Texas to Toronto: Epic Road Trip
On December 16, 2008 my girlfriend and I left Houston, Tx for a roadtrip to Toronto, Ontario, Canada. We arrived back home on December 23, 2008. This is our trip in photos.
Trip stats:
We drove 3,253.1 miles.
We drove for 54 hours and 57 minutes.
We were in the car for 61 hours and 39 minutes.
We drove through:
Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Michigan on the way up. And... New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and back into Texas on the way back. Of all the states, Ohio was the most annoying. New York was the friendliest. Arkansas was the creepiest.
This is the GPS trip odometer we used for the journey. All settings were at zero when we set off. Ignore the Max Speed stat, I had to reset that... 0_o [As a side note, never take a Garmin into Canada... I spent $100 dollars for the 2009 "North American (US, Canada, etc)" update, and once we crossed the border, it became basically useless. It only listed one highway and literally had ZERO GPS listings for Toronto. As far as it was concerned, Toronto did not exist and there was only one road in ALL OF CANADA. Thanks Garmin!]
The photos start out in Toronto because, frankly, everything leading up to Toronto was somewhat of a bore. Not only that, but we had driven so hard through the mid west that we never really even considered stopping to photograph anything, and we always sort of contented ourselves to "we can just get it on the way back"; which, it turns out, we did.
TORONTO:
This was the city on our first (full) day. Beautiful and snowy.
We stayed at a hostel our first two nights in Toronto in the College & Bloor St area. I managed to not take a single picture of the place for whatever reason. On our third and fourth night, we stayed at the beautiful Hotel le Germain located in the Queens West/Entertainment District.
Our bed and "relaxation late night snack plate."
Kind of Marie Antoinette esque.
The following day we made our way to the roof of the hotel to enjoy some Inniskillin ice wine fondue and authentic maple sugar snow taffy (wherein they use real snow to cool the maple sugar).
The ice wine fondue... Was amazing.
The snow taffy!
You can see the CN Tower behind us, and you can see photos of us in the CN Tower further down the page.
Here are some photos before the snow taffy man arrived to offer us his goodies.
TORONTO / The CN Tower:
We somewhat unintentionally avoided most of the usual tourist destinations during our trip, but we (thankfully) still managed to visit the CN Tower. The images should be fairly self explanatory; world's (now second) tallest building + observation decks = great views.
I might have been a little tired.
The CN Tower's glass floor. Nearly 1400ft above the ground.
TORONTO / The Nightlife:
Toronto has an amazing bar/club scene, and we did our best to get drunk with as many Canadians as possible.
Proper ninja-nightlife attire.
Random.
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Here we have arrived at the Underground Garage Saloon/Boobie Bar/Above Ground/Garage/WTF Bar. The place was terribly fun and the majority of the people were exciting.
Boobies.
This is our French-Canadian friend... Apparently her name sounds like Nunny and/or Money but we were too drunk and/or too American to properly remember.
I'll save the rest of the bar photos for Flickr. Bars we visited: First night was 7 West. Then Red Lion on night two. Then night three or four at GarageBoobieBar. It gets kind of confusing after that.
Now! The aftermath of BoobieGarageUndergroundBar and drunkery.
The thumbs up are for my approval of what is about to happen...
Which is that we find ourselves, YET AGAIN, drunk in another hotel's maintenance room on the roof. It was no less then a month ago, on my birthday, that I was in a very similar room at Hotel ZaZa in Houston.
Serious business as usual.
We also carried on with our drunkness in the hotel's fitness room. Here we can see me in the background walking it off on the treadmill.
And then attempting to pick the lock to get out on the roof...
TORONTO / The Long Goodbye:
Here are some random photos from our last day in Toronto/Canada.
NIAGRA FALLS / The Canadian Side:
We forced ourselves to visit the Falls before we made it back to Texas. It was around 5ยบ F that day, but it was worth it.
The view from our restaurant.
Beneath the Falls in a tunnel.
NEW YORK & OHIO / Fun with Blizzards:
We had to spend the night in Buffalo, NY because of white out conditions on the roads. It added another day to our trip, but it was exciting.
Above is a photo of downtown Buffalo the morning after the snow storm.
Once we made it to Ohio, we were greeted with yet another mild blizzard. We were in this for about 3 to 4 hours.
That is the end for now. The rest of the photos will be up on my Flickr page in the next few days.
FOOD!:
As a foodie, I would just like to quickly address the places we ate at while in Toronto:
Hiro Sushi: The freshest sushi I have tasted outside of Tokyo. Chef Hiro is amazing and the place certainly holds up to it's billing as the best sushi in Toronto. This place could easily be in Shibuya/Shinjuku and fit right in as one of the bests. Do yourself a favor and go here.
Golden Thai: I am obsessed with thai food and curries, and as such I have a rather picky sense in regards to how it should taste (thick, heavy on the flavor and spices, traditional, and hot as hell). Fortunately I was not disappointed here. Not the best I've had, but even just being 'good' is a compliment because finding great thai food is always hard and usually involes trying mulitple places.
BiteMe!: Great modern French food with a wonderful atmosphere/vibe. I tried bone marrow for the first time here. Enjoyed everything about this place. This was my girlfriends favorite place to eat during the trip.
Also, POUTINE... I tried it. Cheese curds and all. Beef gravy. Good food for the winter.