that wasn’t meant as a compliment.

We bought First Class tickets on ViaRail’s Canadian Pacific train between Vancouver and Toronto. It looked spectacular (or “Spak-tacular” if you’re our friends Don and Jennifer Spak) online, but we’ve been fooled before.

Our trip two years ago across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Express was also supposed to be first class. We didn’t know that the Russian definition of First Class is something similar to the conditions Ben-Hur experienced below deck on the Roman battle cruiser.

I won’t bother you with recounting those stories from the Russian trip, but if you’re interested you can find them here and here and here and here and here and here. Suffice it to say that Jamie may never forgive me for taking her on that trip. We always say, “It was a once in a lifetime trip.” And when we say that we mean we’ll never do it again.

When we got to our First Class cabin here in Vancouver, Jamie immediately looked around the small room (shown above) and suffered a minor meltdown.

“Where are the beds? First class was supposed to include beds. Are we in the wrong cabin? Are you sure you got First Class seats? Where are the beds. I don’t see any beds. We’re going to be on this train four nights. I want beds. Where are the beds?”

(I just asked her to read the preceding paragraph. She said, “That not what happened.” But she looked very guilty while saying it.)

I must admit that I was also a bit nervous. Instead of beds the room had just two padded seats that were not attached to the floor. You could slide them around on the floor into any position. Definitely not OSHA-approved.

“I hope those aren’t the beds,” she continued. “I can’t sleep on those for four nights. I need beds. Where are the beds?”

“Calm down,” I responded. “I’m pretty sure the beds must somehow fold down out of the wall. Or the ceiling. Or something.”

Turns out this same conversation was going on in the next cabin. When we stepped out into the hallway, the woman next door, right on the edge of panic, looked at us and said, “Have you found your beds? Where are the beds? Have you figured out how to open them up? We can’t find the beds.”

Diversion alert! This story will continue after a brief pause for a back story.

Many years ago I was cursed with a troublesome raccoon. I guess all raccoons are supposed to be troublesome, but this one was tearing up my landscaping and carrying off anything in my backyard that wasn’t tied down.

One night I had a brilliant idea. I borrowed a large cat carrier from my next door neighbor and put some cat food in it. As soon as I saw the raccoon go into the cage and begin eating, I slammed the door shut and covered the cage with a beach towel. My theory was that the raccoon would go to sleep in the darkened cage and the next morning I would put the cage in my car, drive to a nearby national forest and release the raccoon into the wild, where I reasoned, he would be much happier than he was in my backyard.

All worked according to plan until the next morning. When I went out to get the cage I discovered that the raccoon had absolutely shredded the beach towel. He had frantically pulled pieces of the towel into the cage through air vents. Pieces of the towel were sticking out everywhere.

Don’t get me wrong. The raccoon was fine. In fact, he was sitting back looking fat and happy and pretty damn proud of his destructive handiwork.

The story has a happy ending for the raccoon, if not for my beach towel. I drove the little bugger out to the national forest where I’m pretty sure he found a lovely lady raccoon, settled down in a hollow tree trunk, and raised a passel of little raccoons.

Either that or he was eaten by a coyote.

But that is neither here nor there.

Now let’s return to the Canadian Pacific train.

Our neighbors in the next cabin, like us, did not know where their beds were. But the man had apparently begun freaking out like Jamie. He had discovered a couple small corners of a sheet poking out from what he assumed was the bed hidden in a wall. He had pulled and tugged on those exposed portions of that sheet until it reminded me of what the raccoon had done to my beach towel.

But while the raccoon had looked pleased with his destruction, our next door neighbor just looked embarrassed.

The story has a happy ending.

We went to the observation car for a few minutes and when we returned two beds had magically appeared in our cabin. We’re not quite sure where they came from nor where they’ll go, but we don’t care because we have beds. Beds with lovely sheets, comfortable mattresses, and cushy pillows. Jamie couldn’t have been happier.

No telling if the guy next door can say the same.

We had so much fun on Granville Island on our first night in town that we decided to go back to check it out in the light of day. Of course, it takes another ride on the Aqua Bus to get there.

I couldn’t to begin to list all the cities in which Jamie has said, “Oh, look. They have a farmers market. Let’s go.” She was ecstatic to discover that Granville Island’s farmers market is open seven days a week. Be forewarned — later in this trip we will post photos of Jamie at Adelaide, South Australia’s huge market and the Barossa Valley’s tiny market. I don’t quite share her enthusiasm for the markets, but I usually go along to get a cinnamon roll or croissant. To each his own.

Jamie saw these houseboats and said, “Ooh, let’s move to Vancouver and live in a houseboat.” A few minutes later the pilot of the Aqua Bus mentioned that Vancouver’s average yearly temperature is 40 degrees Fahrenheit. She quickly said, “Hmmmm. It would probably be even colder than that on a houseboat, wouldn’t it?” I think we can now safely forget the concept of living in a houseboat.

Sometimes we think that Vancouver reminds us of Sydney, but the size and scale are so much more livable than the Aussie city.

You may not hear from us for the next few days. We board the Canadian Pacific tonight at 8:30 for a four-night rail trip to Toronto. The train doesn’t have internet so in theory I will only be able to post stories and photos when we’re stopped at a station. Let’s see how that works.

I don’t think our plane had left the runway when I got this photo of our next door neighbor Julia in our swimming pool. You just can’t trust kids these days.

 

And another thing: Hey, Rico, stop joyriding in our car. I told you it isn’t insured for street use while we’re gone, damn it!