blogil

Just a pre Toronto update

Today Manchester united was playing against Inter and I was on the treadmill the whole game running nonstop, and reaching 7Miles (11.2K)!!!!:)!!!!! Making this my new personal best ever, passing the half way point on the race preparations (though still only indoors). Manchester winning was a great bonus for the evening.

I spent my evening with busy fundraising and arranging hikes

Today I approached Manchester united football club, another Jewish federation, I have the number of the JCC manager for tomorrow, my linked in contacts and the entire hitzig family (my grandma’s family)

16% raised so far but still to slow and too far behind since I didn’t raise 1 cent from any stranger. More updates on that soon.

So back to Toronto

after the shoe museum we went to the Toronto museum- we had about 2 hours so we hurried in and were told we had to check in our bags and coat. Bags are free, but coats are 1$ - so like good tourists we put the coat in the bag and hand it in. didn’t work, they still wanted the $. So we went in and headed for the 4^th floor (here a floor is a floor, as our feet told us later), directly to the Egyptian exhibition, where they had a display of the book of the Dead.

The true story is that they had it from 90 years ago, bought by the museum founder close to a century ago, then placed in the store rooms again. Imagine- after being hidden for 3500 years, they hide it again, by mistake of course- so they restored the old papyrus and placed it on display.

And now I am more aware of old Egyptian gods, with the correct names and appearance – and I gladly noticed a demigod I had no idea existed.

This is Ammit demonstrating how to place 2 coins of the boat man on the way to the other side

This is Amit in human form

and this is the demigod Ammit with a humble servant

Below is the translation from the book of the dead on the newly found god

For those of you who do not know the human form of Amit – he is one of the original blogilisters and a very good friend- who will accompany me this summer in Alaska J

So- we read the book of the dead- which is basically a set of scrolls to guide them on how to handle the dead, how to pray to avoid the soul from going to the wrong place, how the souls is being judge, introduction of the gods and other such death related subject. The Egyptian called it the book of the living, or something- since the living used it- the dead could not for some reason.

We breezed through the Cyprus period and the Ukrainian display and continue with the Egyptians- and see lots of interesting ancient jewelry , scarabs and mummies- these mummies also don’t jump at us, but they look real- so creepy photos attached.

The middle eastern display is such a cliché- full of weapons- is this the CNN sponsored display? No wonder they all think we are just fighting- we do other stuff like… wait, we have election twice a year-which is another form of fighting, or haggle(another form) or swear at the players of the other team, the players from our team, the current coach, the previous coach, and the one that will come tomorrow, and of course the judges - also fighting – oh yes we grow great fruit- unless you count biological pesticides as fighting…- lucky there are demi gods the handle this.

From there we saw some glorious butterflies and bugs and headed for the nature of diamonds display- which was more of an info on diamonds then actual diamonds, which was very interesting. They also had under a very big vault – the world 3^rd largest diamond ever found. We found ourselves checking the security measures and noticing other would be thieves doing the same.

The day did not end at that- we went to the main attraction of the day- “we will rock you” the musical by queen- which was o.k but the songs were great.

After the show, we went hungrily to find food and all we found was another place the serves Shawarma, actually…. There were other places, but I have a shawarma crave for the last month. This place didn’t have photos of Jordan, but the shawarma was better- or was I hungrier?

We walked back after a long day- and accidently passed by some nice looking place, and stopped since they had a rest room. The place looked good and we stayed and had that great big shake, banana split and a mai tai. We split the banana split but the “killer” shake was too much, so I had the rest for breakfast.

So after this very interesting and dietetic day , it was time to tell Toronto good night

Some cities I dislike right away like detrotoilate Budapest or Venice (yes I didn’t enjoy Venice very much), and others I like right away (Amsterdam, Prague, san Marino, asisi , Verona , san diego) I don’t know exactly why , Budapest and Prague look generally the same, yet one is charming and the other is Budapest. Toronto was on the like side.

It is the same as any other US major city , just nicer- could it be the fact that temperatures are in Celsius? The traffic light are on the sides as they should and not on wires in the middle? The speed is in kilometers?, they have lots of good Shwarma? The city is open at night? And when you want to turn left, all the roads will lead to the right(just like tel aviv), they say baataa and not baita – I guess it’s the best of a US city with Israeli features. So Toronto is still on the road map- we will probably go there again in the summer- and maybe stay for more than 1 day, we have not even begun to explore it.

The Toronto chapter ends and it’s time to say goodbye

We left the castle and made our way to the shoe museum with a stop at an espresso bar (kind of like Aroma) and we split a burger and a Crepe.

Is saw a huge shoe by the window so I had to get an appropriate photo next to it

Than some oooohhhh tourist (you know, a local Canadian) offered to take our photo

Alla tries to get him to take the shot like you normally would-but the dude takes it vertically – and says an ok shot- but takes it with Alla’s hand asking him to take the shot in the other way- I guess you had to be there- but it was funny.

So we go to the museum and we were having a debate on the correct pronunciation of it’s name – ‘Bata’. I usually get it wrong here, since they say A like ee

There is no logic to this language – so I say it like baattaa, and she says baita. So I find an impartial judge and ask the counter lady. There is no better counter lady (because she agreed with meJ ).

The museum is 4 floors of shoe and foot history with not a single photo of Al bundi. The 1^st floor is dedicated to shoes from different era, shape,religion, profession and others- kind of interesting and I got too many shots.

2^nd floor is a movie on famous people and their shoes- most of the movie revolves around the persons, not the shoes- like I am really expected to believe that tiger woods’ made it because of his shoes, or the ballet dancer made it for the very same reason- and his shoes in the movie were all turn up- he might have well been dancing bear footed. I wonder what they would say in the tights museum on this one.

The rest of the 2^nd floor had the reception, gift store and some big room that you cannot enter- so this floor does not count

3^rd floor had 1 exhibition and offices- so it is really just half a floor- but it had shoes from ancient civilization like the modern Eskimos (inuits), old middle eastern shoes, turks, and other euro shoes.

Did you know that high hills just started during the renaissance era- I guess after the middle ages and the inquisition there was a need for a new brand of torture- so suddle(sorry the spell check can find the right word) and yet so wide spread.

There were no source shoes like I wear which is a shame, but the 2^nd floor had 2 exhibitions- one was the Olympics.

So they had various skating shoes. Advancement in winter sport shoes.

Even curling shoes – the most demanding sport of them all

At one corner they had lots of pillows- so we had no choice but to take a snutch (also known as,nap)

Some experiances should be repeated- this is not one of them- though I did enjoy it- weird as it sounds – enjoy a shoe museum- obsurd, but too many shoes for one day

But I was with racer so it was fine

So here is Alla and Big foot