Thanksgiving weekend - Day 1

Don't read this series if your are in a cold and nasty place, but wished you were sipping a daiquiri under a palm tree instead. That's what I did.

So, Thanksgiving coming up - what should we do? No idea! Left Alastair downstairs one evening and he decided that if most Americans stay at home for Thanksgiving to spend it with their families, going somewhere would be a good idea. With autumn finally arrived here in DC, somewhere warm might be nice. So he checked all the flights from DC and came up with Nassau, Bahamas.

Off we went, on the eve of Thanksgiving out of DCA, there were no people! No queue to check-in, no queue through security and no people in the lounge. I would have thought, as we were travelling domestic the first leg, DCA - MIA it would be chaos, but not!

Off we went on a reasonably full not to completely full flight to Miami. Not bad being an AA flight as flights go and at MIA we had booked a motel-room between the runway and the freeway. It lived up to it's Day's Inn reputation, but what do you really need for a few hours sleep. First greeting in hotel room was a load of flyers from various pizza delivery places - hmm, don't they do food here?

It looked pretty shabby. After un-loading we headed down to the bar / restaurant. It turned out they had stopped serving food and had some special club/dance evening, with entrance fee. We asked if we could jut have a beer at the bar, and as they were empty, they agreed. The music was so loud we could not talk to each other at all. There was nobody there and we would gladly have stayed for at least a few drinks and a snack, if they turned it down a notch - but no way. Left around 11 PM - not sure how many travelers staying at a cheap airport motel will go out clubbing all night!

The hotel in itself, I thought was put-up-able but after spending $40 more at the Sheraton going back, perhaps not... You get what you pay for as they say.

Road trip No.1 - Day 3 - No new countries, No new States or Provinces BUT 1 new Hurricane glass (Toronto)

Day 3   - Niagara (ON) - Toronto (ON) - 80 miles:

Day 3 was spent on quick breakfast at IHOP and then a short drive through to Toronto. 

Checked in and some basic shopping, then off to collect this trip's 3rd Hurricane glass. 

The bartender was very helpful and gave advice for where to walk around and also Dinner suggestions, which was quite surprising. But perhaps she was clear we were not interested in eating at Hard Rick, but was merely collecting Hurricane glassed. Off we went to the street she recommended where we dropped a dinner table reservation into the mailbox of a nearby recommended Italian restaurant (as they were not open yet) and had a quick lunch at a pub.We were probably quite lucky as when we left the pub, there were some staff around at the Italian restaurant.

They were not open yet, but as we explained that we had dropped at reservation note in the mailbox, they invited us in to make a proper reservation. After arriving in the evening, wen they were full and turned away several people, I doubt they would have been happy with our little note.

Toronto as such was a pleasant town. Quite small (downtown) but a great place to move around. There were some kind of arts festival going on which was a bit strange, and cause a bit of noise during the night (especially for Åsa , who had some disturbance right outside her hotel door for a long time - which is not acceptable at a Sheraton - so we will complain!). Evening finished with drinks in the lobby as the sky bar closed at 11pm !!!