I’VE NEVER BEEN TO... TORONTO
Seasoned traveller Simon Parker hopes a Canadian honeymoon will allow him and his bride to share fresh experiences
The problem with being “well-travelled” is that you risk becoming a “been there” bore, one of those annoying people at parties who have Top Trump tales up their sleeve from Kansas to Capri.
As a travel-writing singleton it was always hard to book a holiday with friends and family without coming across as one of these patronising Palins. And now that I’m getting married, organising a honeymoon to somewhere that I, or my future wife, haven’t been to has felt like banging our heads against a world map pinned to a brick wall.
But after two months of destination ping-pong, we may finally have a winner: driving coast-to-coast across Canada, with a few days to rest in a city that neither of us have been to – Toronto.
We plan to do the trip next autumn, when the world is hopefully a tad more normal, and Ontario’s Capital Greenbelt is shimmering with rusty reds and polished golds. Downtown, we want to eat thick steaks at the top of the rotating CN Tower and look out beyond the Great Lakes, all the way to Upstate New York and across to Pennsylvania.
But more than anything we want
to share views that are entirely new to us, rather than rehashing a journey that one of us has been on before. We are desperate to try cocktails our tastebuds don’t recognise and mispronounce new words and phrases that twist our tongues.
And then, when we are feeling
refreshed and ready to hit the road, we will cruise on down to Niagara Falls. In my mind, I fear, I will instinctively compare them with Victoria Falls in Zambia and Zimbabwe and Iguazu Falls in Argentina and Brazil.
“Been there,” I’ll say. If I’m feeling really, really brave.