Attempted train ride

While I assume it is something she will gradually outgrow, my daughter does have a tendency to get nauseous on long trips, particularly in cabs and on buses.  So this puts a definite crimp in our travel plans.  Anyway, we have been debating attempting going to Montreal, and one of the better ways to go is to by train, particularly as the train station is, if anything, even more central than Union Station in Toronto.

We finally managed to get our act together and test a short train ride from Toronto to Port Credit and back, which worked out to just about an hour of train time and 20 minutes of stretching our legs in Port Credit.  It was colder than I would have liked, and in fact it was snowing periodically throughout the day.

She seemed to think that the train would be ok, so we will give it a shot, though keeping them reasonably occupied (and not bothering other passengers) will be a challenge.  I just have to accept that I won't get as much reading or other work done as if I was traveling on my own.  I have drawn up a slightly ambitious schedule, though one that is prioritized so that I can cut certain activities if we are running late or the kids just really balk at one more museum.  Because the train ride is taking a bit longer than I would like and we are only staying overnight, we won't get to explore the city quite as much as it deserves, but I think we'll be back either in the late fall or 2016 when there are other interesting exhibits to see.  After I confirm a couple of things, I will go ahead and book tonight before it gets any more expensive.  Anyway, we're trying to be optimistic that it will work out, and if so, then we will start thinking about other trips for 2016, such as New York and perhaps Boston or Philadelphia, though we will definitely be flying rather than taking the train for these trips.

Back in Toronto, my daughter went with me to work, and the rest of the family went home to recuperate.  We actually went back to the Douglas Coupland exhibit at MOCCA (only another week or so left).  She seemed most interested in the suburban Lego community.

She was also sort of amused or at least surprised to see the abused CN Tower.

Honestly, I think her favourite thing was the fake flower exhibit from the pop-up gallery next door.

I kind of like this artistic shot of the gallery where you can (mostly) see the mannequin inside as well as the reflection of a streetcar and trees and powerlines. 

Anyway, it was a trip that held out some promise for future travels going more smoothly, and we'll just have to hope for the best on our upcoming Montreal jaunt.

Edit to add: I used to take the train far more often than I do now.  I probably would at least consider taking the train from Toronto to Chicago if they hadn't essentially torn up the connection from Windsor to Detroit.  Now the trip has to detour around Lake Erie and is completely impractical.  What a terrible decision they made, almost entirely on the Detroit side as far as I can tell.  I can think of two other train rides that didn't happen.  We were going to head up from New York to Boston, but this trip was scheduled for the weekend after 9/11 and things were chaotic to say the least, so that trip was cancelled.  At least I had done that train trip on my own in the past, but the train ride that I do regret missing out on was the London to Edinburgh run.  I think that would have been a really interesting, if somewhat long, trip through some interesting countryside.  We had tentatively planned to do that while living in Cambridge, but family matters got in the way.  The one long train ride that we did manage -- from New Orleans to Chicago -- ended up being a complete disappointment, so I guess you never can tell.