An Unexpected 24 Hours

We woke up this morning in Canada instead of in Ireland. I woke especially worried because I knew it was 6 hours later in Dublin and our hotel reservation was quickly approaching. I needed to reach the hotel and explain the situation to see if we could get a refund before our check-in time.

So I woke around 5 a.m. central time and got to work. The hotel emailed back that I had to cancel with my travel rewards company since that’s who I had booked with. . .but my phone wouldn’t work to call my travel rewards because I had no service in Canada. I wandered out into the hallway and a nice security guard near the elevators took pity on me and let me use his phone. When he had to leave to go do security-guard-things I went back to our room and worked as quietly as I could on our room phone and my ipad. The girls and Jay slept on. Finally about 3 hours later the hotel and rewards company were all in agreement that we deserved the refund! Yay!

Once I had that taken care of, everyone was

waking and hungry and ready to explore. We got a delicious breakfast of way too much food from Uber Eats and I told everyone my plan for the day that I had devised before falling asleep.

Dad decided he didn’t need to see any more of Canada than he already had and wanted to stay behind and read. The rest of us piled into an Uber after checking out of the hotel and headed down to the waterfront.

Our Uber driver taught us how to say “Thank you, precious one” in Arabic. Shukron habebe. He was a fantastic tour guide as well as driver and we had many laughs despite some nasty traffic.

We proceeded to have a fabulous afternoon!

We started at the “Wavy bridge” (the Simcoe WaveDeck) and explored along the harbor.

The CN Tower was high on our list of what we wanted to see and we loved it! We still can't believe that it's the 3rd tallest tower and 9th tallest structure in the world!

We came across a street performer who entertained us with a show where the juggled, stood on beds of nails. . .while juggling knives that were “REAL METAL” and “REALLY SHARP”. . .and he had a very memorable laugh.

We walked by some booths and Ellie bought some earrings made by a woman who used vintage fabric passed down to her from her grandmother to make her jewelry. And we had a good laugh with her over what was bigger. . .the Arch or their CN Tower.

There were a bunch of ping pong tables out in a green space so of course the girls and Chapin had to try them out.

Chapin decided we needed to do some “work research” for Ices and we all got ice cream. The strawberry sorbet was a hit but I really enjoyed the tea ice cream. It was exactly

what we needed for lunch.

We stumbled across a fabulous downtown spot that is anchored with their historic train station. We loved looking at the rail cars and Gwen LOVED a very entertaining brass band that was playing.

Farmers’ booths were scattered around and we got a bag of yellow plums that looked like Rainer cherries but were definitely more tart. . .especially the skin.

We wandered back down to the waterfront and relaxed sitting by the water and watching the boats.

The weather had been predicting an 80% chance for storms all day long. . .but we barely had a sprinkle! We truly lucked out!

But wait. . .

. . .did we?

No of course not! After we finally made it through the very chaotic and very confusing Toronto-Pearson airport for the second time. . .our plane delayed though it was sitting at the gate ready for us to board. . .because a big storm rolled through right as it was about time for us to leave. Go figure!

But delayed as it was, we were still able to fly tonight and will wake up in IRELAND!