Monday, June 30, 2014

Celebrating Six Looked Something Like This

Yesterday was our sixth anniversary. (You can click here to read my oh-so-amazing post about six years of marriage if you haven't seen it yet.) We celebrated early by leaving the kids with our friends on Friday night and heading into Toronto for some anniversary celebrations. Not completely unlike our marriage, we had made plans and some of them worked, and some of them didn't.

We got to our hotel and, since we were a little short on time we decided to drive to our restaurant of choice instead of taking public transit. And then we realized our restaurant was smack dab in the middle of Gay Pride celebrations. And not only Gay Pride celebrations for Toronto, but for the World. I guess a different city is chosen every year for World Pride Day and Toronto was the choice for this year. I wish I had know that before we planned our anniversary celebrations.

Needless to say, trying to find parking was a nightmare and when we finally found (way overpriced parking) we had to run, through all the Pride celebrations (think concerts, food booths, lots of people taking over the street) to get to our restaurant. It was crazy.

Our restaurant of choice was O.Noir where you eat Completely. In. The. Dark. It was weird. It was unique. It was bizarre. Close your eyes, stay that way for over two hours, and eat a meal. We went with Donny and Marika and I'm glad it wasn't just the two of us. We made a lot of inane conversation just so we weren't sitting quietly in the dark.
After making our way back to our parking garage, through all the Pride celebrations, I asked Marika to take a picture of us. Sadly, the parking garage had the "best" lighting at this point. Ha!
The next morning, after not being completely satisfied by the "free hotel breakfast," we stopped at Starbucks and then headed to our next adventure.
We had arranged to try stand up paddleboarding on Lake Ontario. After running up and down the lakefront for half an hour looking for the tent where we were supposed to meet our tour, getting increasingly hot, sweaty, and stressed, Dave got the cell phone (which he had left in the car) and called the people, only to find out it had been cancelled due to a high concentration of e.coli in the water. That's what you get for trying to disconnect from e-mail for a whole eighteen hours. Blah.
While we didn't want to get e.coli, we were rather disappointed to not get to try stand up paddleboarding. I ended up reading on a bench at the lakefront, while Dave practiced his photography skills.
Then we continued on with the rest of our day which included lunch at Panera Bread, shopping for some new work clothes for Dave, picking up our anniversary present from my parents (a new spade!!!), and picking up Sam and Rachel.
So yeah, our anniversary outing didn't turn out quite like we expected. It was a little more crazy, frustrating, weird, and relaxing than we had planned, but we had fun anyway. And like our marriage, it was better because we were in it together.

9 comments:

  1. Oh goodness! You all totally have our kind of luck. lol. I am surprised that you all were able to get a room with that many people in town. Wow! I can only imagine how crazy it would be trying to navigate through so many people. Eating in complete dark sounds very interesting. I'm sure the conversation was great. I'm glad that you all had a great anniversary.

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  2. OMG!!! I can't stop laughing at all of the weirdness. A restaurant in the DARK!?!? I'm sad you didn't include a link to the restaurant, because I'm just wondering...WHY?? I'm going to Google it, no worries. Maybe their food is really ugly. Sad that SUP didn't work out, but...yeah, e.coli doesn't sound like a good anniversary present, so I guess it's good that they check for those things!!! (Pretty sure the pond we SUPed in probably does NOT screen for that!)

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  3. It's funny because when I read your other post I was thinking "they are brave to go to Toronto with World Pride happening" but then I thought maybe that was your intent! ha! Guess not!

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    1. No. I had no idea! It was quite the surprise!!! Next time I'll be sure to check out what is happening in Toronto before I go there. Ha ha ha!

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  4. I feel like I have heard of a handful of weekend getaway outings going awry in one way or another recently... glad the awry-ness (made that up) didn't stop you from having a good time together!

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  5. Happy Anniversary!! ( and although I am sorry your anniversary adventures did not work out perfectly, you gave Neal and I quite the entertaining story to read tonight... I was reading parts of it out loud to him :-) Wishing you many more years of adventures together!

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  6. Okay, seriously, I just watched a funny comedy with Eddie where they went on a date to a restaurant where you ate completely in the dark. Was it as weird as it seemed in the movie? Haha! I am just not sure I am that trusting of waiters and waitresses with what food they put before me. The movie is called "When in Rome" if you are interested. Kristen Bell is the main character. It is a cheesy romantic comedy. Despite the bad luck timing of your get-a-way, it really sounded like you guys had a great time together which is what I've come to expect from you two adventurous people. :-)

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  7. Any day with Panera is a good day for me! And wishing you (a somewhat belated) happy anniversary!

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