...as of about midnight.
Everyone--even our dog Raven is wiped out.
Thankfully, the trip home was uneventful save for the awful time we had with the traffic getting out of the city of Toronto. It reminded me of Chicago gridlock--and it was mid-morning--not the time that I'd have expected such a jam.
We stayed in Chinatown for our last two nights in Canada. I've heard that there are four Chinatown's in TO--we were in the one about 6 blocks in from the CN Tower.
We stayed at a Hotel Super 8 in the Chinatown Centre Shopping Mall complex. It was so new that they hadn't yet installed all the services but it was a lovely place just the same. Our room was sumptuous with cherry wood furniture throughout, scads of space, and very firm mattresses on the beds. Both son and spouse seemed to really like that touch.
The neat thing was that there was a Chinatown street festival just below our 3rd floor digs so we were able to walk right out and have abundant choices in Chinese notions, souvenirs, and best of all, food.
I'd picked our hotel it for it's proximity to the CN Tower and The Hockey Hall of Fame. We'd also planned to go to Casa Loma--a real castle-- in the one day visit. Unfortunately, two things got in the way way of being able to do all that we wanted.
One, due to the festival and construction closing down many roads in the areas of the hotel, we spent a great deal of time on the night of arrival just trying to access the hotel which we kept driving by, looking in vain for any way to park near it. Just as in many American cities there were plenty of one way and no turn streets and it made it all the more challenging.
The other cog in the machinery was that though the hotel accepted "animal guests" one could not leave said guest alone in the room for more than 10 minutes.
With the temperatures predicted to soar in the the high eighties with high humidity there was no way we could've brought Raven with us to Casa Loma which was where all three of us wanted to go the most.
So while the guys were sleeping I decided that I would stay at the room with Raven. By the morning there was a steady drizzle outside which was fine for roaming the castle. Raven and I stayed behind, sleeping, then reading Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows (more on that in a post to come).
***All photos of Casa Loma by my son.
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