Toronto!

Friday after work I drove to Upland to drop off my car and my Mom drove me to Markle to meet up with Jackson who had been all over the state for work that week (thanks again, Mom!). We headed for Toronto with a quick stop at a random Tropical Smoothie (my favorite!) in Ohio. It felt like the drive took forever but we eventually made it. Jackson had enough reward points for us to stay at a hotel by the airport for free. Score! We slept like small children and then got up and headed into the city. 

We stayed right in the heart of the city on Saturday at a fancy Hilton. It was lovely. Our room wasn't quite ready when we got to town so we went out sightseeing and in search of lunch. We went to a place called Jack Astor's which was, unbeknownst to us, kind of like a Hooters restaurant. We went because it was on Yonge Street (which is similar to Times Square in NYC) and had a 4th floor balcony to sit on. The Canadians allow smoking, though, so we sat in the small nonsmoking section inside instead. I was mortified at the waitstaff's attire. They were hardly dressed! 

Jackson smiling at lunch- he didn't mind the lack of clothing as much as I did. Imagine that. ;)

After we finished there we headed to a museum to see their dinosaur exhibit. 

This made us think of Alex!

It was too pretty of a day to stay inside for long, though, so we headed back out to explore the city. I especially loved the University of Toronto. It was built right into the city and was old but lovely. 

Our room's view...LOVE

We walked forever just seeing the city before we needed to get cleaned up for dinner. Since Jackson was stuck in Fargo for his birthday and didn't get a real dinner (he had McDonald's if you'll recall), I promised to take him to "360" which is the restaurant at the top of Toronto's CN tower.

The tower's elevators are glass with great views. The floors also have glass parts. Perhaps some people are into such things.

Not me. I closed my eyes during our ride, tuned out the attendant's speech about how high we were going and how fast and REFUSED to stand on the glass floor. We made it and I was the first one out of that death trap, I mean elevator.

The restaurant spins so that you get ample views of the city. I found that dining there allowed you to get to the observations decks much quicker and entrance to said decks are "free" with dinner. It was $45 or so each to get to the decks so dining was a given.

The BEST soup EVER

You guys. I'd ride that death trap in the sky (elevator) again to get that soup. So good!

My handsome date :)

My date wasn't half bad either. ;)

Delicious salmon dinner

My dinner, like my soup, was really good. They didn't mention the mustard sauce that would be on my salmon so that was mildly annoying but I lived. 

The view from the restaurant

The sun starting going down

We enjoyed our dinner and then took the stairs to the observation decks. There are two floors. One entire inside and one out. We did both.

Mr. Petefish being brave

Mrs. Petefish pretending to be brave

How Mrs. Petefish actually felt...SCARED 

Jackson's idiot self stood on the glass floor at the top of the tower

That view never got old

Again, we lived. I did pretty well up there. Jackson said he was very proud of me. I think he only said that because we rode down in the elevator with a jerk who heard I didn't like the moving death trap and made a big deal of how fast we were going down and wondering if it was normal. I just didn't want to give him the satisfaction of having annoyed me.   

He had his own room at our hotel! 

While the restaurant in the tower was really good, their dessert menu was lacking. We decided to go to the Ruth's Chris in our hotel for dessert instead. Along the way we saw that Jackson had a room named for him already. The Canadians loved us. ;)

Dessert with the greatest bar staff ever

The cheesecake was not all that great but the bar staff were the best ever. They flipped the channel from hockey to the Pacers game for us. That's unheard of up there. They told us about the Pacers staying at our hotel and therefore dining with them. We stayed for probably an hour just chatting with those folks. It was the most enjoyable dessert I've had in a long time.

The evening view from our room...LOVE

We decided to change out of our dress clothes and do a little more exploring of the city. We knew we'd eaten enough to require some pavement pounding. We stumbled upon the city's club scene which was fascinating. The amazing thing was we absolutely never felt unsafe. The people were friendly everywhere we went. Amazing! To top off an already awesome day we had the view shown above to gaze at when we crawled into bed. It was a lovely, lovely day!