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The Dream Is Alive, And It Is Full Of Eels

For 11 weeks in the summer of 2004, there was a high-speed ferry from Rochester to Toronto.

It was a big, fast ship: on-board casino, duty-free shopping, 2:15 crossing times.
OF COURSE it went bust (...gas prices, for one thing...).

The City of Rochester took it over, and ran it a few times in the summer of 2005.

I missed it, I missed it both seasons. I had penciled it in for "Hmmm, I must try that some year."

Ever since it went bust, people have been kicking around the idea of reviving it.
This year, the Port of Toronto solicited proposals:

http://www.citytv.com/toronto/citynews/life/money/article/22191--can-fast-hovercraft-service-between-u-s-and-toronto-stay-afloat


This particular business plan looks dubious; still, I would like to do this before I die.

Around the Lake Again in Twenty Ten

A couple of times when we were in college, M & I went camping around Lake Ontario. This year, it was finally time to take my daughters on a similar expedition.

Before we left, I looked into the Glenn Gould Tour of Toronto and found that his neighborhood diner up on St.Clair was now gone.

So Priceline gets us a pretty good hotel right in the middle of Toronto:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=bond+place+hotel+toronto&aq=0&aqi=g8g-m1&aql=&oq=Bond+Place+H&gs_rfai=CAcTvWxKDTN-PDae-zgSht9GLBQAAAKoEBU_QZ0kg

Monday afternoon we leave Niagara Falls, arrive in T about nightfall, find the hotel just steps from the Eaton Centre: but where is their parking?

Drive around the block: hey look, it's Massey Hall; oh look, that looks like a decent place to eat across the street. We go check in, get told where to park, stash the car, check out the neighborhood.

Time to eat: OK, let's try this "Fran's" we spotted just down the block.
We wound up eating there for dinner, breakfast the next day, and The Eldest and I wound up there a third time.

Come home and find that the place is actually a descendant of Gould's neighborhood diner: the original branch uptown is gone, but they opened on Victoria St. in 2004.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran's_Restaurant

http://www.fransrestaurant.com/

"Sometime between two and three every morning Gould would go to Fran's, a 24-hour diner a block away from his Toronto apartment, sit in the same booth and order the same meal of scrambled eggs."

Kinda funny how even though I didn't go up to GG's old neighborhood, I still *accidentally* managed to eat at his hangout anyway.

Small world.