Deadly Casa Loma

            I was still stuffed up and sniffling on Wednesday morning. It felt like a cold but I’m pretty sure it was an extreme pollen reaction. 

            I translated the second verse of “Valse Dingue” (Mad Waltz) by Boris Vian. The lyrics are surrealist and perhaps inspired by the poem "Pequeño vals vienés" (Little Viennese Waltz) by Frederico Garcia Lorca. 

            I finished posting my translation of “What tu dis qu'est-ce que tu say?” by Serge Gainsbourg and then memorized the first verse of his song “Oh Soliman”. 

            During song practice, I had the longest sneezing fit of my life. I notice the pollen count is very high again. It’s forecast to be slightly lower tomorrow. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before breakfast. I was scheduled to meet my daughter and her boyfriend at Casa Loma at 14:00 and I knew I would be wiped out if I didn’t sleep first and so I took a siesta from 11:00 to 12:45. When I got up I rushed to get ready to go because I figured it might take an hour to ride my bike there. But I checked my phone and there was a text from Astrid saying they slept late and went for brunch and so now she wanted to meet at 14:30 instead. That was a relief because it gave me time to have lunch. 

            I weighed 84.8 kilos before lunch. I had a Montreal-style bagel with caribou paté and a glass of limeade. 

            I headed out, but halfway along Maple Grove, I realized I’d forgotten to put my denture in. I didn’t want to go to a public place looking like a hockey player and so I went back and got it. 

            I rode along Bloor to Bathurst and then north. Bathurst is always jammed for some reason. I turned right on Davenport and rode to Walmer Rd, then north to Casa Loma. That hill north of Davenport is the steepest hill I’ve pedaled up for years. It turned out that it only took me half an hour to get there. I locked my bike outside the gate and sat on the edge of a fountain for half an hour. 

            Astrid and Adam came pretty much on time and we went inside. There was one person in front of us finalizing her tickets. She’d bought four tickets online, and one would think that doing so would make getting into the building less complicated, but we waited behind her for ten minutes. 

            Since my neighbour David gave me $100 to spend on Astrid, I paid for our tickets. I told the ticket seller I wanted three tickets “to see the fake castle.” It cost me $115 and took less than a minute to have the tickets in my hand. We went downstairs and got audio devices that looked like mobile phones from the mid-1980s. I just carried mine and wasn’t interested in using it, but Astrid and Adam used theirs to hear the trivia about each room we visited. 

            The big feature this time was a Princess Diana exhibit, which really seemed out of place since I don’t think Diana ever even visited Casa Loma. She only came to Toronto once and her sons went to the CN Tower and the ROM. Casa Loma would be pretty unimpressive for a royal who lives in real castles. 

            I noticed that Casa Loma was built in 1911, which makes it fifty years younger than the place where I live. 

            We’d taken Astrid to Casa Loma a few times when she was a kid and she’d found the secret stairways and other features of the place exciting. But on none of those previous occasions had we explored every centimeter of the building like we did this time. It was very tiring and there really weren’t a lot of rewards offered for all the work of walking around. There were a few interesting art deco pieces and a couple of the rooms were nicely decorated. But it was worth it to see my daughter enjoy it. For me, the most interesting thing and the only thing I photographed was a graveyard of dead ladybugs on a window ledge of one of the towers. 

            We were there for two and a half hours until closing time. We left the building and rested for a while near where I’d locked my bike. We decided to walk down to the Annex to look for a restaurant. We finally settled on Insomnia near Bloor and Bathurst. I had the jalapeno burger with fries, Adam had the Insomnia burger with fries, and Astrid had an enormous plate of nachos that was meant to be eaten by two or three people. Even with Adam’s help, she couldn’t finish it and so she took the rest away in a box. The fries were very good and the burger wasn’t bad. I had it with a Sapporo. 

            I saw Astrid and Adam onto the Bathurst car and we said our final goodbyes for this trip because she would be leaving for Montreal the next day. She promised she wouldn’t take five years before returning next time. 

            At home, I was very tired and kept dozing off while writing in my journal. I posted my blog and went to bed an hour earlier than usual.