Or Subtitle: Andrew's brown face and my plastic feet
I didn't bring my pair of tennis shoes to this trip. That pair has a little tear on the tip of my right big toe, and I figured I shouldn't take a chance when they forecasted rain when we were there. I thought we would just sort of chill between Andrew's feeding time while we await a break during Amanda's conference sessions.
What Amanda didn't tell you when she said we walked 30 miles in 5 days, is that, well it was more than 30 miles total and we did most of those in first three days. I just drew a rough map of our first three days of walk in Toronto. A rough estimate is about 26 miles and that of course doesn't include the distance from walking within sites. Consider pushing a stroller that is just below your habitual stance level and you have a recipe of hunchback concrete hiking in the lovely city of Toronto.
The red line indicate our path on May 5th, green indicate the May 6th and blue indicate the May 7th. Blue asterisk indicate our apartment and yellow asterisk indicate the convention center. On May 5th, we walked to ROM as Amanda said and after looking for Spadina subway stop we rode it to conference center. After registration Andrew and I went to a stroll to a music garden where I was severely disappointed with its lack of musicality. It was a nice garden alright, and I guess I did enjoy a quiet breeze from the ocean while Andrew rested on the stroller and I thought about my research, but I don't think it's worth your visit unless you are a serious music theory buff. We met a gentleman and his two children from Houston there who also was waiting for his wife to get out of ISMRM conference session so we talked/walked out for quite a bit. Except, that I didn't ask his name, so next time I see him, I will be like "Hey!!! you...!! from.. that conference at Toronto....music garden...yea..." Then we met up with Amanda, and walked through chinatown and little italy back while Amanda attended another session at the center. We also walked to the west of little italy to grab a glazed chicken from portuguese churrascaria recommended by our apartment owner. It was by far the best chicken we ever had.
On 6th, we started out late and went to convention center to met up with Amanda, then we went to Eaton center, city hall, bunch of other important theatres in entertainment district (not much to share there). Walked home through chinatown and cooked dinner and brought it back to convention center and went to the Blue Jays game (because it was only $2 per person) against Devil Rays. It was Andrew's first baseball game but he was frightened every time there was a roar so we stayed until the end of 4th inning and took the street car home.
On 7th, my feet started to hurt so we took a street car instead (but you will read that we didn't do any less walking this day, either), which stopped before our destination, so we had to walk to the convention center. From there Amanda wanted to go to the distillery district on east side, so we walked all the way (oh we stopped by at St. Lawrence market and had a best sandwich in Toronto from a friend of Emeril or some cooking show star) there and had a "drink of the Gods" which is not an alcoholic beverage but an intense shot of chocolate. In the evening Amanda's second boss had a lab dinner planned so we walked there in rain through underground PATH including the Eaton center (again) and found ourselves in a party of over 30 people without any indication to order food around 8:30p, so we left early and walked home. So we might have actually walked the most this day. In addition we actually ordered Thai food which was recommended by our apartment owner (again), so I walked another mile or so there.
By this time the sole of my feet had no feelings. We had sun lotion pasted on Andrew on some occasions but not all, so his face was tanned like a monkey. Wow, we have a monkey in our house. Did we mention we walked on the fourth day there and at Niagara Falls, too? We got another best sandwich in Toronto from the "California Sandwiches" (how many best sandwiches are there?) which had the longest line for a lunch sandwich place that I have ever been to.
Well we had fun, I won't change anything about it. Well, actually just a higher stroller perhaps.
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