I'm breaking this trip post into smaller posts so the photos don't fill an entire page, or something like that.
We have just returned from a 4-day trip to Toronto and Niagara Falls. It was technically a school field trip but limited to a few select students...probably those who could afford it.
Details are sketchy but we got an email earlier this year when the kids were still in 3rd grade. it occurred the weekend before Fall Break so they only had to miss one day of school. There was not a lot of communication throughout the year and Nightingale was the contact because down here it is assumed only the Mom is in charge of the children. We didn't get an itinerary until Sept 23rd.
I don't know why the trip wasn't planned better. We left at the buttcrack of dawn on Friday (10/4) and returned just before midnight (10/7). The trip was so expensive as it was that I cannot imagine that a more convenient flight would have added too much to the total.
FRIDAY
Our first day was such a clusterF. We arrive in Toronto around 11 am local time. We find our tour guide and she offers lunch at either Tim Horton's at the airport or a Denny's near our next destination. They don't have Dennys' in the South so most of our crew didn't have an idea that we would be eating at the Love Child of IHOP and Waffle House. We chose Denny's because we thought it would be cheaper than Airport Horton's. Boy were we wrong.
This would have been fine had it not taken so long to get everyone together. By the time we got to Denny's, it was mid-afternoon and we would be eating our free* dinner 3 hours later. I don't expect a lot from Denny's. It's the cheap place to goto after a night of drinking and you just need to soak up last night's sins. But this Denny's failed to achieve even that much. The food was expensive, terrible and expensive.
And because we ate lunch so late in the day, even with walking around the ROM, most of us were not hungry when we got to Hot House.Hot House has a great menu but for a tour group, it is understandable that they would limit the menu to quick, easy, and cheap items because they aren't getting much profit off us. Still, they failed to meet this minimal standard.
BTW, ignore the estimated time stamps on the itinerary. Even Island Time is more accurate than this. We did get to our next destination, the Observatory Deck of the C.N. Building in time to see the skyline at dusk. For some reason, in my old age, I no longer like heights.
We got to our hotel late and all we want to do is sleep. We are next to the airport but we are so exhausted it doesn't matter. also the planes stopped around 11 pm.
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