Hey Puppy

We woke up hoping that magically it was 7am, but it was not to be.   9am seems to be the earliest we can wake up, I don’t understand!!  We go to sleep by 2-3am, why can’t we wake up any earlier?  

In any case, we woke up and were RAVENOUS because if you read yesterday’s entry, we only had CRAZY BREAD from little caesars for dinner, and we split one order between the two of us.   We’ve become eating machines on this trip!

So we quickly packed and then ran across the street to The Famous which is a restaurant where we ate the vegetarian sandwich and salad the day before.  We had seen some other people eating breakfasts there and the plates looked big and delicious!

Here Heather is trying to make perhaps the most important decision in her life. What will she order for breakfast??

We both were able to make decisions and then began the long wait.

I would quickly look up everytime the waitress walked by with a plate thinking, "Is that it? Is that my food? Is it?" And then when she'd stop at another table I'd go "Awwww." This went on again and again and as my friends can attest, I have immeasurable patience/annoyingness in repeating things over and over and over and over and over again

Whew, my plate finally arrived and unfortunately it was a bit smaller than I had hoped. hah hah. My plate had bacon, 2 slices of challah toast (you pronounce it like Holla as in Hollaback Girl), beans, scrambled eggs, and potatoes. In case you're wondering, Heather ordered a Canadian egg muffin thing that was huge too. Both plates were delicious!

And that was that.  We went back to our hotel room, checked out, and picked up our car.  We figured we should do one last drive by the falls so I pulled off to the side of the road and let Heather out with the camera and she snapped this last photo of the falls.

It truly is a remarkable spectacle!

We also decided to drive through the main strip of Niagara.  Remember yesterday when I mentioned how touristy Niagara was?  I had NO idea at the magnitude of cheesyness.  We weren’t even on the main road yesterday.  The main road is like 5 times more touristy.  We took some photos to show you.

Here you go, another Fashion Mistake noticed at Niagara. Look at the outfit the guy on the far left is wearing, animal skin is so last year!!

When you think of the majestic beauty of Niagara falls, I also think of a Haunted House. What about you?

Apparently Frankenstein likes the whopper over the big mac

We were very surprised to see someone we had encountered the night before standing on the side of the road.  I’m pretty sure he saw us too, and it was pretty awkward.  We gave a quick embarrassed wave to him, and he waved back but we knew that it was best that we did not acknowledge what happened the night before so we continued on our own separate ways instead of stopping to chat.

Goodbye Crazy Bread. We will never forget how you were there for us in a time of desperation.

We drove the hour or so drive back to Toronto, threw our luggage back at our hotel (we actually had two hotel rooms booked on the same night, one in Toronto and one in Niagara Falls so our Toronto room was empty that night.. DOH.. Long story I’ll explain some other day haha), and then we headed out to see what we could see on our last day in Toronto.

Oh yeah one thing I forgot to mention was that we chose a perfect day to NOT be in Toronto and instead be at Niagara Falls.  Apparently Toronto was a big old mess near our hotel because Bill Clinton and He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named were the two past presidents who were in town giving some speeches or something.  It was good we were far away to avoid all the commotion!

We decided to stop by at High Park which is a large park on the west side of Toronto.

This little guy was there to greet us which already made the whole visit to High Park worth it

As I looked at the purple flowers while eating my Flavor Blasted Goldfish, I wondered what it would be like to experience the world while the size of a squirrel.

Whoaaaa..what was in those flavor blasted goldfish??

Make a wish! Heather wishes for a puppy for the five billionth time!!

At High Park, they even have a section with some animals!!

Behold the peacock in all its splendor!!!

Behold the peacock's ass in all its splendor!!

I didn't know this, but Heather is some sort of pine tree druid. Notice how they are bowing reverently to her.

It was a nice stroll through High Park but we realized we were overdue for a caffeine fix. 

We stopped by Clafouti bakery for some coffee. I also bought a loaf of olive bread. I'm always trying to find the perfect olive bread loaf. The coffee was awesome but unfortunately the olive bread loaf was not all it could have been. Neither was this damn coffee lid that wouldn't stay on!

We walked across the street to another park to drink our coffee and soak up a little more sun. Notice Heather's coffee cup does not have a lid because I failed.

We were having a really hard time trying to figure out what we should have as our last dinner in Toronto.  Somehow we ended up deciding that the last meal would be…. drum roll please….. CUBAN FOOD!

Julie's Cuban Restaurant. We were lucky enough to have parking right in front!

We had a nice little table in the back of the restaurant

Cheers! I had a beer and Heather had a mojito. Both were delicious!

We started with chips and guacamole. The bowl may look small but it's because the chips were HUGE. We couldn't even finish the guacamole because there was so much, what a sin!

Heather got grilled shrimp in a garlic/white wine marinade that came with plantains, saffron rice, and a carrot salad.

I got a Chicken Breast that was stuffed with ripe plantains, saffron rice, and fried plantains on the side.

Both dishes were good, but it wasn’t quite what we’d call truly authentic Cuban food.  It was more like a trendy Cuban influenced restaurant.  I did like the ambiance but the chicken could have used a sauce to put over it.  Heather liked her shrimp more than I liked my chicken.

After our meal, we were stuffed!  We decided to head back to the hotel room and start packing and to get some rest.  The weather also had turned ugly yet again and it started to rain, so we figured it was time to get indoors!

The tulips I got Heather had bloomed nicely while we were in Niagara and were glorious!

We heard thunder outside so Heather opened up the drapes and was wow’ed by the view outside.  This is a wonderful photo from our last night in Toronto!

The rainbow was uncannily vibrant (the photo doesn't do it justice). What a view from our hotel room for our last night!!

Thanks for spending the week with us in Toronto.  Tomorrow we head out to another incredibly diverse and multicultural city, yes, we’re of course talking about Elkhart, Indiana.  Stay tuned for adventure!!