Toronto...EH!

We crossed the boarder at Niagara Falls and made the 90 minute drive up the coast of Lake Ontario. Upon crossing the boarder, Hillary and I both got text message from Verizon welcoming us to Canada and reminding us that we are now roaming and calls would be 89 cents a minute, texts would be about a dollar a piece for received and sent messages and data was crazy expensive. Needless to say, we put our phones in "airplane mode" for the 24 hours that we would be in Canada. I don't think you realize how much you use your phone everyday until you sped a day without the use of one. We couldn't check the score of the Wimboldon Final (surprisingly Hillary was more upset by that than I was), no texts to anyone. Just email over the hotel wifi, and I can remember the last time I made a phone call from the actual hotel phone.

Many people think Toronto is an extension of the US, and in some ways it is with all the franchises that are around. We stayed in a Holiday Inn with a Perkins attached to it. But realized that ESPN was nowhere to be found on the channel lineup. 

A few things we learned was the price of things in Canada compared to the US. Of course everything is in metric measurements. When you see gas prices that look like this:

You get excited and think, "Wow, we have to fill up here!" Only to realize that it's based on the liter and gas is actually $5.04 a gallon after doing the conversion.

With parking in Toronto being so expensive, we opted for public transportation and took a bus to the subway downtown for the game. 

The Blue Jays play in the Rogers Centre (formally named Sky Dome) which was opened in 1989 and was the first stadium to feature a retractable roof and built-in hotel. The stadium was one of the last round "multi-purpose" stadiums to be built. While I'm sure it was state-of-the-art at the time, the building is starting to show its age and is well over due for a major renovation. 

As you can see in the picture below, the dome was closed for the day with a threat of rain.

Also note the stadium used two yellow painted nets as foul poles. My guess is to keep the obstructed views to a minimum.

After the game, we decided to see if we could have dinner at the 360 Restaurant located at the top of the CN tower. It was a last minute decision and learned quickly that you need to have reservations well in advance. We weren't too depressed as Canada charges an arm and a leg at restaurants. What would be a $35-$40 tab at TGI Fridays is a $75 dollar tab in Canada. Eating dinner back in the US sounded pretty good if it wasn't going to be an experience in Canada.

We took the subway and bus back to our hotel and got ready for the drive back to the US. We still had $8 left in Canadian money and didn't feel like getting ripped off at an exchange booth on the way back to convert it back to American money. So we did the next "smartest" thing and bought $8 worth of gas. Again, we learned at the equivalent of $5 a gallon, the needle hardly moved on $8 of gas in Canada.

Had to share this picture, note how the license plate is mounted:

As we approached the boarder, we noticed that two of the three entrances in the US were backed up 1-2 hours due to heavy truck traffic. Luckly for us, the Niagara Falls bridge that we crossed, doesn't allow commercial trucks and were able to get across quickly. 

Once back in the US, I immediately turned my phone back on to check the Wimboldon score. It was exciting to hear that Andy Murray won and, again, surprised that Hillary was more excited than I was. This is coming from the same person that once said a tennis match is equally exciting as watching paint dry.

We decided to have dinner in Buffalo, NY which is about halfway to Erie, PA (our stop for the night. We found a local BBQ restaurant called Fat Bob's Smokehouse. 

We are outside on the patio and enjoyed a great meal.

We made our way to Erie PA around 11:30pm and crashed for the night.

Next up... Cleveland!