Tatterdemalion Tuesday

tatterdemalion ~ tattered; ragged; scarecrow-like

Seeing as the hubby’s unexpected brush with death put the kybosh on the cruise we were going to take for our 40th anniversary, we decided to treat ourselves to a holiday weekend in good old Toronto. And yes, I know this post is a day late, but I have an excellent excuse. I wasn’t home to write it (and it never occurred to me to write it ahead of time).

To start this off right, I’d like to share a few observations and tips I made on our time away:

1. Make a list of stuff to take, including incidentals like hair brushes and deodorant. Check off each item as it’s packed and do not trust your husband to pack such things for you even though he is in charge of packing stuff from the bathroom.
2. Summer is hot. Summer in the city is stupidly hot.
3. Shoes/sandals that are fine for walking around the house or when you’re shopping are not necessarily good for walking miles and miles in unrelenting heat.
4. If you’re going on a site-seeing boat tour with the idea of taking lots of pictures, check out the boat before you pay for your ticket to make sure it doesn’t have windows that will cause reflections to muck up your pictures.
5. VIP Cineplexes are twice the price of a regular one and really not worth it.
6. Summer is not the most ideal time to visit a series of greenhouses in the center of the city. In fact, it’s a really, really stupid idea. Don’t do it.

All that being said, we still had a pretty good time. Our hotel was right on the waterfront so we just parked and walked to pretty much everywhere we wanted to go, like the Eaton’s Centre:

We actually went there a few times and got lost in there twice. I swear it’s built on a magical vortex of some kind that gives it the power to move stores and floors and exits.

For such a large city, Toronto is surprisingly clean. And just to pretty it up even more, there are murals in many unexpected places. Street art put to good use. This particular one was in the alley beside Massey Hall.

We saw it as we were leaving Fran’s after dinner our first night there. Fran’s is a somewhat famous diner that’s open 24/7. Its claim to fame is the invention of the original banquet burger by owner Fran Deck. Another famous place we ate was The Old Spaghetti Factory, which is housed in a building that at one time was a Blacksmith shop. It’s full of atmosphere and antiques and the food is fabulous.

As well as a lot of shopping and walking, we managed to squeeze in time to see the newest Jurassic World movie. It took four escalators to get up to the Cineplex where it was playing, and then another two to get up to the actual theatre where the movie was showing.

We also took a one hour boat tour of the Toronto Islands, and visited the Allan Gardens Conservatory. Allan Gardens is over 100 years old and covers over 16,000 square feet. The greenhouses contain tropical plants from all over the world and one of the greenhouses is nothing but cacti. And it is NOT a place to be visited on one of the hottest days of the summer. I now know how it feels to be sweating so much it drips into your eyes.

I do have a great many pictures from both the islands and the greenhouses, but they’re all on my camera and it’s going to be a while before I get those pictures downloaded. I did, however, manage a phone picture of our final excursion, the Royal Ontario Museum.

There was a lot to see, but we managed to see pretty much all of it – three floors of permanent exhibits as well as the special spider exhibit in the basement. I probably took close to a thousand pictures, but again, they’re mostly all on the camera not my phone. I did, however, get this picture of Yanluo, the King of Hell (Ming Dynasty):

Weighing the fun we had against the heat, the sore feet, and the leg cramps, I’d say all in all it was a great way to spend our anniversary weekend.

Happy Anniversary to us!