Toronto
Saturday
Saturday was our day to shop at the Eaton Center. The Eaton Center is one of the largest malls in the world, or the oldest, or the best, or something like that. Needless to say it has the potential to make any man cry and any woman celebrate. At first, she walked into some stores which were familiar to her from the U.S.A. and she was very disappointed that even with the beneficial exchange rate it wasn't as good of a deal, and in fact sometimes cost more. After explaining that imports usually would cost more, she went into other stores, "that simply looked slightly different from American stores [she] knew" and lo and behold the credit card started flying. Like a little American Express Ninja she shopped high, she shopped low, she basically accounted for a large percentage of Canada's GDP that day. I think the day of shopping could best be summed up by her line, "It's just like America, but a little different... and cheaper."
After the shopping we again ran over to our new best friend, T.O. Tics to get some more 50% tickets, this time for the comedy club the Laugh Resort. We then got ready for her surprise- dinner at 360.
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360 was probably the best idea I had and the best experience we had for the entire trip. On top of the CN Tower (the tallest structure in the world), there is a revolving restaurant. For only 45 Canadian Dollars you get the pre-fixe menu with appetizer, dinner and dessert. To me, this was the deal of the century... for only 30 bucks American I'm basically spending half of what I would in Manhattan to get a dinner that's at a nicer quality restaurant, and best yet, the highest restaurant in the world! To all of the guys reading this, if you screw up everything in Toronto, you can save yourself simply by taking your date here.
Sunday
Sunday was airport preparation day. After packing and checking out of the hotel we took a taxi over to the Ontario Science Center. It was here that I was reminded I was in Canada every 10 seconds as I couldn't get away from the French signs. Every sign was written in English and then in French to the point it looked like a multicultural billboard... "Toilet... La Toile per Homme"
We did all of these goofy hands on experiments that were supposed to teach us things, but we just had more fun punching and pulling the levers. I highly recommend heading over to the sports section where you can see how your physical skills compare to the rest of the world. We learned that my wife has a stronger grip than me, which did nothing for my self-esteem... although she walked around the rest of the day squeezing things with her amazing strong grip.
After that it was a taxi ride home and then the Airport Express bus back to the airport. At the airport the woman at the counter seemed to get an immense pleasure from telling us that they overbooked the flight and while my wife had a seat, I no longer did. She kept us at the counter for a little while explaining we could never get on the 5 o'clock flight (which it turns out we could) and don't bet on getting the 7 o'clock which was over booked by 89 passengers. To make the long flight a short story, we were on the 7'oclock flight and home in no time. I'm not sure why some Air Canada employees seemed to enjoy frightening us but the second customer service representative seemed to imply that the first one didn't know what she was talking about and proved it by getting us on the flight.
All in all, I have to say that Toronto is now one of my top 5 favorite cities and I can't wait to visit Canada again. It's a calmer and cheaper costing version of Manhattan, and at times the differences that come about make the change all the more refreshing.
Read part 1