I have five words to say about Toronto: GPS WILL NOT HELP YOU. Not a fan of Toronto, to be honest. Not a fan at all.

Nothing really went right today, and now we’re gonna be up until 1:30am packing for our flight tomorrow morning. *SIGH*

We left an hour later than we wanted to, to pick up the rental car – which was a bitch and a half to find at Pearson International Airport. We found a Timmy Ho’s and tried to order a latte, only to find out Timmy Hos in Toronto don’t serve latte. In fact they don’t seem to sell any “specialty coffee” at all. No latte, no cappuchino. Nothing. Just coffee or tea and that’s it. Oh and hot chocolate. Me without morning coffee… not a happy site. To make it worse, I asked for a white sweetened coffee and got plain black. The people were all speaking french, too! We’re in Ontario, people! Not Quebec! By the time I realised the woman is stupid and can’t take a simple order there was a huge line… so in the bin the sodomised excuse for coffee went.

By the time we got to Budget Rent-A-Car, both of us were in bad moods. The coffee incident pissed me off, and Wendy unfortunately got the brunt of it, which i’ve since apologised for. If the lady had said we were in the wrong place, I seriously think I was going to cut a bitch. We ended up taking a GPS system, but keeping the smaller car. It was a little more than we were originally quoted but nothing to horrendous and we can cover it.

Then we got lost trying to get out of the airport. Seriously, it’s just not a roadtrip with us if we don’t get lost at some point. Anyway we finally found where we were going and tried to get to the Hockey Hall Of Fame. Except we didn’t want to drive to the HHOF, we needed to park nearby. But we didn’t have the exact address of where we wanted, so we tried to get as close as possible. GPS didn’t like that very much.

Anyway after finally finding where we were going, getting cut off, cutting others off, we found a parking garage near the HHOF. It was $3.00 for every 30 mins, and $12 for all day. Holy bejeezus. We didn’t want to put in a $20 in case it didn’t give us change – that’s happened before in Chicago. So we tried Wendy’s Australian credit card. Didn’t like that. Tried the CAD Travel Card, it accepted that. Go figure. Got parking paid for, looked for an exit. Found one – notice on the door stating the exit was closed due to road works. Tried to find another exit. Got lost in the parking building. FINALLY found our way out to the street.

Walked down to the HHOF, and into the mall where the entrance is. By this stage, it was 12pm, and 2 hours LATER than we wanted it to be. So we had Maccas for lunch – bleh. Wendy got a small filet-o-fish meal… ate the burger, half the fries and drank half the drink. Seriously their small here is like our large back home, and you can’t get smaller, it’s ridiculous. I went classic and got a big mac meal. He managed to eat the whole thing. Then, guess where we went…

STARBUCKS! OMFG they actually served Latte’s! I thought I was going to kneel down and kiss the floor of the place. A message to Timmy Ho’s of Ontario… screw you, Starbucks WINS hands down!

We went into the gift store first and got some things – mostly for our friend Dianne but also for us, some Carolina Hurricanes things and a couple of HHOF shirts for us since they were on special. And a Buffalo Sabres official game puck since it was $7 (awesome because they were $12 at the game!). Once we were loaded with stuff, we went into the HHOF.

HOMG. Just… HOMG! We walked around for 3 hours. We won’t bore you with details, but Wendy got teary when she saw Brett Hull’s display in the NHL Legends section. We saw the original Lord Stanley’s Cup, which is in a vault in glass! And then we toured all the other NHL trophies before we got to the big one. The current Stanley Cup. Actually it was the replica. The actual current Stanley Cup is in Minnesota today. But hell, it was close enough. We got photos taken with it and talked to the handler and it was awesome. I had a go on the “be a player” and “be a goalie” interactive games but Wendy chose not to. Needless to say, I wont be playing in the NHL anytime soon. Wendy took a photo of Lliam Webster’s jersey in the WORLD OF HOCKEY display, and we got to see the limited time display of the History of Olympic Medals for both winter and summer games. It was really interesting to see how each country designed their medals.

From there we decided to go to Niagra Falls. You can’t come this close and not go to the Falls, right? So we loaded up the GPS (again) and headed to Niagra. We got there around 5pm. We couldn’t find anywhere to park and stop and take photos because all the parking lots were $14 straight up! UGH! But we saw them. Impressive. But fucking annoyed we couldn’t stop to get photos! We continued on to the HSBC Arena. Border Control/Customs was a breeze. The guy was very nosy about what kind of jobs we did that gave us 6.5 weeks off. Wendy’s like “I saved up my holidays…” etc. Anyway, they let us though and off we went to HSBC.

Found the HSBC Arena okay. Got a park about 4 blocks away, but it was $5 so we weren’t complaining. Met up with this couple who were there from Niagra to watch the game. He was a Leafs fan, she was a Sabres fan, and they ended up walking with us to the arena, just talking. We got inside, found a souvenir stand, bought a Buffalo Sabres shot glass to go with our collection of shotglasses for every city we go to, and then got some pizza for dinner and found our seats. The pizza was typical hockey food… big, cheap and kinda tasty. I guess you have to be there to understand.

The game was awesome! Wendy wanted the Sabres to win, so i went for the Panthers. Personally i didn’t care who won.. the sport of hockey was the true winner for both of us. The glass seats we had were almost on the blue line, so we saw a LOT of huge hits into the glass in front of us, and saw up close how fast those shots really are. I was wearking a Dallas Stars hat, and had people behind me mumbling “Is that a Stars cap, what’s he doing here”. I almost responded.. but decided to behave myself and leave them alone. The Sabres were sloppy on the PP and PK, and the Panthers simply outplayed them for most the game, eventually winning 6-2. Thomas Vanek was incredible to watch… super fast, great hands and a wicked shot. He came so close to scoring but hit the pipe! Ryan Miller forgot his game and really messed up a few times leading to Panthers goals.

After the game we walked back to the car and headed home… a move that should have been a simple “drive north” type thing, but alas, we decided to find food and coffee to keep us awake. Afterall, it was 10pm when we left Buffalo and we had a 2hr drive back to Toronto. Customs were great and super quick, and after paying the toll… did you know Canada charge a toll to cross the border? Sheesh! Anyway, after going through the border we head north and take a turnoff to get some food; Timmy Ho’s BLT Combo (Coffee, BLT sandwich & Donut). So far so good… until we head back to the road and, along with the help of our great yet annoying GPS… get lost.

That’s right people, we had a GPS and still managed to get lost! 15 minutes later we’re finally on the freeway again and heading north, until we find where the 403 and the 407 split… the GPS, being is saying take the 407 Express Tollway. WTF.. we don’t want a tollway, so we take the 403 – and head the wrong direction! All of a sudden we’re in Guelph or something. The GPS meanwhile is “recalculating” to get us back where we wanted to go (hotel). So we follow her directions and finally get onto the 407! That’s right, the bloody tollway we avoided that started this mess was where we finally ended up. More than a few expletives were issued by the 2 of us!

We eventually got to the hotel, got the parking pass and headed up to the hotel. By this time it’s 12:20am… did we mention we had to be up at 5:30am?

So that’s our 1 day in Toronto… only 2 things went right; the Hockey Hall of Fame and the Buffalo Sabres game. That’s right folks, in order to have a good time in Toronto other than the HHOF, we had to go BACK TO THE USA! UGH! Whodathunkit!

It’s now 2:10am so off to bed we go.