We slept in and recovered after our marathon flight back from Vancouver. When we did venture out, we went birthday shopping for me at the Eaton’s Centre which is a big mall downtown. Alison spoiled me with some essentials that I needed, which was good, because I had to limit the amount of stuff I could carry in my luggage.
Friday evening and Tony and Craig had organised a bit of a shindig for my birthday, but also as a farewell for Alison and I. Tony came and got us from our apartment and we headed down to the Drake, a bar we had been to a number of times over the previous months – it was super cool, so we just kept going back. We had a little sectioned off area and had an array of beautiful food to keep our stomach’s lined. It was as a heavy night of drinking. I had countless drinks bought for me, shots of every variety, constantly one if not two drinks in hand. We shared the night with a whole bunch of people that we had become friendly with during our time in Toronto, and it was great to go out with a bang. Thanks again to Tony and Craig who organised and catered the evening.
We finished up late Saturday morning back in the apartment with another drink in hand. Tony stayed the night on the couch and Alison and I tried to sleep soundly through till the morning. By the time we woke up, Tony had gone and I was knocking on deaths door. Well and truly on struggle street. We had originally intended on going to a baseball game, but that was never going to happen. Alison found me on the bathroom floor around 3pm using a towel as a pillow and with a face cloth across my forehead. It was the coolest, darkest and quietest part of the apartment – and I stand by it. It was a quiet day in, nothing happened.
Sunday we were feeling better. We had organised to go and visit some of Alison’s family in Toronto. We’d been pretty slack, because it took us 4 months to travel 45min away to see Alison’s family. We thought it was time. Alison’s pop’s sister from Malta lived in Etobicoke (pronounced Et-obe-ee-co) which is an outside suburb of Toronto. When pop moved from Malta to Australia, his sister moved to Toronto and he hasn’t seen her for 45 years or so. Needless to say, Alison had never met her. We met Francis (pop’s sister) and her daughters and their family. Alison was blown away by how similar her pop is to Francis – and there was definitely a large resemblance, there mannerisms, there humour, it was uncanny.
During our final week in Toronto we did a tour of a brewery across from the Skydome downtown, followed by a Blue Jays game. The Jays game definitely doesn’t pull the numbers that a Maple Leafs game does, but the atmosphere was still great and we had a good time. The Jays won 8-1 beating the Kansas City Royals.
On the Friday night (my birthday) Carlo (Tony and Craig’s cousin) mentioned a concert with Hot Chip and The XX that was on Tuesday the following week. We went along gladly and had a great night. Both Hot Chip and The XX put on a great show. Following the show, we went to an after party at which one of the XX was DJing, we ‘could’ have had photos etc as per Vampire Weekend, but not knowing the XX quite as well, we decided against it.
Wednesday night we met up with Philli and Jen at their place, we enjoyed a great dinner with them and said our farewells.
Thursday night we headed to Claire and Bernie’s, and again enjoyed a lovely dinner, and we were spoilt with a farewell ice cream cake which was super awesome. We stayed the night, said our farewells and was out the door early Friday.
We headed back to Toronto as we had organised to rent a car and drive north to Craig’s cottage in Muskoka. We picked up the car early and drove up. I got pulled over for speeding early on in the piece, but the innocent tourist Australian charm got me out of jail yet again. So we continued on our way and arrived in the early afternoon. It was very different to the last time we were there, which was in the peak of winter and everything was under 4 feet of snow. This time it was sunny, starting to turn green and bearably cold. Alison and I made ourselves comfortable and we relaxed and enjoyed the peacefulness. Craig came up later in the evening, and after a fireworks display to rival Sydney’s New Years eve, and a movie we headed to bed. In the morning Craig and I ran a couple errands, and he ventured back to Toronto, late Saturday afternoon. Alison and I just relaxed, watched movies, read, ate and escaped. We headed back to Toronto late Sunday night, and we were more or less given the all clear to fly to Europe.
The next few days was a mad dash to pack up and clear out. We had to clear out a whole bunch of stuff from the apartment, and we had to (still have to) send home a huge amount of stuff to Australia. We had somehow accumulated so much stuff. It took all day Monday and Tuesday to pack, and clean. We said our good bye to Tony on Monday over a few drinks at the pub across the road. Tuesday night we spent with Luciano, again we said our goodbyes over a few drinks. And early Wednesday we got up and Craig had offered to drive us to the airport, so we ventured out, said our goodbye to the apartment, Craig and Toronto. It was sad to go, but we were also excited about the next leg of the trip and the adventures that lay head.
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