The Five Part Journey

I spent the past weekend in Toronto. It was lovely, up until precisely 5:39pm on Sunday evening. But I'll get to that in a bit.
Marissa and I wanted to see the Mystical Landscapes Exhibition at the AGO, so we took a trip to Toronto. I also took the opportunity to visit Emily and Alison. We arrived very late on Friday evening, so much so that we just chatted for a bit before heading to bed. On Saturday, Marissa and I went for brunch with her aunt at FRANK, the restaurant at the AGO. (Emily had brunch with her roommates and friends celebrating a belated birthday). The brunch at the AGO was lovely. I started with a pastry platter, which had two mini croissants with butter and jam and two mini chocolate croissants. For the main course we all had eggs benedict: a croissant with smoked trout, poached eggs, and hollandaise sauce with roast potatoes on the side. Marissa's aunt insisted on having dessert, so I had tiramisu gelato with a delicious caramel sauce and 'churro dust'. To top it all off, a lovely cup of tea.
We then met up with the others to see the exhibition. The exhibition had timed entry, so we looked around the rest of the AGO for a little bit before heading to the exhibition. The exhibition was advertised as "Mystical Landscapes: Monet, Van Gogh, and more". I was under the impression that it would be primarily Van Gogh and Monet, with some other artists. To my disappointment, it was the other way around: primarily other artists with a handful of Monets and two Van Goghs. Overall it was still a great exhibition; there were some paintings by Emily Carr and Paul Gauguin, who stayed with Van Gogh at one point. One of my favourite paintings was Crystal Castle in the Sea by Wenzel Hablik.

One of the Van Gogh paintings was Starry Night over the Rhone, which was on load from Musee D'Orsay. Which is where I had seen that painting for the first time. So now I've seen it twice (still just as good the second time around). The Monet paintings were some of his famous Rouen Cathedral paintings, some of which I had also seen before. I enjoyed the exhibition, but had been hoping to see more Van Gogh and Monet. And the audio guide was on the artistic interpretation side of things, whereas I prefer to hear about the facts of the painting.
After we finished the exhibition, we continued to look around the rest of the AGO. It's much bigger than I thought. And as with every gallery, very easy to lose track of where you are. I'm not sure if we actually saw everything or not. We did see most of it though. The last section we walked through was in the basement where they have the miniature boat models. Miniature is a relative term, some of the models were the size of kayaks. But all very impressive; the amount of detail on the models is astounding.
We then went out for dinner where I had chicken wonton nachos (very good) and stopped at Michaels to grab some supplies for a t-shirt making party we are having later this week. Then we headed back to Emily's apartment for a pit stop before Alison, Marissa and I went to see the Toronto Light Festival. It's a collection of light installations in the Distillery District. It was pretty neat and I got some cool pictures of some of them.

On Sunday we slept in and spent the afternoon at a board game cafe. We discovered a game called Codenames, which we all really enjoyed. I'd like to play it again in the future. At 4:30 we decided to head back to Emily's apartment so that Marissa and I could get ready to catch our train.
And this is where the weekend derails (no pun intended).
Our train back to Stratford leaves at 5:40pm. We leave Emily's apartment at 5:20. It's cutting it close, but Google says it's a 15min walk so I'm not too worried. But despite walking quickly the whole way there we arrive at the station at 5:38. Our train isn't listed on any of the screens around the station. Panicking, we ask the info desk where train 87 is leaving from.
Info Desk Attendant: Train 87? I don't know about a train 87! Where does that go??
She was less than helpful and was wasting valuable time. I go to a different desk and ask if they know where train 87 is boarding.
Info Desk Attendant #2: Oh, that's probably left already. *checks with someone on the walkie talkie* Yeah that train just left.
I know you're all thinking we should have given ourselves more time to get to the train station. That's probably true. But I would also like to state that the train left 2mins early. And Union station is a nightmare.
That was the last train to Stratford for the day, so we were not going back to Stratford by train Sunday evening. There were a few options:
1. Stay at Emily's another night and take the Monday morning train to Stratford and be late for class.
2. Somehow get to Waterloo and sleep at Marissa's parent's house and get a ride with a carpool to Stratford Monday morning.
3. Somehow get to Waterloo or London and get our parents to drive us to Stratford.
We decided to try #3 via Waterloo. Marissa called her mom to make sure this was a plan that could happen and we quickly got on the 6:00 GO bus to Mississauga, where we would switch GO buses at Square One and go to Waterloo from there. Neither of us are sure whether our presto cards have enough money on them to pay for the ticket. Mine had just enough; Marissa's did not. We think that we'll have to get off but turns out you can pay with cash (who knew?). I lend Marissa some cash and we're through. We get on the bus, and while still shaken, I'm glad we've figured out a way to get back to Stratford fairly quickly. Although, I had the issue of not having enough money on my presto card to pay for the second bus ticket.
Around 6:45, Marissa is not sure we're on the right bus because she doesn't recognize the route we're on. I check the map on my phone and sure enough, we are nowhere near Square One. We are on the edge of Mississauga and about to go to Milton. I suggest we get off, because Milton definitely is not where we want to be. At this point, we're both tired, cold, and desperately want to get home in one piece.
So I decide to call up Sheila, whom with which I stayed with over the summer. I asked if she would be willing to come pick us up and drive us to Square One, so that we could get on the next bus. Thankfully she wasn't doing anything and was willing to come rescue us. The drive from the edge of Mississauga to Square One was explaining to Sheila the night Marissa and I had had. When we arrive at Square One, we see the bus that we are supposed to be getting on to. Marissa and I decide that instead of rushing and potentially missing it, we'll wait for the next bus which comes in just under an hour. We grab dinner at the nearby Starbucks and buy tickets for the bus at a kiosk there.
Finally the bus arrives and we get on, this time sure that it is the right bus. It take just over an hour to us to get to Waterloo. The bus stops at the university; it was strange being back there. I haven't been there since second year. Entire buildings have gone up in the time I've been gone.
Marissa's mom met us there and drove us to Stratford. I have never before been so glad to see this apartment. I had intended on doing some school work Sunday evening because the train would've arrived in Stratford around 8pm. When we finally pulled up in front of our apartment, it was 10:30. I was going to bed.
That, my friends, was our five part journey. It will surely become something to laugh at in the future, but for now we're simply calling it a comedy of errors.

BFFLAATs Take TO: Take 4

The yearly tradition of me going to visit Emily (and now Alison) in Toronto for a weekend continues. I was able to stay for a little longer this year because I don't have school on Fridays. I arrived Thursday evening and we went to see Mariah Carey perform at the unveiling of The Bay holiday windows. There was a large crowd filling the street and we weren't sure where Mariah would be performing. We did manage to eventually worm our way further into the crowd, but we still couldn't see a stage. Mariah eventually came on stage after the Mayor of Toronto and CEO of Hudson's Bay Company spoke for a few minutes. We couldn't see her at all, but there was a screen that was projecting the whole thing. I did see her at one point when I jumped above the rest of the crowd and I caught a glimpse of her in her predictably red dress. Add Mariah Carey to the list of famous people I've seen with my own eyes.

On Friday we went to Snakes and Lattes Board Game Cafe. It took us a while to walk there, but it was worth it. They have so many different games. We played one called Sushi Go Party, which once we got the hang of it, was a lot of fun. It's a card based game by Gamewright, whose games I've played before and enjoyed. We played a number of games and ended up staying at the cafe for the whole afternoon. We headed home and made dinner (pasta with a rose meat sauce - very delicious) with our friend Justine. It was really good to be able to see her again.
Saturday morning I took on the role of model for Emily's roommate, Nicola. She was doing a photography assignment on lighting and needed a model, so I was assigned to the role. It was a lot of fun, and also something I'm not keen to do again. It feels great to have your photo taken and to have the fancy lights and reflectors, but staying in the same pose for an hour at a time or trying to recreate a pose multiple times get tiring. For one position, I was leaning all of my weight on my crossed leg and I promptly lost all feeling in my lower leg. I could touch my foot and I didn't feel anything. When we were done it took me 5mins to try and get feeling back in my foot again. I can't wait to see the photos though. I'm sure Nicola made me look much better than I usually do.
After the photoshoot was done, we headed to a cafe that made #freakshakes, which are these milkshakes that have entire desserts perched on top of them. I got a surprise version, which came with a chocolate milkshake topped with Nutella, whip cream, a mini cupcake, two powdered donuts and lots of sprinkles. They also offered a version which came with a full size donut and a fudgsicle on top. On the way to the cafe we stopped in this store that has a bunch of random props everywhere, including these absolutely massive picture frames. It was a really neat store to look around in.

For dinner we went to a pub type restaurant across from the movie theatre, where we each got poutine. Alison got a popcorn chicken poutine, Emily got a smoked brisket poutine, and I got the poutine sampler which came with the standard poutine, the popcorn chicken poutine, and a pulled pork poutine. It was delicious.
Of course, the tradition of the visit to Toronto is to see the next Hunger Games movie. Unfortunately those are finished now, so we found another movie with a November premiere date that we all wanted to see. Thus, after we finished dinner we crossed the road to the theatre to see Doctor Strange. It was a really good movie, and pretty different from other Marvel movies. But they still managed to tie it into the MCU. And I'm very happy to hear that Doctor Strange will be making appearances in future Marvel movies.
I had to leave fairly early on Sunday morning to come back to Stratford, so Emily made pancakes for breakfast and I was off. I got a ride with my friend Mara, so the ride was much more enjoyable than riding public transit. I ended up going skating at one of the Stratford arenas in the evening with a couple of guys from GBDA. It cost $5 which might be a bit much for skating, but it was enjoyable. I'm not quite at the level of skating as the guys I was skating with (they both play hockey), so at the beginning we were spread out on the rink. After a while we were starting to tire, so we just started doing laps together and chatting. There were only 6 other people on the ice, so there was lots of space. It was an adults only skate as well, so there wasn't any kids which was nice. It was good exercise. I set a new record on my Misfit (fitness tracker). The way the misfit works is you get points based on how much you move. It's approximately one point for 100 steps, but if you're doing something more intense than walking, you get more points. Unfortunately, I think some things got mixed up with the time change, so things aren't registering correctly. But I reached my daily goal of 600 points with just the skating.
A very busy and enjoyable weekend!

HOW IS HE SO CUTE HERE

He also looks so young. This man is impossible.

156. Are you watching TV right now?
Nope, bout to beat my dad in some Rummikub