weekend round-up

We spent this weekend in the big bad city of Toronto!  And what a weekend it was!!  Rolled into town about 10pm Friday night, checked into our great hotel (thank you Hotwire) and rolled into Chinatown for midnight dinner at Rol San.  We ate ourselves pretty much silly and thank gosh for our walk back to the hotel cuz otherwise I'm scared to think about what shape my tummy would have been in.

Saturday up and in for a quick bite of breakfast in Yorkville and on to Harry Rosen to spend Marc's money.  And boy did we ever.  Marc, god bless his heart, gave himself a proper conservative budget to stick to, walked into the store and promptly doubled that.  A man after my own heart.  Left yuppy town and headed back down to Queen West for a visit home.  And by home I mean Fluevog where I brought those perfect shoes from last week into my life.  Onwards to finish up a couple of errands and on to Criminal Records to celebrate Record Store Day in style.  We picked up 3 great vinyl records, all of which came with digital copies of the record which is my new favourite thing ever.  Lord knows if I buy the CD, nobody's handing me the vinyl!  This way I'm getting the best of both worlds and I love that it seems more and more bands are working this way.  Post shopping, our Toronto friend was lovely enough to host all 10 of us for dinner before heading to the Neko Case show (separate post about this show entirely deserved so stay tuned).    Spent the next couple hours in musical heaven, bliss, perfection -- whatever you want to call it.  I can barely talk about the show without getting choked up.  Instead let's talk about the 1am burritos we had from the Burrito Banditos at Peter and Queen.  Best late night booze snack I've probably ever had and by the time we got back to the hotel I had most of it on my jacket and pants.  It was entirely worth it.

Sunday up and out for a quick crepe breakfast and on the road to Orillia where the Saltcoats had their audition for the Mariposa Folk Festival.  Then we pretty much rushed home to rescue my parents from the task of babysitting Sadie.  Apparently she behaved like a donkey all weekend so once again, Sadie has embarrassed us with her poor social etiquette.  Sigh.....oh puppyhood, please end soon!!

All in all, a brilliant trip and one that I had nothing to do with the planning of, which could have easily been stressful for me.  I'm usually the one who buys the concert tickets, finds hotels, picks places for dinner but this trip was entirely planned by other people and I gotta say, it was a pretty awesome feeling to be moreorless completely clueless about most things.  Talk about stress-free!  All I had to do was follow around and take my wallet out every once in awhile.  

And here's a note about Hotwire -- it was brilliant.  Now, I wouldn't use it for a city I'd never been to nor would I use it on a really killer important trip like a honeymoon or anniversary or something like that - something where it really did matter what neighbourhood you stayed in or what the rooms looked like and you weren't super concerned with staying as cheap as you can.  But for a concert trip like this or for a work trip, where it really doesn't matter where you stay and in a city you're totally familiar with, I will 100% use it again.  We got a $200 hotel room for $54 U.S smack downtown.   Excellent stuff.

Yay for weekend trips out of town!!!!