Monthly Archive for July, 2007

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Yes, we’re still in Toronto. We were planning on leaving today and heading for Cleveland, but a few thing happened that changed our minds. First, we were hoping to stay with a family friend of mine, Chris, outside of Cleveland, but he is out of town for the weekend and wouldn’t have been able to put us up. Second, it turns out there is a concert here tomorrow (Saturday) that we would really like to see (the group is De La Soul). It’s all part of Wakestock, which is apparently the biggest wakeboarding event in the world. Third, the person we were supposed to stay with in Chicago has just had to move out of his apartment unexpectedly (relationship issues), so we have had to make other plans, which means we will get in on the second instead of the first. As a result, Julia and I will be staying in Toronto until Sunday.

Originally, our plan for today was to go to the Toronto Islands, but it was hazy and raining (not to mention the fact that we overslept our alarm), so that didn’t work out. After lazing around for a while, we went down to the Taco Bell that is conveniently located adjacent to Rita’s building for lunch. On our way back, as we approached the elevators, we saw an Asian woman in her 50s literally dragging a cocker spaniel down the hallway. The dog was sitting and being very resistant, but the woman simply pulled him along. Then, we realized that the dog wasn’t sitting, it was pooping, and had left a trail of fresh turds all the way down the hall. As we began to laugh, the woman finally noticed what had been happening and was forced to clean it up. That was the start of poop day.

At about 3 p.m., Julia and I had agreed to drive Rita to the airport. She is flying to New York City to visit her boyfriend, but has said that we can stay while she is gone and simply give the keys we have to a friend of hers before we go. We dropped her off around 4:30 p.m. and her flight was scheduled for about 5:30 p.m. Afterwards, we went to see what was going on at the Just For Laughs festival, a free collection of performers, dancers, comedians and so on (a bunch of photos from the festival are below). It was interesting, but the streets were completely flooded with people, so it quickly became annoying to try and navigate.

After Just For Laughs, we decided to grab some dinner, so we stopped at a place named Alio, with a menu that looked good and reasonably priced. The food was, however, underwhelming. During the meal, Julia and I received text messages from Rita saying that she had been sitting on the runway in her plane waiting to take off for an hour or more.

After dinner, Julia suggested a walk around the block, just to see the area some more, so we set out heading west on Dundas Street. As we were walking, we caught a glimpse of something on the wall of a building nearby. Of course, as we got closer, we saw (and smelled) that it was, indeed, poop. Poop day was in full swing. Toronto seems to be a pretty clean city, overall, and this was in a pretty good neighborhood, which made the random poop even more strange. In any case, we made a beeline back to the condo to settle in before heading out to a movie.

At roughly 9:30 p.m. we hopped on the subway and, subsequently, the streetcar, and made our way to the big theater downtown. On the way, we received word that Rita’s flight had been canceled altogether and she was waiting in line to see what her options would be. She waited on the runway for about four hours before they decided to cancel the flight. We had planned to see Chuck & Larry, but we arrived a little bit too late for that. Instead, we saw Harry Potter 5 in IMAX. The theater was very big and very nice, but their popcorn was terrible. The movie was good, although Julia has only seen the first and parts of the second movies, so I had to pretend to know all about Harry Potter in order to fill her in. It was a 3D showing, but there are no actual 3D scenes until the very end of the movie, and then the entire climax is one giant 3D experience, which was somewhat annoying, since I don’t feel the effect is entirely convincing. About halfway into the film, I went to pick up my Coke and the top slipped off and the entire thing spilled all over Julia, her purse and my arm. Her phone is currently drying out and hopefully will work in the morning.

In any case, we spoke to Rita afterwards and she managed to get a hotel room at the airport and a flight from Toronto to Boston to New York City at 6 a.m. tomorrow, so I guess that’s something like good news.

Tomorrow we will be out at Wakestock and the other Toronto Islands all day. Hopefully they will allow me to bring my camera into the event, so I will be able to post photos. Speaking of photos, here are a bunch. As always, click “there’s more to this” to see them all.

A Canadian reporter making a face during a broadcast at Just For Laughs. She was surrounded by a bunch of strange characters, including some that looked like really weird boogers. Continue reading ‘Day 12: Poop Day’

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

This morning, Julia and I walked to Black’s to pick up prints of Julia’s photos (which she should be posting sometime soon) and drop off a few more rolls. The weather was, once again, beautiful. Afterwards, we took the subway north to Bloor Street and had breakfast at a crêperie called Crêpe A Go Go that Rita had recommended. I had never actually had crêpes, so I wasn’t sure what to expect beyond “thin pancakes.” I had one with maple syrup and fresh strawberries, which was really delicious. Julia had one with scrambled egg, mozzarella cheese and maple syrup, which was also very tasty. Afterwards, we picked up Data and drove to Kew Gardens east of Toronto, where they have a beachfront dog park where a leash is optional. Data romped around for a while until he was completely worn out. There weren’t as many dogs at this park as there were at High Park, but there were enough to give him a consistent run-around. After bringing him home to sleep, Julia and I went back to Black’s to pick up the film she had dropped off and do some grocery shopping. We had agreed to make dinner and dessert for Rita tonight. Julia made salad while I made Annie’s shells and cheddar. Afterwards, I made a berry cobbler, which has left all of us feeling pregnant and sleepy. So much so that we have decided not to see a movie tonight, and to go tomorrow night instead.

Speaking of tomorrow, our plan for the day is to take a ferry over to the Toronto Islands, where there are some nice beaches and other attractions. After that, we will treat Rita to dinner someplace to thank her for her hospitality while we’ve been here.

Here are some photos from the dog park. As always, click “there’s more to this” to see the rest.

A dog running at Kew Gardens dog park. Continue reading ‘Day 10: On The Waterfront’

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Before I get started on today’s adventure, it has come to my attention that certain parties would like to see photos of Julia, Data and me, the people we are staying with and where we are staying, as opposed to the “artistic” photos I have been posting. I have been taking these photos (mostly referring to the photos of who we’ve been staying with), but not posting them because I pretty much assumed that nobody cared who we’re staying with. I have, however, been uploading some of these photos to my SmugMug (link to the right). Of course, I haven’t been keeping up with the whole SmugMug thing over the last few days (mostly because it’s a pain in the ass to have to add labels and keywords to photos over and over again), but I have done a retroactive update to the galleries tonight and will try to upload photos there every time I post from now on. I am not going to promise I’ll post photos of people we stay with in the blog, but I have been and will continue to upload more photos to my SmugMug than I post here. In any case, you can see larger versions of the photos on SmugMug and even buy prints if you so desire.

Moving on … I should warn you, long post coming …

Today we left Data at the condo and went for a long walk around Toronto. First, we went about four blocks south so Julia could drop some film off at Black’s camera. Then we walked north about eight blocks to Bloor Street before heading east to the Royal Ontario Museum. While standing outside of the museum taking photos, a nice guy stopped by to talk about cameras and computers and gave us some ideas for places to go both here in Toronto and Vancouver. From there, we went south again to the University of Toronto. Then we made a beeline south and west on College Street to Little Italy for dinner. We ate at an Italian (duh) restaurant with a nice patio called Café Diplomatica. They had great bruschetta and I liked their cheese tortellini with rose (tomato cream) sauce. Julia wasn’t thrilled about their minestrone soup and the Sicilian crepe (frozen crepe stuffed with ice cream) was also a little boring.

After all the walking we had done, we decided to take the streetcars from the restaurant to the Blue Jays game. It was a pretty simple process and we only had to change cars once. When we got to the Rogers Centre, five minutes before game time, there was a decent crowd at the box office. Shortly after getting in line, some guy came up to us and asked if we wanted free tickets. Although this would normally be the start of a bad murder mystery, this guy seemed nice and said he had been given the tickets at work and couldn’t use them. We accepted and were able to see the game for free. The seats we had weren’t great, but the stadium (which is quite nice) was pretty much empty, so we were able to move around a bit. If it weren’t for the fact that they make so much money, I’d feel bad for the players on the Blue Jays because they basically have to play in front of an empty stadium for every home game. After the fourth inning it was 3-0 Blue Jays, so Julia and I decided to head out (there were very irritating people nearby). As we left the stadium, we decided to try a veggie dog from the hot dog vendor, which was better than I expected.

At this point, the light was still fairly good, so we decided to spend the money we would have spent on baseball tickets on a trip up the CN Tower. It was about 8:30 p.m., I’d guess. I asked the woman at the ticket booth if there was a wait and she said “about 10 minutes.” The light looked great for photos, so we bought tickets to the topmost observation deck. Once we got up to the first (of two) observation decks, we learned that we would have to wait in line to go higher. What they didn’t tell us was that the line was over an hour long. This was frustrating, especially since the light had been so good for photos and was already mostly gone. Once we got to the top, the view was spectacular, but it was difficult to photograph because there were extremely bright red and white lights shining directly up into the windows from below, which cast a nasty glare on almost every photo I tried to take. Afterwards, we spent a few minutes playing around on the glass floor before heading down to Union Station and taking the subway back to Rita’s. I should also mention that Rita was good enough to walk Data twice while we were gone, after she got out of work.

Now, once again, Julia and Data have fallen asleep. Tomorrow’s plan is to take the car and bring Data to a beach park where he can supposedly be off-leash so that he can get another workout. After that, we are going to make dinner and dessert for Rita and then do something simple, like see a movie.

Here are today’s photos. As always, click “there’s more to this” to see the rest.

The view from the top of the CN Tower.

Continue reading ‘Day 9: A Little More Touristy’