Sunday, May 26, 2013

Ontario, I'm on ta you!

After surviving Michican we could hardly wait to be in Toronto. We fled our own country as fast as we could and ran into Canada's open arms. Eh, can we take refuge here for a night?

On the way through Ontario, somewhere around Woodstock, we ended up taking a wiz break at a Tim Horton's (apparently those are like the Starbucks of Ontario except it's fast food). Here we met the most preciously wide eyed group of Ontarian teenagers hanging out in the parking lot, up to no good and seemingly no wrong. They saw our Oregon plates and nearly jumped out of the car to ask us where ärēgōn was. They wanted to know if it was in Canada...or in New York. They were precious. I wish I could have hung out with those rascals all day. Why were we at a Tim Horton's in Woodstock-ish Ontario? Oh yeah, because someone just absolutely had to get her hands on some McDonald's french fries otherwise this someone would have had a hangry meltdown. Ahem, not I. Ahem, Claire. Much to both of our regret, McD's is not as easy to come by as the Canadian equivalent when in Canada, go figure. After hauling around for what turned into a lot longer than 5 minutes we finally found those golden arches and Ms. McDonald was appeased. Back on the road!

We pulled into Toronto around happy hour and checked into our hostel for the night which was actually a University of Toronto dorm room. Not a bad deal. The campus is centrally located in downtown and brought about a familiar sense of coziness to when Claire and I first became friends in the dorms years ago. Didn't think I'd be back in a twin bed so soon! We freshened up from a long day of driving, finished up some beers leftover from the Grand Canyon and jumped onto the nearest street car to visit the pubs. We stumbled across some hot dogs,  a funkadelicious blues band and zero available taxis until eventually hauling our tired bodies back to our collegiate abode.

For our big day out on the town we figured we'd head straight downtown for a proper brunch. After all, it was Saturday. Downtown was strangely deserted and we had the most difficult time finding a place that was open for service. And also no one around seemed to be able to point us in the right direction - for anything. "Excuse me, officer, do you know where we could find a place for breakfast around here?" "Excuse me? What? No. Not really. No." Oh, a very nice hotel with a restaurant that has the lights on. "Hi! Two for breakfast?" "Oh, what? No, we're not open. We won't be serving food until 2:00 PM" What's going on, eh? We were very confused. It seemed like we were there on the wrong day or something and eerily like we had traveled into an early 90's parallel universe. We started to see some Blue Jays fans making their way to the afternoon game but by that point we were on our way back to the car.

All that being said, Ontario was ok. I'd be willing to give it another shot on a day that was any of the days except for the one we went on. As long as I stick to that plan my next visit is bound to be a whopping success! But hey, I mean eh, thanks for the shelter mates, we sure needed it! Catch you on the other side CAN!















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