I Land in Canada

I landed in Canada and went back in time haha as Toronto is 5 hours behind the UK. I could not believe it I was finally here after months and months of planning. Now it was time to put all my planning into action.

when you first land and you make your way through the airport just before reaching customs you will come across a load of kiosks that you have to input your details into, there are a fair few of them so you don't have to queue up too long to use one which is great. These machines ask you some questions such as if you have any food that you shouldn't be bringing in and your reason for visiting and so on. Once you answer this, the machine will print out a slip which you take to the front desk where they check your passport and once I gave them the slip they put a red line through mine, which panicked me as the colour red you associate to something serious haha. I was given the slip back and was told to go the opposite side, I followed the instructions and found myself in a queue waiting to be seen by an immigration officer.

As it was a Sunday the queue wasn't so bad which was good for me... remember when I mentioned earlier in my blog that you want to check and double check your documents, well it was for this moment right here.

I was called up to the desk and was meeting with the immigration officer who asked me the reason for my visit and asked to see my letter of invitation, which I gave him, I had all my documents organised in a folder and was able to access each document quickly and stress free, being organized helps speed up the process for sure.

Each document that was asked for I provided and this was something that showed I was prepared and aware of what I needed to provide, the immigration officer was friendly, which always helps put people at ease 🙃. He actually provided the permit I required, your key document is the letter of entry for travel and once you arrive you get the permit given to you at the airport.

I was now ready to leave the airport and make my way to my accomodation, I followed the exit signs and was on my way, so from the airport I followed the signs for the Gotrain and caught the express service (this would get me out the airport and to the train station) to go to Union Station you can buy tickets from a kiosk and there are information desks you can ask from if you are unsure (which I did alot of 😂)

You could catch a taxi if you wish but I was new and did not want to spend a huge amount on a taxi, as I found online that you can use public transport and you can get to Downtown for around $10 CAD total if that, so I decided to take that route.

The jounrney from the airport to Union Station via the express took around 25 mins or so, which was great, once I got to Union Station I had to catch a streetcar (which are known as trams in the UK) however getting to the streetcar part of the station was not as straight forward as I hoped, Union Station is quiet big and merges with the PATH which is an underground route (more on that later) so it was easy to get kinda lost.

When I said try not to bring so much luggage the reason is it can be hard to travel with it all, like I had one large suitcase, one small suitcase and my rucksack, this was hard to handle when there are so many steps you have to go up and down and you are alone. At one point I had to do it one at a time haha, I would take the large one up like 20 steps then run back down and take the small one up lollll it was hard work I can assure you.

A good while and a good workout later 😂 I finally made it to the streetcar and was finally one step closer to getting to my destination and being able to relax!!!

After a good nights sleep in the morning I made a list of the things I needed to tackle for the day, such as:

After breakfast I headed out to work through my to do list, I wanted to make the most of the day and sort out as much as I could, I also wanted to get my bearings and get familiar with the area around me.

Overall this was a productive day, and I was able to get all the things ticked off my list and also get familiar with some of the routes near me. Over the next few weeks I did some sightseeing, and took alot of photos.