Okay, so when we last left off, Auntie Ag and I had safely reached the hotel (Courtyard by Marriott, by the way. FABulous hotel!), and were settling into our room.
I noticed on the remote how there were many different buttons. I had no clue what they were all for, but I did see the colors...they had the rainbow colors on the remote! how nice of them to welcome us queers to Canada that way!
I went to change my money (the conversion rate SUCKED! It was like 1.10, although we found it for 1.20. First time I was in Toronto, it was something like 1.67. Thanks again, George W.), and on the way back, I saw this guy using chalk to make this large, realistic artwork. Pretty impressive, it was.
This would be the outside of the Eaton Centre...how can you NOT love a place that puts larger than life, huge billboards of Madonna on one of its' busiest streets???
After this I went to "The World's Biggest Bookstore", and while it may not in fact be the world's biggest, it's gotta be close. Wandered around in there for quite some time.
This is a photo of our hotel. If you see the Mariott sign on the corner, just look three windows to the right, and that's where we stayed.
This is a photo of Yonge street looking south. It's just a block south of our hotel, and this is the view I normally saw each day walking around. Well, not this one exactly, as it's taken from the middle of the street, but you get the idea.
As I may have stated, we were on the 17th floor.
I also mentioned that I met my friend Ed there. he and I went out Friday night to Crews/Tango/The Zone. This is that bar. Crews is on the first floor, Tango is on the second floor, and the Zone is in the back, down a long hallway. The place was fun, but very crowded. Course, it WAS a Friday night. And the crowd was mixed: lesbians, gays, straights, drag queens, leather guys, bears, young, old (although there was more young than old, which made me happy!). And a good time was had by all.
Saturday evening, we kinda dressed up cause we were gonna go eat at the hotel's restaurant, which seemed a little...hoity-toity? Nah, fancy. At any rate, this me, dressed up, and posing like a guy in a catalog. Similarity is striking, isn't it?
After eating, i went out to visit a few stores, but as it was raining, Ag decided to stay in the room. "Silly girl" I thought, "it's only a little rain." And then I got outside and saw exactly how MUCH it was raining. So my first real purchase in Toronto was an umbrella. You can see it in the top of this photo.
Later, as I was changing, Auntie Ag, naughty little Auntie Ag, got a hole of my camera. (Course, to be fair, I probably shouldn't have just been changing in the middle of the room in front of her, God, and country, ya know?)
And this is Auntie Ag, in her bed, ready for sleep. (I don't know what night this was, but I can pretty much assure you, soon after this, I went out to prowl around and she went to sleep. So is our evenings every trip.) She's got her little bag of trail mix and her glass of Homo Milk (that's what it says on the carton, people. We'd call it homoginized milk, but they print Homo Milk. God love the Canadians).
So this is 1,000,000 Comics, which I feared had gone out of business. But it just moved here. Nice little store. It's got a larger room in the back filled with comic books. And it's just two blocks north of our hotel!
This is in a storefront of the Eaton Centre, a hot shirtless guy....what's NOT to love about advertising in Canada????
This building is going up on the corner of Dundas and Yonge, a major intersection. The first time I was in Toronto, a building stood here. The second time it was torn down. the area has been "under construction" the last eight years or so with no progress. But this time, we saw this. And it's indicative of Toronto as a whole. There's buildings going up all OVER downtown!
I visited several stores in the gay-borhood along Church Street. This is one of the: Out In The Street. Pleasant little place. It fronts Church Street, so you can see it heading south.
This is Zelda's, a campy, cheesy, gay resturant that must be experienced to be believed.
This is the menu and I wish I had a better photo, so you could read it. It's really funny, what they've named the dishes and stuff. The food is passable, the waiters generally have a bit more attitude than thier looks should allow, but the entire atmosphere is what makes it one of our favorite places ot eat there.
Yonge Street at night, looking south. This is roughly the same place as the previous picture of Yonge Street, although, obviously at night. You can even see the moon in the upper left.
Yes, I did indeed break my tooth while I was there. There really was not pain involved in any part of it, although there was a lot of worry on my part. Nonetheless, I couldn't figure out how else to show my broken tooth, so I did it this way.
And then just two days later, the little bugger broke off entirely, and there it is. Still no pain, thankfully.
The same day of my tooth-breakage, but earlier, Ag fell on the street and buggered up her knee, the one pictured. Luckily, she was still able to limp home, and it was fine the next day, no lasting damage. But that day was kind of an off day for both of us.
Canadian money. All the different colors. How cute. I like the 10 dollar bill best, cause, yeah... (wait for it)...it's PURPLE!
This is a photo of our hotel room post-housekeeping, and pre-us getting back into it and settling in for the day.
And this is the room post-us getting back into it and settling in and pre-housekeeping. And even Ag's the only one in the picture, you can see my bed in the background. This is what we left each day when we went out (not including whatever tidying up Ag's anal retentiveness forced her to do before leaving).
This is a view straight down (or as close as I could get) from our window looking down onto Yonge Street.
And this is the littel gay jade Buddha I bought Ag as a gift. A bribe really. I needed the hotel room for another hour because of an unexpected hookup, and giving her this was my way of appeasing her.
Eventually, though, the day came when we had to leave. Reluctantly, we packed everything up, and somehow, we managed to fit it all onto one cart.
I took one last photo of the cloud enshrounded CN Tower. IT was raining, as you can maybe see by the raindrops on the window. BUt we knew what was happening was that Toronto was weeping with us that we had to leave.
As we were leaving, we passed this restaurant: Ho-Lee-Chow. Had us laughing it did, and was deserving of a photo.
And then we left Toronto, it's dark, sad weather echoing our moods.
The clouds parted to allow us to say goodbye to our friend, the CN Tower, as we passed underneath it.
And the next thing we knew, we were at the border again, stopping at the Duty Free Shop. Miss Cleo's in the photos with us again.
And here wa are crossing the bridge again, just ready to enter no-mans' land, and then the USA.
Immediately after crossing the bridge, we had to go through customs, and we hit a standstill. I think we waited maybe 15-20 minutes easy ot even get up to the booth. It's never taken this long to get through EVER before. WE thought perhaps there had been another terrorist attack that we hadn't heard of yet. But no, it just seemed they were taking longer this day.
And this is a photo of Buffalo, as we pass through it. Hanging from MIss CLeo's rearview mirror oyu can see a Marriott parking tag or something, which in all likelihood is still hanging there, cause I never realized it was there until I saw this photo.
We made it back to BrRadford again, where we spent the night. I was looking snazzy, as usual, in my purple t-shirt and firey Superman S boxer shorts! boy howdy!
As I mentioned, everytime we've been in Bradford over the last 6 years, we ate breakfast at the European Pastry shop, and this lady was there every stinking time! I don't know if they had a cot for her in the back or what, but she's always been there. And she's got a great sense of humor as well. She reminds me somewhat of Flo, from Alice, if people are old enough to remember that. Anyway, I wanted to get her photo, and even though she was somewhat reluctant, she joined Auntie Ag in allowing me to photograph her. Too bad I never did get her name.
As we pulled out of the pastry shop parking lot, I got a photo, and you can see the weather. It appaers Bradford was weeping for us as well. The weather was rainy, dark, overcash and dreary as well. The entire trip I don't think the temp got above 70 degree F (although who can tell, those silly Canadians' use Celsuis...you tell me, is it hot or cold when it's 6 C, or how aobut 13C? They all sound cold to me. but i digress...) however, once we got home here, it was about 83 F, and kinda humid. Quite a difference.
And that, kids, was our trip to Toronot, #14, in photo. For those of you who requested it, no I don't have any photos of the guys I was with. I mean, come ON, I'm not the type to kiss and tell. Or well, actually, how about to kiss and take photos? Okay, um, let's try again, how about I didn't have my camera with me when I was with them? Not only does that work as an excuse it has the added benefit of being the truth.
So, I hope you enjoyed the photo posts. I'll resume with more regular posts soon, but frankly, now, I'm kinda wiped out. Blogger wasn't totally cooperative, so this was an ordeal. But for you, I don't mind!
POLT = listening to "Everybody's Changing" by Keane
"Who wants to put on a leotard and get yelleds at?" "Um, well hookers and Spiderman?" - Homer, the Simpsons.
1 comment:
Glad you guys had a good time and Cleo made it there and back. Yes, I remember Flo, Kiss My Grits! I find it Ironic somehow that the Gay bars are located on Church Street.
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