My parents have flown back to Nova Scotia, so the vacation is now officially over. We’ve set about recovering from the time away and resuming our daily lives. We both have tomorrow off and plan to relax a little, but soon it’ll be time for the office and the gym and groceries and bills and blah blah blah.
We had one last farewell to the festivities last night, having dinner at Fieramosca with my parents and my aunt and uncle from Guelph. Now every member of my immediate family, and Nellie’s, has been there with us at least once. It was, as always, a terrific evening and a good way to cap things off.
Actually, getting my parents to the airport on time was a bit of an adventure. We booked a car from Autoshare to drive them and Nellie went across the street to pick it up. After fifteen minutes she still hadn’t shown up (the car is parked right across the street) so we were all puzzled. Ten minutes after that I was starting to get a little worried, but five minutes later she appeared. See, the downtown core was slammed today: Nuit Blanche has shut down some streets and both the Toronto waterfront marathon and the Run for the Cure were on today. This meant road not only closures, but also that thousands of people who’d just finished running were trying to drive out of the city…and we were already thirty minutes behind our (conservative, admittedly) schedule. Calling a cab would’ve taken too long so we drove anyway; after crawling along Queen Street we thought we were home free on University…until we saw that Word on the Street was blocking the entirety of Queen’s Park. Apparently it’s festival weekend in Toronto. Anyway, after a slight diversion around WotS we booted up Avenue and cruised to the airport, arriving in plenty of time for their flight. We think.
.:.
I saw some really great places on our trip — highlights include the view from Domme, walking around the old centre of Sarlat, the rooms at the Relais Franc Mayne and pretty much all of Paris — but the five days spent at the chateau with so many friends and family, in such a phenomenal location, for such an auspicious occasion, is really what I’ll remember about the trip. It was just one great memory piled on top of the next. As I said before, it was a once-in-a-lifetime happening. I can’t believe it’s only been a week since we left. Already I miss it terribly.
.:.
One more good thing about France:
- Original weight: 233
- Weight last week: 227
- Weight this week: 221.5
Yup…I actually lost weight, despite a steady infusion of pain au chocolate and booze. I may have lost even more than those 5.5 pounds but put a bit back on once I arrived in Toronto.
Clearly I need to spend more time in France.
.:.
Given how many times I’ve watched these two movies, I can’t believe I didn’t notice this before now:
“The (toy) bear that Jack Ryan brings home to his daughter at the end of The Hunt for Red October is the exact same bear that Bruce Willis brings to his son in Die Hard (both films were directed by John McTiernan).”
[via John Sakamoto]
[tags]fieramosca, autoshare, nuit blanche, toronto waterfront marathon, run for the cure, word on the street, relais franc mayne, domme, sarlat, die hard, hunt for red october[/tags]
