Sitting in a cafe on "car free day"

I'm sitting in a cafe in the downtown area of Toronto after having walked around for a few hours. Needed a little break, some water, a bathroom break, and wireless internet and I found it all at a cute little cafe with good veggie food options.

Today is "Car Free Day" in part of downtown Toronto, sponsored by the Sierra Club - I happened upon it accidentally - or, more likely, I heard it calling out to me when I headed out this morning. There was cheesy music with environmental lyrics that I wish I could recall and some booths set up with info from all sorts of organizations. A small event overall, but they shut down some of the major roads around a main mall in the center of town, so I hope it did something to inspire people to lose the car for at least a day or even consider walking/biking somewhere that they didn't before.

I haven't yet rented a bike but I just found out about bikeshare.org where I can sign up and have access to bikes stationed all over the city - I'll check that out later if it's not raining. I'm all set to take a historical bike tour of Toronto Islands tomorrow if the weather's nice, otherwise I'll check out some museums, etc.

It's kind of strange writing all this out as though I'm talking to myself, or rather, I'm talking to all of you who may or may not read it at some point - I'll have to find some people to hang out with so I can fulfill my daily need for human interaction otherwise you'll have a LOT of posts to read!

Several things I've noticed about Torontonians: #1: They walk very slowly, and if I, walking at my rushed NYC pace, accidentally bump into them, THEY apologize. Very friendly. I've slowed down my pace considerably since arriving here.

#2: They recycle very well. My notes on their recycling program will have to come later but overall it seems very successful and people do it really well, both residentially and in public spaces! Yay recycling!