Day 3 - Toronto and Beyond

The 3rd day of the H2Olen roadtrip started with our second trip to Tim Hortons - these coffee/donut establishments are as numerous in Canada as Dunkin Donuts are in the Boston area. We then made the short trip into Toronto. We walked a bit around Toronto before the kids and I went to the Blue Jays - Yankees game and Karen got some alone time to explore Toronto.

The weather for the game was glorious and the roof was open at the Rogers Centre. We had good seats in the upper deck behind home plate. The hometown Jays beat the Yankees 4-1 - so it was a great day at the ballpark (Kelsey's 1st MLB game).

After the game we headed West through Ontario and stopped to visit and have dinner with friends who had recently moved from Natick to near Guelph Ontario. They have a great house across the street from the hub of their community activities (libary, sport fields, community center). Below is a picture with the Schnurr family

We stayed a bit longer than we had planned and hit a bit of traffic on our way to our resting spot in Sarnia Ontario. As it turns out - we should not have been in a rush.

I pride myself in doing pretty extensive research. When scouting for hotels - I look at the amenities, read the reviews and even look at the satellite images on Google Earth to get a sense of location and neighborhood. None of that prevented me from completely whiffing on my pick in Sarnia. Sarnia is the last city in Canada before you head over the bridge to Michigan and it not loaded with 4-star hotels. I knew we would be rolling in relatively late and just needed a nice place to sleep. The Super 8 motel in Sarnia is, as it turns out, not a nice place to sleep.

The front entrance was under construction and was covered with scaffolding. Even though we reserved a non-smoking room - all they had left was a smoking room. Apparently the Malboro Man had been the previous guest in that room. We kept the window open for awhile to air the place out but of course our room faced the road - so we had to abandon that plan after awhile. Luckily we were all pretty exhausted from a long day and fell asleep fast. The free continental breakfast consisted of cheerios and something resembling english muffins. Even if you wanted to eat - they had seating for only two people (no joke !). Overall a disaster. The first real misstep of the trip. On the bright side - we were able to reinforce the evils of smoking with our kids.

Back to the USA.....