Toronto!

Earlier in the year my husband and I were thinking about summer vacation possibilities.

"Toronto," he said.

"Toronto?" I said.

"Toronto, Ontario. That's where we should go this summer," he said.

"Why Toronto?" I said.

"Why not Toronto?" he said.

While I never got a straight answer, we went ahead and planned a trip to Toronto, Ontario, the center of many things Canadian.

Of all the people I spoke to who had been there, very few had anything good to say. The few months between the deposits and the actual trip were filled with people saying, "Toronto. Why go there? It's dirty/polluted/too hot/full of rude people/crowded/full of weirdos." By the time we were ready to leave, I was truly dreading the trip.

The vacation could be summed in one large word:

FABULOUS!!!!

Toronto was absolutely wonderful. Awesome, clean, friendly, vibrant, interesting, fun... there are not enough words!

I cannot remember a day-by-day account of what we all did, so I'll type it as I remember it:

We arrived at our outstanding hotel, the Residence Inn Mariott Downtown. Due to our son's food allergies we really want a kitchen available to us in our hotel room, and each of these suites has just that. The hotel was clean, super quiet, very friendly, in a good part of town, and CHEAP! $ 199.00 a night for a one-bedroom suite!



Our first day we decided to take the subway to the Royal Ontario Museum. First of all, I was astounded to see the subway system clean, safe, well-lit, and so efficient that I'm *still* shaking my head. Holy cow. The transit system in my city is nothing even close to the model of efficiency that the Toronto system is.

Anyway, we got our first taste of how Toronto does things with this museum -- big, bigger and biggest. In the 7 hours that we were there, we still didn't see it all. There were several floors of exhibits covering anthropological matters, natural history, and the most amazing art exhibit I've ever seen. I originally wanted to go here to see the Darwin exhibit, but I was utterly enchanted with the Shanghai Kaleidoscope art exhibit -- it was a number of installations of visual arts, including video, textile, and photographic, that were all metaphorical of the massive changes taking place in Shanghai right now. My advice: Go to the gift shop FIRST, buy the book about this exhibit, read it fast, then go up and absorb it.

We dragged our aching feet back to the hotel, where we planned the events for the next day. They were to include the one feature I had been lusting to see:



THE BATA SHOE MUSEUM! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!

What can I say? With 4 floors of SHOES -- the origins of shoes, old shoes, new shoes, work shoes, theatrical shoes, celebrity shoes, art shoes, beaded shoes, metal shoes, wooden shoes, embroidered shoes, big shoes, teeny shoes (even Barbie shoes) -- quite frankly, I have found my spiritual home. Every shoe fanatic is required to attend this sumptuous display at least once in their lives. To top it all off, there was a tiny gift shop with gifts ALL ABOUT SHOES! Scarves with shoes, paper notepads with shoes, shoe-shaped luggage tags, purses with shoes, books about shoes, jewelry with shoes. I spent almost as much time in the gift shop as I did in the museum. Seriously. This is such an enriching place to those of us addicted to shoes.

The rest of my family spent their time at an enormous music store down the street called Sonic Boom, which was THEIR spiritual mecca. What, you think I'd bring a bunch of straight males into a shoe museum. Not.

Our trip didn't end in two days but this posting will have to end for tonight. I'll carry on about the trip tomorrow.

'Night!