Day one is chaos.
We have a three night, four day run up to Toronto, built around the one young woman's desire to see someone called Dave, in concert. We didn't need to do three nights, but while we're up there, we thought we'd make a trip of it, young grandson and all. We're almost ready to go, and the little one is beyond excited, his mother is stressing out, and DW has a cold to end all colds, hence the chaos.
To add insult to injury, I've just realised that the hotel, the Town Centre Marriot, is costing us $850 a night after sales and room taxes, but not the $50 a day parking. It had better be damned good hotel!
Indeed, we've been looking around at things to do and places to eat and have come to the conclusion that Toronto is not a cheap destination. If you're hankering for steak and eggs for breakfast in the hotel's restaurant, it'll set you back $40, and that's before tax and the usual, almost mandatory tip. Even an out-of-hotel restaurant wants around $30 for breakfast, which is double what we'd pay at a restaurant at home. Four of us to visit Casa Loma, a kind of stately home in downtown Toronto, is just short of $200, as is a trip the aquarium. I think we can get three of us up the CN tower for $120, but only if we go late in the day. I have no idea why Toronto needs to be so expensive, but it outstrips New York for expensiveness, and by quite some margin. It's not that we can't afford it, but it feels like a rip-off. Still, we're committed.
The journey starts in about thirty minutes, so I will pick this up when we're safely ensconced in the hotel, but I needed to get that off my chest first.
As promised, here we are, in the Marriot City Centre, Toronto. It's a modern hotel glued onto the back of the Rogers Centre, the home of the Toronto Blue Jays (Major League Baseball). Some of the rooms here have windows that look into the stadium, but those were not only sold out, but were considerably more expensive, so we're looking north, over the railway line just outside Union Station. If you like Go (commuter) trains, or UP (Airport) trains, it's brilliant.
The run up here was OK, surprisingly not too scary with the traffic. We stopped at the halfway mark at Woodstock OnRoute service centre and bought "New York Fries", just chips, but quite nice all the same. I had a rare success with Starbucks where there was no line, coffee was ordered and delivered in about thirty seconds, and with a big smile. Why can't they all be like that?
The rest of the trip into the big city was as expected. Very busy on Highway 403, then along the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW), past Burlington, Missausuga, and the rest, right up to the Gardiner Expressway. The QEW had a High Occupancy Lane (HOV) so were were able to skim past the slow moving traffic in the regular lanes. The Gardiner doesn't have the HOV lane, but it was moving, and moving really right up until we left the main road and made a left onto Spadina. That was a bit sticky, but it was only a short drive up the hill to the hotel, so no real issue.
At the hotel we were met with some assistance, a nice man who whisked the car away to be parked somewhere, where I do not know. It was busy in the hotel lobby with lots of business types in suits, but the check-in went easily, although not quite with the grace of the check-in clerk at London Heathrow's Sofitel early this year.
We had two rooms, and were offered an apology that they couldn't get them closer together; Emma and Charlie were on the third floor, we were on the fourth. The elevators are operated by means of your room key and will only give access to the floor that your room's on, so being split across two floors meant that we had to exchange spare keys.
Emma's room is standard downtown style, smallish but comfortable. Ours, albeit at the end of a very long corridor, was deemed a "Suite", because it has a sitting room. Our windows go from floor to ceiling and face west, but thankfully are equipped with electrically operated blinds, shielding us this afternoon from the setting sun.
It's an OK room, clean and perhaps a little tired, but it is comfortable. It's not worth $850 a night, but we are right in the centre of downtown Toronto, so I guess we're paying for location as much as anything. We have a couple of bottles of Spring Water, free and for nothing, but there are two bigger bottles that they want us to part with $3 should we consume one. That strikes me a quite chintzy given the cost of the room.
Having settled, briefly, we made our way out into the downtown core to get some food. We have used a little pizza place just down the street when in the big city, and we used it again today. $15 for a small pizza isn't too bad given the location, which I guess is why we use it. The young 'uns went back to the hotel afterwards, while DW and I wandered down to the harbourfront and soaked up a few late afternoon rays as we walked the boardwalk and admired the tranquil lake. We've been to Toronto a few times, and that is the first time I have been down to the waterfront, and it was well worth the effort today.
Charlie was in bed in good time tonight, so DW and I have a peaceful evening ahead. She's still feeling very rough, so that's a good thing. We have the day mapped out tomorrow, so lets hope that the weather holds and the missus starts feeling a bit better.
