Seattle to Toronto, Thursday, 14-Jul-2022
/Melody wanted to go to a week-long book group event in Toronto, so I tagged along so we could make a vacation of it. The last time we were there was almost a quarter century ago, so it seemed like an opportunity to revisit the city.
Because our flight was pretty early, before the light rail service begins, we spent the night near the airport. On the way south, we had to switch trains just past downtown due to work being done. Only half of the trains were going the whole route, but ours didn't. When we got on the next train, we ended up face-to-face with a friend of Melody’s. Imagine the odds. We chatted until she got off after a couple of stops, and continued on south.
After checking into our room, we searched for dinner, after which we returned to the room to settle in for an early night.
We woke up early, before both the alarm and the wake-up call that never happened. We had allowed enough time to not feel rushed while gathering our things. We checked out and waited for the first shuttle of the day. We knew we would get to the airport later than the recommended time, but we figured the combination of the time of day and being able to go through the pre-check line would work in our favor, which it did. We had enough time to eat breakfast and grab some lunch for the plane.
When we arrived at the gate, we knew they would need to check passports, so we did that with no wait. Not long after that, they announced a long list of names of people who needed to present their passports, and the line became very long.
Once on the flight, Melody and I fed our addiction to in-flight live maps. These had an interesting feature where you could show a window view that labeled various features that were visible, which was nice for identifying rivers, lakes, and mountains.
After landing in Toronto, we looked for the Nexus lanes for customs. The kiosks weren't working, so we had to fill out the paper forms and then have everything looked at by the one Nexus immigration agent. There were probably about 20 people ahead of us, which was much better than the hundreds of non-Nexus people waiting for 5 or 6 agents.
Knowing we wanted to take a train into the inner city, then a subway to near where we were staying, we started looking for transit. We purchased our transit cards, put money on them, then tapped onto the long-haul train. The good news is we had added enough to cover that trip, but the bad news was it used all but 75 cents; after we got off the train, we loaded more money, then wandered around until we found the subway. After that, it was only a handful of stops before we got off.
After going back up to daylight, we walked through the University of Toronto campus a bit on the way to Massey College, where we were staying. We got our keys, settled into our room, then went to look for dinner.
We found a BBQ place to have dinner, then walked down to the Kensington Market area to have gelato, wondering how many times we would return during our stay.
On the way back, we took a different route and happened to go down a street that was filled with duplexes of many different styles. Some brick, some wood, some tall, some single story. Several of them had different looks for the two sides, such as a couple of the duplexes having the left side's porch being turned into a sunroom, but not the right side.
Making it back to Massey College, we wandered around a bit. The building is built around a central quad, with a pond and clock tower near one end. At that end is a common area, including the dining hall which looks like you would think a British-style college dining hall would be like. The other sides have houses that have rooms; ours is a suite with a generous living area. The basement is a big ring which links all the houses. Returning from dessert, we walked all the way around, finding the study area, library, letterpress room, game room, kitchen, and laundry. We found the door for our house, then went back up to do some planning for the next couple of days and retire for the night
