Toronto, Part I - You Know It's a Holiday, Right?

A few weeks ago, we went on a kind of random trip to Toronto. We'd been talking about going, and then tragedy struck in our household, so our thoughts were consumed with that, but we decided that getting away for a little while was still a good idea.

We stopped for a quick brekkie at Starbucks to sustain us for the first half of our trip.

Detroit, MI was about 4 hours from us, so we stopped there for lunch at Seva Restaurant, where we shared the Spinach Dip and the TLT Wrap (Tempeh-Lettuce-Tomato). This was a vegetarian restaurant with very fresh-tasting food. Everything was light but still satisfying, which is perfect for traveling!

Detroit is right on the border of Canada, so we were just a short drive away from crossing over to a new country.

We had a dinner stop planned in London, Ontario, but surprise, surprise, we ended up traveling during the Canadian Civic Holiday. Oh, also, the border control guard informed us that Toronto was hosting the Pan Am and ParaPan Am games, so expect it to be crowded and lodging to be limited. With all our traveling, we have still not gotten very good at avoiding national holidays. :-P The restaurant we'd planned to stop at was closed for the holiday weekend. So, we stopped at Shaw's Double Decker Ice Cream.

We were pretty hungry by the time we made it to our room, still an hour or so outside of Toronto.

After checking in, we decided to just keep it simple and run across the street to A&W, which seemed to be in abundance in Ontario.

In the morning, we finished the drive into Toronto. It was trafficy, but not awful. Our first stop was to take a ferry out to the Toronto Islands.

It was a short boat ride out to the islands, and we mostly spent our time there just walking from Ward's Island to Centre Island.

While we were there, I said a few words in remembrance of Travyss and released some of his fur over Lake Ontario. That cat could not even imagine how heartbroken I am over his loss. To me, traveling, especially to another country or unfamiliar place (as foreign as Canada! :P) is such a big part of mine and Francisco's spirit, and Travyss was such a big part of me, that it made sense to me to release part of him there. Of course, that just ended with me sobbing on an island in Canada, but that was to be expected. :-P

It wasn't a sad trip though - there was just that one sad experience I wanted to get done while we were there, and then I tried (semi-successfully) to push all the sad stuff out of my head for a little while. So, we had ice cream and then I spent a lot of time stalking black squirrels who must've thought I was crazy.

It was obvious how un-Canadian I am, lol. Actually, black squirrels are supposed to be common in the MidWest, but I can't think of a time when I've seen any.

We headed back across Lake Ontario and onwards to our next adventures in Toronto.