Cars

Well my birthday was fun, we got the car, it was a VW Golf city, 2.0.
It drove pretty well, but everything apart from the gearbox was manual. A brand new car with manual windows, manual side mirrors, no central locking and the back doors had to be opened from the inside.

The highways here are a bit confusing too. In general the even numbers run north south, and the odds are east west.
The 400 runs north-south and takes us home.
The 401 is east west, and north of the city.
The 403 splits south from the 401, then heads west to re-join the 401 in about 100km.
The 407 is the toll road, which is much faster to use to traverse the city cos it costs money.
The Gardener runs east west along the lakefront and turns into the 427

To get into town, we take the 400 south from Woodbridge. It's mostly 4 lanes each way, but can be 5 or 6 lanes at on-ramps.
Then the 400 ends after about 20km, and you have to choose whether to take the 401 east toward the city, or west to Mississauga. The 401 is kind of famous in Canada, as it's the biggest, longest highway going from Detriot, Michigan through Toronto and up to Montreal. It is 8 or 9 lanes wide each way in the city, the middle 5 lanes on each side are called the express. Then there's a concrete barrier and 3 more lanes called the collecter. That is the slower bit where you get on and off the highway.
So the idea is you get on at an on-ramp, you're in the collector. Then you jump across a few lanes, wait for a transition point, and move into the express section. If there's normal traffic you then put your foot down and level off at about 140. If there's traffic you'll be going very slowly.

So anyway, on Wednesday we left Aimee's job interview in Cambridge to the west of Toronto, and took the car on the 401 east, then I decided to take a shortcut by going south, heading in the direction of Niagara falls. Bad move, I turned right instead of left when we hit the 403 and we ended up going the wrong way and were about 100km off target. We ended up in Hamilton Airport, got some directions and got back on track. Took the 403 back east, through Hamilton, got on the QEW, through St Catherines and finally ended up in Niagara. pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/aimee.carbonell/Niagara
Map of our adventure: