Back in the Homeland!

[bjarvis]

Our trip from home to BWI airport was exceedingly uneventful, despite having to drive in morning rush hour.

Our tickets were grouped under a single reservation code. Last night, when I clicked for early check-in, by luck of the draw, Kent was assigned to SouthWest Airline's "A" boarding queue while I was assigned to the "B" queue. Figures. Not only am I not an A-list bear, I'm not even an A-list cow. :-(

Upon landing, we retrieved our luggage --figures my single bag would be the very last one to be unloaded-- and drove off in our rental car. Crossing the border from Buffalo, NY, to Fort Erie, ON, was surprisingly easy although I wasn't expecting the bridge toll to have risen to $3 USD ($3.50 CDN). Ah, well... it's worth it to be home.

Amazingly, we were only asked for our city of residence, our destination and why we were coming to Canada. We didn't have to present our passports or rental car agreement as we did the last time.

For lunch, we stopped outside of Grimsby. Tim Hortons was promoting their new triple chocolate donut so I had to sample one. It fairly exploded with my first bite. I thought I'd have to stick my face into an open fire hydrant to wash all of the chocolate filling out of my mustache and beard. Let me check... yup, I can still taste the chocolate. Mmmm...

We made good time to Toronto, dropped off our bags at John & Chris' home at Pape & Danforth and headed off for adventures in the big city.

1st stop: a TD Canada Trust ATM to get money from my Canadian chequing account. I keep $100 CDN with me in DC to cover immediate expenses from the airport but I like to keep a little more available since it goes faster when I'm not using my US debit card.

2nd stop: The Toronto Transit Commission's HQ at the Davisville Station to exchange my old TTC tokens for the new ones. Tomorrow is the last day these may be exchanged; I had 11 in inventory.

3rd stop: Shopping in Yorkville. I was looking for ideas for a birthday present for my grandmother, largely without success. At 80 years of age, she has almost everything she could possibly want and her apartment is relatively small so she doesn't need new stuff. I don't know her clothing sizes so apparel is out. I'm still working on it.

4th stop: The hemp store on Yonge Street, just for laughs. kent4str bought a new hemp wallet to replace is aging one. We declined to tour the 420 paraphernalia.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering down Yonge Street and through a portion of Eaton Center, pausing for milk shakes before boarding the subway to head for home.

John beat us home; Chris joined us soon. We've had a nice dinner of thai food on the Danforth and are prepping now for bed time.

Comments

[emramesha.livejournal.com]

Aaaah, Toronto. How long are you boys are up for again? I forget what you said before. I doubt it's long enough - london_bill will be there next Saturday night (April 21st) after a tournament.

[greyguy-sf.livejournal.com]

Foodstuffs... grandmothers love to get exotic foods that they won't buy themselves...interesting marmelades, imported cookies and the like. Interesting boxes of dark chocolates are popular,too.

[jss]

To expound on what greyguy_sf said, my grandmother really likes the cookies-of-the-month club her grandchildren get her every year. Once a month, two or three dozen cookies of a different type. (My cousin buys the annual package and the rest of us send her a check.) There're all sorts of these of-the-month things, so do a little research based on what you know she likes (for example, my grandmother wouldn't eat enough fruit before it spoiled and isn't fond of cut flowers, so both fruit and flowers of the month would be Right Out) and voila! A gift that's better than once-a-year.