Jo Knits!

Toronto, the end

This is the last entry of the weekend in Toronto. Pics might be added another day, I have been lazy! LOL!

Tomorrow, back to more regular blogging about knitting! Yes, I have knitted since Toronto! Just wait and see what. :)

Monday,

Woke up bright and early, we want to make the most out of this last day in town. So off we walk to the Eaton Centre, we need a new bag to bring bag our new stuff. 1st stop breakfast, we stopped at Saint Cinnamon and got some coffee and a sticky chewy incredibly deliciously sweet pecan cinnamon roll! They are the best just a tad still hot from the over. Oh my, my mouth waters as I type this! LOL! We were eager to start shopping but stores only open at 10am and we had time to kill, so we basically walked around the mall and outside too. We went back into it and found a store that sold mostly bags and luggage, perfect, just what we wanted to buy after all. Well... they had some luggages on sale that had the VIA Rail logo printed on them, since we took the Via Rail train to come to Toronto it was almost to fuuny to see those. So, we bought two! LOL! A matching his and hers set, aren't we just too cute. ;) The bags have wheels in the bottom, with a handle so we can pull your bag when it's to heavy or convert them into a backpack too. So we happily went back to the hotel, check out was at noon so we still had some time to prepare. Got all our stuff into our new luggage, put my new Booga bag project in my little handy backpack so that I could knit whenever I had the time. We wanted to get our bags checked in for our train that would leave 12 hours later, no use having all the heavy gear with us and slow us down all day. ;) Took the subway, I just loved taking it and got off at the train station. We thought we had to pay to have our bags taken in at the luggage 'daycare' but if we wanted to have our bags on a seperate wagon on the train then it would be free, being cheap, I mean frugal, we went with the free option.

Dh got a call and he would have to go work for a few hours. I took this time alone as a sign.... must go find more yarn! teehee! So I hopped on the streetcar all on my own and went back to Romni Wools! :) Then, I just stayed there for as long as I could. LOL! Looked through all the Fiber Trends patterns, all the hats and then kids patterns and sadly they didn't have the Fiber Trends #AC-16 pattern in store. The seller did still help me with the wool I should get for the pattern (best to buy wool in Toronto, than in Montreal), silly me just don't have a pattern to go with my wool! :-P Then I walk throughout the store and got some cute printed sock yarn the brand is called Sisu, which I never heard of previously but the colors were fun so I went with those. I splurged on bamboo dpn's simply because I have never used any bamboo needles before and hear the yarn nice to knit with. The customer service at this store is AWESOME, the seller was almost as excited as I was about my purchases! LOL! Oh wait, now that I have some yarn for socks, I need a pattern to knit some. Since I wouldn't have access to the internet all day and was eager to try out these new needles I needed a pattern. There book collection was really nice, I got to read though many books I had heard about on blogs. I spotted a books and knitting with printed yarns, now there's an idea. I have seen before some Regia/Opal/etc. socks that just didn't do justice to the stitch pattern someone had knitted with their yarn or sometimes printed yarns just look funny in a certain pattern. I know I already have some Regia at home and plain old stockinette socks can be boring when knitting a few pairs in a row. So I did buy that interesting books, it's from Lucy Neatby's and is called Cool Socks Warm Feet. I guess it's a pretty good book, as I have seen a few bloggers buying or referring to it since I got back. I wouldn't have thought of buying this book before hand, a book about socks? A 128 page book with only 6 patterns for socks in it? Well, I do not regret my purchase, it is mostly a how-to book about socks and talks about everything in it to achieve socks that you will like AND that will FIT! ;) After saying my goodbyes to the Romni staff and saying that I hope to come back some day, which they didn't seem too worried about. I left and started my walk back to the Eaton Centre to meet back with Carl. Ooooh a Second Cup coffee shop was just on my way so I stopped and got myself a yummy vanilla latte, it was just the drink I needed to put some beat in my walk. LOL! I was smiling at everyone, couldn't have been happier at that moment. I saw where Arton Beads was (apparently a neat beads shop) but it was packed and it said no drinks inside. Since I had just bought my latte, I sure wasn't going to throw it out! ;) We have nice beads stores in Montreal so my main focus was really all about yarn in Toronto.

Once I get to our meeting point, I call dh just to learn that he is in the mall too. So we meetup and I happily show off the Sisu yarn I bought! LOL! We went at the food area and while he ate sushi (OMG! I even tasted sushi...) I went right at it with my new yarn and started swatching. I decided that I liked the fabric the 3mm dpn's were giving me so I didn't have worry about going back to Romni for another set of smaller ones before we were leaving. The rest of our day was spent just walking around shopping and sightseeing. We went back to the CN Tower but only at the gift shop, found a coffee mug for my mom and I got a postcard for my friend Crystal. Wrote to her and sent it right away. We then went for supper at Taco Bell, woohoo! Should've gone more often but we just didn't have time. I thought Taco Bell was a nice fast food option from the regular hamburger and fries places. Wish we had one in Montreal, I love mexican food and a little taco always makes me happy. ;)

So the day went by and the evening flew by even faster, it was weird seeing that our time in Toronto was getting shorter by the minute. We went into Union Station pretty early (9pm, our train is leaving at 11:30pm), dh was eager to hop on the train again. LOL! We went right to the 1st class lounge and I just knitted away on my booga bag. Dh went for a little walk around the train and the subway terminal he came back and said a few restaurants were still opened. We walked around and checked out the food available to us. LOL! I went for cinnamon sticks (which are basically cinammon roll leftover that they cut into strips) they were served with cream cheese frosting, oh my goodness, fat-o-rama heaven! LOL! Dh went for a sub sandwich, we are very into sub's these past few weeks, eat some at least once a week. Finally when we got back to the lounge, I stole half of dh's sub and then we shared my cinnamon sticks. Still time was like frozen, soon enough we would have to board and leave this city that has made my wildest dreams into reality. Ok, so many dreams weren;t that wild! LOL! I still didn't think they could all be realised in a weekend.

The ride home was fun, we had a beer in the lounge car, then went to sleep. It was still a weird night to sleep, it's not all that easy to sleep in a train but hey, it's fun. Carl woke up at 5am and I got up a tad later we ate our lovely breakfast while talked to the Via worker, she was the one who was working in the lounge car and sold snacks from a little window. Us 1st class people get free breakfast both those in coach have to pay for coffee or snacks so she sells them. She was a true sweetheat, couldn't believe how gorgeous my Noro Kureyon yarn was, said it sure was worth the cost. LOL! See why I liked her? ;) I love little jars of jams, our breakfast had some and dh told her how I thought the little jars were so cute. Well once someone has finished their breakfast they have to throw away the jars even if the seal isn't broken. Well.... I ended up leaving the train with 8 tiny jars in my bag. Little things like that make me happy, it didn't costs anything but it sure made my stay in the train a tad more happy.

Once we got into the Montreal train station, we had to run, get our luggage and take the metro/subway right away. Why? The public transportations were on strike, there was a metro and bus service from 6-9am and then 3-6:30pm and then 11pm-1am. If you miss the time slot, you'd have to wait a few hours before taking the public transport. NOT very fun, this strike has lasted a long 7 days. Luckily today everything is back to normal. It sure makes you realise how much you depend on public transport when living in a big city with no car.

Thanks for reading about my weekend in Toronto! :)
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I was lucky enough to have lived my dream, my expectations were exceeded in every possible way and I can NOT wait until next time Carl and I get to travel together. Hey, I love my kids but leaving them for the 1st time ever for a couple of days has rejuvenated me and made me feel that *I* am a person, other than a mom and that I am lucky to have Carl as a life partner. This weekend has helped us see that we truely do love each other and it was nice to remember it! LOL!

hugs,