It’s nice waking up in a fancy yacht club. Newport is a great yacht club, with amazing people, and I love waking up there too, but it’s not exactly fancy. Port Credit Yacht Club has fancy washrooms and showers, classy docks, fine dining, bartenders serving drinks, staff all over the place doing the members’ bidding, and that nice pool we were floating in yesterday. Despite that, we decided to push onto National Yacht Club in Toronto, which is a fancy yacht club too, just without the pool.
After a quick job and a half on the boat then showers and breakfast, we motored the short distance to National as there was no wind and the lake was flat. We gave SeaLight a little sponge and bucket bath along the way as she has picked up a bit of crud on deck. The day was already hot and heating up by the minute.
After getting docked we gathered our things and walked into the city. National is located on the western side of downtown, right across from Toronto’s Billy Bishop island airport so it within walking distance of anywhere you want to go in central Toronto, as long as you have the time and the stamina and don’t wimp out and take a streetcar or subway.
As we walked along we noticed a CP24 crew (local Toronto media channel) and the host interviewed Stella on the topic of how to keep cool in the sweltering heat. We didn’t hear much from her for the rest of the day as she was streaming CP24 on her phone waiting to see if her clip appeared but, sadly, it did not, so she learned that in the future she had to act more like a crazy person to get any sort of media exposure.
We walked all the way across town to St. Lawrence Market, and nearly made it before the girls found a consignment clothing store and went shopping. Dad and I were starving so we pushed on and found a nice young man shucking oysters in the market so we ordered up a plate and they were simply amazing. We followed up those slimers with a couple of pints of craft beer, then once the girls arrived we all grabbed lunch then ate together outside on one of the picnic tables and watched all the tourists and locals going to and fro on a fine Tuesday workday.
From there we pushed onto the Distillery District and found a giant stage with a three piece jazz band playing to a sea of inflated, multi-coloured rubber couches and only a handful of people. The girls went shopping so Dad and I got seated on our own couches and listened to the snappy jazz tunes under the hot sun until we both crashed out. The girls, of course, took a few glamour shots of us before they slapped us awake.
We returned to St Lawrence Market and went into Balzac Coffee where Magnus had just started his shift. He poured us up some cold brew coffees and drinks and we sat watching him work. He is very good at his job and kept up with the hectic pace and steady stream of customers, despite our heckling from the corner.
The prospect of walking all the way back to the boat under the punishing sun was a bit too much so we ordered an Uber and Dad got to experience the brutal Toronto rush hour traffic, which took nearly as long as it would have if we had walked.
Once back at the boat we all flew into action as we were making dinner for our friends Daryl and Lydia who were docked at the Alexandria Yacht Club, right beside National. It had been a rough few days for them as their baby had needed a surgery shortly after his birth and they’d been at the hospital non-stop. We met up at the club bbq area and had a big meal together and many glasses of wine and even got to see little Zachary through an online web camera focused right on his little beautiful face.
What better way to finish up a day in Toronto than taking a midnight dinghy ride around the islands. All four of us piled into our dinghy and head out then Daryl caught up later, moving at lightning speed solo in his dinghy. The glamorous Toronto skyline alight with colour is even more incredible from the water. After transferring Dad to Daryl’s dinghy we were both able to plane at high speed and we ripped across the inner harbour and out into the lake. We stopped at Ward’s beach to get some sand on our feet then jumped back in and circumnavigated the islands then popped back into National to put the wraps on an excellent first day in Toronto.
No comments:
Post a Comment