January 18th was Mer’s fortieth birthday, but we always push our birthday celebrations off to the following Saturday. Since this was a big birthday for Mer, I decided to go a bit splashy. I told Mer to be ready and packed to go on a weekend trip right after school on Friday. We managed to be on the road by around 4:00, and we had good traveling weather. We headed northeast out of Ohio, and through Pennsylvania, and stopped for supper at the Angola rest stop, near Buffalo. After a pretty decent supper from a chain offering made-to-order burritos, we headed through Buffalo, and crossed with ease into Canada. I had to declare our intentions at the border, so Mer knew our weekend plans – to go to Toronto. We arrived in downtown Toronto, and were directed by a very affable doorman on where to park cheaply. We were situated in the middle of downtown, at the King Edward Hotel, a four-star hotel on which Priceline had worked magic for us. The room was on the eighth floor and had a view of the top of the CN Tower antenna, and was a quite lovely room. The only drawback was that the hotel was older, so soundproofing was not total, and we could often hear the man in the next room when he was on his cell phone. That was fine, though, as he seemed to keep our hours, more or less.

We were both up relatively early on Saturday, and were heading out the door around 10:00 or so to explore the waterfront. We bought a day-pass for the mass-transit system, and rode one stop toward the southern terminus of the subway. From there, we walked to the waterfront, and along it for quite a ways.

Toronto’s waterfront is lovely. It is publicly accessible, and looks out over Toronto Island, where there is a large park and a good-sized metropolitan airport at one end. We strolled along the lake, and enjoyed the ever-changing views of Toronto’s skyline, including the famous CN Tower. The amount of high-rise buildings going up in downtown Toronto is astonishing – there were cranes everywhere.

We made several little happy discoveries along the waterfront. I loved the up-close view of small jets landing at the airfield. We then came across a sculpture and fountain where you could walk inside the sculpture, which was shaped roughly like a globe. We stumbled upon a community ice rink that was very active on a Saturday morning. We found a spiffy walkway with lights laid out like sails, and ran across a sidewalk that was designed to be rolling like waves. We wandered around inside Pawsway, a building dedicated to cats and dogs and stories about them. We then headed back to the hotel by going past the Rogers Center (where the Blue Jays play baseball) and past the CN Tower. It was quite a marvelous little walk.

We stopped by the hotel briefly before heading across the street to a burger joint that was quite good and served an enormous helping of fries. After lunch and a brief hotel stop, we walked north through the shopping district, heading to the first event of the day. We arrived at a cross street while I looked for our destination, and found it – a theater across the street that happened to be flying a rainbow flag. Mer blinked a couple of times and asked, “Are you taking me to a gay theater for my birthday?” Since I had only looked up the show based on the summary, my honest answer was “Apparently so.” Gay theaters can occasionally do work that is extremely risque, and we were both a little anxious over that.

We did not need to be. The production we saw was being put on by an all-women company of actors, and it while it was certainly suggestive several times, it was about a PG-13 rating. Yay! We were there to see The Penelopiad, a retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey from Penelope’s point of view. (Penelope was the wife whom Odysseus left behind for twenty years while he was off at the Trojan War.) The show was tremendous and thought-provoking. It was very well acted, especially by the woman playing Penelope; and the woman who played the male Odysseus was so good at what she did, I often forgot she was female. The show explored the relationship Penelope had with her family and her household, especially her slave girls who (in this interpretation) sacrificed much to protect Penelope. It also shows how difficult the situation was in the house while Odysseus was away. It was a great show, and we were both pleased to have seen it.

After a brief return to the hotel, we jumped on the subway and took it out pretty far east. Toronto’s subway really is amazing – clean and efficient and not overly crowded. We found the next theater to which I was taking Meredith, and so then decided we could find a restaurant for supper. We walked a couple of blocks and ran across Queen’s Pasta Cafe, an Italian restaurant. It turned out to be a charming two-story restaurant. The experience was odd, though – it took awhile to be waited on, and then the food came very quickly. It was excellent. Then, the service disappeared again for over twenty minutes, so we did not have time for dessert, but headed back to the theater.

We were at a little community theater to see another play of which neither of us had ever heard – Queen Milli of Galt. The play explored the claim of a woman, Milli, that she had had some kind of a relationship with Edward, the Duke of Wales, and the later king who would abdicate the throne to marry an American woman. When Edward died, Milli had a tombstone erected that claimed she was “Queen Milli of Galt.” It turns out to be wonderful material for a witty and sometimes poignant play, and one that only required five actors. The actors in the work all did a wonderful job with their roles, and we both loved the play.

We headed back to the hotel via the subway, getting there around 11:00 or so. Mer had insisted on bringing much of her birthday food students and friends had given her, so we had a very pleasant dessert in the hotel. The day had gone more or less as I had planned, and we still had all of Sunday for more exploration of Toronto.