Barrie

Barrie is a place in Ontario, Canada (about 50 miles North of Toronto) that I visited with my family on a recent trip to Toronto.

Barrie was a place we had seen on the Internet and quite fancied it as a place to live.

So on Thursday 9th August 2007, My wife, my two children and myself found ourselves in the Downtown Toronto Bus Terminal ready to catch the Greyhound to Barrie.

The trip on the 400 (which is an extremely busy road/highway) is quite uneventful, the only slightly interesting places you pass through are Yorkville and Vaughn.

When we first rolled into Barrie, we were a little disappointed (to say the least) as the Barrie Bus Terminal seemed to be in a slightly run down part of town, the taxi drive to pick up the hire car didn`t quell our fears as we drove down a busy road with totally uninteresting features on either side.

We were staying at the Days Inn which seemed to be in the middle of nowhere but was actually very close to everything, in fact Barrie itself was very deceptive, at first it seemed to be a large area but the longer you stayed there the smaller it became, it would probably take you ten minutes to cross from one side of Barrie to the other.

Barrie also became a much nicer place the longer we stayed there, the lake front (check out the spirit catcher) was very impressive with great beach's and enjoyable walks and the Georgian Mall was an excellent shopping experience. There are also some great places to eat like Moose Winooski`s http://http://www.moosewinooskis.com/menu_steaks.php

Also check out Kelseys for more great food http://www.kelseys.ca/en/index.aspx

All in all our stay in Barrie was very pleasant, I don`t think we will ever move there to live but would visit again, although we went in Summer there seems to be a lot of activities available in winter and that would possibly put a different spin on things.