Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Toronto trip, day 1

We had taken a red eye out of California, and reached Toronto early morning, around 7 AM. I had bought tickets online for the Airport Express, so we took that to the hotel. We stayed in Holiday Inn in downtown Toronto, on King. They were nice enough to let us check into the room as soon as we reached, even though the official check-in time was around 4 PM. We showered, and immediately went to sleep :)

Woke up and started wandering around the hotel. I had bought the City Pass from Priceline, which included admission to 6 attractions. The first of these was CN Tower. It was within a very short walk to the hotel. It was a much, much bigger version of the Space Needle in Seattle. I thought the coolest thing there was the Glass Floor. This is a see-through floor located at a height of 342 metres.

After that, we walked, and walked, and walked! We had an Italian lunch followed by more walking. We were looking for a Scotia Bank ATM, and also wanted to get a general feel of the area. We also went to the College Park Box Office, and picked up our 30 tickets.

By the time we reached the Royal Ontario Museum, which was the venue for our first movie, we were dead tired. But all that changed once we went and stood in the line. The ticket checker asked us if this was our first movie, and we told her that not only was that our first movie, but our first festival ever :) We were so excited!

Our first movie was The Pervert's Guide to Cinema. The director, Sophie Fiennes, came on stage after the movie and did a Q&A session.

This was followed by Ten Canoes. Neither me nor Hobbes was able to appreciate this movie well. One reason was that a lot of the movie was in a language called Ganalbingu (the rest in English), and those parts did *not* have subtitles. So one was left guessing as to what the characters were saying. The Festival did add another screening - this time with subtitles - and anyone with a stub for the previous screening could attend this one. Unfortunately, for us, it was impossible to attend due to time constraints.

I had also read that no photography or filming was allowed inside the theatres and I assumed that this meant that no cameras would be allowed. Imagine my surprise when I saw people clicking pictures of the director after the movie. So I have no pictures to show off for day 1. The only pictures are in my head :) Except this one.

IMG_1255.JPG

No comments:

Post a Comment