Friday morning, just before 10 am, Dave and I hit the road. Our destination…

That big shining city… Toronto!

Dave grew up in Mississauga, a stone’s throw from TO, and I grew up in Hamilton, just a little further down the highway. And we both commuted to various parts of it over our working careers until we moved here.

While Toronto has its delights… driving to and from and around it is not one of them. According to Google Maps, driving to the downtown from our current house should take just under 3 hours. In practice… unless you’re driving at 3 am… that is not happening. It’s much, much longer.

So… I decided to book us a hotel room for the night, and we could take transit a good chunk of the way (through the worst parts of the driving – basically Hamilton to Toronto). First, we drove to the furthest outpost of the GO train (2 hour drive) just outside Hamilton. We took the GO into Union station (1 hour peaceful train ride) and then had a 20 minute subway ride to our hotel.

Only, we got into Union about 2 hours early because I wanted to play the tourist.

Despite living so close to it… I have never been up to the top of this bad boy

The CN tower. I figured now was finally my chance. Only… it wasn’t…

As we were walking to the tower from Union, I was reminded of another attraction right at the base of the tower – Ripley’s Aquarium. I had been with Mom and the girls back in 2017, but Dave had never been. So I decided we could go to the aquarium first, and THEN go up the tower.

My pictures aren’t the best. You can’t use flash, and while my phone works well in low light, the place was packed. You have to move quickly to get near enough to the exhibits to get a picture.

My favourite part of the aquarium are the sharks.

I know they aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I find them absolutely fascinating!

Though the rays are a close second.

I could sit and watch them all day.

This guy…

A Long-Comb Sawfish, was pretty cool too.

This guy has a face only a mother could love.

I think he was Dave’s favourite. (It’s a type of Grouper if I am remembering correctly)

The seahorses were pretty friendly, they swarmed the glass when I stepped up to take their picture.

There were so many different things to see… it’s hard to show it all here.

I really recommended stopping in if you’re ever in the city.

Of course, after all that excitement… neither of us has the energy to do the Tower. We were both starving and wanted to get some food and get to the hotel before heading out to the wedding event that evening. I figured I could hit the Tower the next day before we left the city.

We took the subway to our hotel, got some food, rested and then hopped another subway to the event. We had a wonderful time and were back safe in our hotel bed by midnight!

But unfortunately, I failed to factor a couple things in when planning out our big city adventure. And that was walking… and not just walking, but subways mean stairs…. lots and lots of stairs (and throughout the weekend there were four subway trips). While I wore flat shoes, my feet still objected with several blisters. And those stairs… they did a number on my thighs. Saturday morning, by the time we got off the subway in the downtown, I knew there was no way I was going to be able to do the Tower. So… we hopped on our GO train and began the long journey back to the car.

My date with the Tower is just going to have to wait, I guess.