Flew into Toronto on Monday and they met me at the airport after I passed through customs. We drove to downtown Toronto and wandered around. Perhaps the most interesting things we saw was Paws Way, which is as cute as the pictures on their web site. It's part dog history museum, part educational facility, part shop, and part training center. They also have a little cafe in the front. I had no idea such a thing existed anywhere. Had dinner at Il Fornello. Went back to our hotel, which was all the way back by the airport, but not before driving through the large Jewish neighborhood of Toronto. Next day we got a late start, saw Casa Loma (house on the hill) which is a famous historic castle. After being there and watching some house hunters, I decided our home should have a fancy name. So now we live at "Casa Oso" or perhaps we should call it "Casa Oso de miel".
We had a late lunch then spent an hour at the Shoe museum which was surprisingly OK. By pure coincidence the Mariners were in town, so we went to the Blue Jays game that night. We had checked ahead and thought it would be fun to see a game in Toronto. Of course, the Mariners lost and looked terrible, but made it interesting in the 9th. Ichiro had 4 hits. And the stadium was empty. We complain about the Mariners drawing 10-15K, but there must have been only about 4000 people at the game though the Jays reported 12K paid. Before going to the game Nanci and I went up the CN Tower and had great views of the city and a cool view looking straight down on Rogers Centre (nee the Skydome).
Niagara Falls was awesome. A picture is worth 1000 words.
We had hoped to play poker at Casino Niagara but they had a couple of dealers call in sick and had 15 names on the wait list. I found this stunning as I'm sure they could have found back up dealers. In this economy every dealer is looking to pick up extra shifts. Then back to the US of A. Buffalo isn't very touristy. After Meier and Nanci dropped me at my hotel I walked around downtown for a little bit and saw some of the historic buildings. Meier picked me up later and we went to Duff's for buffalo wings with Nanci's family -- how can you go to Buffalo and not have wings?! Wings were good but we all ate too much. Meier and I headed back to the Falls to play some poker, actually wound up playing on the New York side and had an interesting border crossing at 2:30 AM when we wanted to go back to pick up poker chips. Ended OK but got home very, very late.
Thursday I got up and wandered around town by myself. Walked down to Coca-Cola Field, then walked along the waterfront and looked across to Canada. Meier met me and we discovered that City Hall has a free viewpoint on the 28th floor so we got a good look at the city. Then it was back to eating -- some famous hot dog place that didn't impress me at all and Anderson's for custard (soft serve ice cream) which was pretty good. Then airport and home.
Lots packed in in just four days.
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