Greetings from Colorado! It’s been a million years since you’ve heard from me (on this blog anyways). I’m assuming you’ve missed me terribly. I’ve missed you too! It’s amazing how quickly my days have been flying these past couple weeks. I need a vacation from this vacation, stat. (Just kidding, I’m really not that ungrateful! I’m having an amazing time and I feel incredibly fortunate.)
As you know (or if you don’t, you will now), I was in Canada from July 11th – 17th. I finally got to use my passport! Now that I’ve spent six days in Canada, I am practically an expert and I have come to the following conclusions:
1) Canada has cooler money than us. I resent this deeply. To compensate for my sadness, I will make fun of your money with the following GIF.
2) There are no cops in Canada. (Seriously, were they hiding? We couldn’t find any cops!)
3) Canada is terribly expensive and has like 16 different types of sales tax. Also, $5.50 is not a drink special! No, it is not.
4) There are no natural born citizens in Toronto. It is the most diverse city I’ve ever seen! The only thing missing were Canadians.
5) I really dig Canada. (Except for the fact that you can only buy alcohol at a liquor store. Why, Canada?)
Alright, onto the recap of my wonderful 6 day vacation to Niagara Falls and Canada. Fill in the holes with “walked around aimlessly” because we did a lot of that. For more pics, check out my Instagram!
THURSDAY
After a day of packing my life into a Ford Focus, we headed up to Niagara Falls. It was already 10 PM when we got up there so we just grabbed an overpriced drink and called it a night.
FRIDAY
We woke up early to check out the Falls (thank god because around noon there were whiny children everywhere). Beautiful, but smaller than I imagined! We didn’t do any of the tours or anything because they were a total ripoff — as all tourist-y things are. We managed to accidentally cross into the U.S. and then we ALMOST did it AGAIN. They don’t have enough signs, I’m telling you.
We drove up to Toronto and had dinner and drinks at Firkin on Yonge and paid way too much for parking as we accidentally parked right next to the CN Tower.
By the way, it is a pain in the ass to navigate around cities without GPS capabilities. We didn’t get an international data plan so we had to use maps and iPhone screen shots that we took in coffee shops with free Wi-Fi. I’m assuming this is how ancient man got around…
SATURDAY
We decided not to drive into the city anymore and started taking advantage of public transit. Someone finally said “eh”. Like good little tourists we had brunch at Fran’s and went to the Royal Ontario Museum (used my student ID to get a few bucks off admission, score!). We had dinner and drinks at Bar Italia in Little Italy.
SUNDAY
We went to Chinatown. Gotta say, I’m not a fan. It was super crowded and smelled heavily of fish. No bueno. We stopped in an Irish pub for a couple drafts and then decided to seek reprieve from the heat in the movie theater. Yes, I broke my movie theater rule for Grown Ups 2. Judge me if you will. We had dinner at The Emerson, home of the best burgers we have ever tasted. OM NOM NOM.
MONDAY
Also known as the most awkward day of my life. We went to the African Lion Safari in the morning (kinda cool but way overpriced!), I worked on some freelance stuff, and then we had the dinner experience from hell. Monday was a dark day…
TUESDAY
We went to the Toronto Islands in the morning. The most interesting tidbit from that was our visit to the Clothing Optional Beach. Have you ever seen Eurotrip? Yeah, it was exactly like that. A total sausage fest where all the sausages were small and over sixty. No pictures were taken of this event — that image will be burned into my brain for all of eternity. After we got back to dry, non-disgusting land, we had lunch at The Fox.
In the afternoon, we went to Old Town Toronto which I love, love, loved! We spent a lot of time browsing furniture stores and doing a bit of daytime bar hopping. We also went to the St. Lawrence Market and bought ice wine! Yum. Dinner was at Kultura, pricey but yummy!
WEDNESDAY
Checked out of the hotel and headed back to the good ol’ U.S. of A.
Now onto the spending. We have joint finances, so this is for both of us. Remember, I said Canada was expensive…
Lodging: $0
Thank you, credit card points!
Transportation: $193.85
Yikes! This includes gas, tolls, parking, and public transportation costs.
Food/Alcohol/Coffee: $582.41
I honestly don’t even know what to say about this. I swear we weren’t eating at baller restaurants for most of the trip. This one hurts.
Shopping: $68.72
We bought ice wine, vodka at Duty Free, and random drugstore things that we needed. Nothing overly exciting. We typically only buy consumables while on vacation.
Entertainment: $139.55
Admission to ROM and African Lion Safari, as well as tickets to the movie and ferry admission.
Fees: $20.28
Foreign transaction fees (that I still need to argue about because there aren’t supposed to be any!) and ATM fees.
TOTAL: $1,004.81
So that was my Niagara Falls/Toronto trip! We had a lot of fun and I’m so glad we finally ventured into Canada. I really want to go to Vancouver while I’m living on the West Coast. Maybe next summer?
[Image from My Vegan Summer]
