Day 22
Sightseeing in Hotel Rooms
I think it'd be pretty safe to say that by this point in our vacation, we were pretty well touristed out. Not vacationed out, mind you, as it doesn't take much more than a suggestion to convince me not to go into work. Still, I know I'd lost the will to sight-see in a very large way.
I don't think Robert was much more enthusiastic than I was, either. We got up late, and spent a long time in the hotel room, staring at each other, hoping one of us could come up with a suggestion that'd get us our vacation money's worth out of the day.
No dice. It was kind of important to get out of the hotel, as our room didn't have an air conditioner in it. The good point of this was that we weren't jarred awake at 6:00 in the morning by the compressor finally cutting in (as in Vancouver), but it was also bad in that we had to keep the place as dark as possible, and even then, it was still too warm in there.
We finally settled on lunch in the hotel restaurant as an excuse to put off any decision just a little bit longer. Besides, I was sort of anxious to try the place, as they had adverts up all over the hotel for the smoked salmon that they produced on premises.
So, we stopped by the restaurant about thirty minutes before they started serving lunch, and just sat there, sipping cups of tea, waiting for the food to start flowing. After they did start serving lunch, it took another half hour to convince them that we wanted to order off the menu rather than have the brunch buffet. I would have probably taken the buffet if they had any of that smoked salmon on it, but they didn't, so I didn't.
We each ordered $6.00 sandwiches as an excuse to order their $8.00 smoked salmon appetizer. The sandwiches were good, as far as excuses go, and the salmon itself definitely lived up to the expectations all those signs had set for me.
As good as the lunch was, though, it still didn't do anything to help us decide what we were going to do with the rest of the day. We decided to see one of the few movies we hadn't seen yet. This one was at the not so nice theater chain (Famous Players). It may not have been as nice as the Cineplex Odeon chain, but it was still above US standards, and it, like the one we went to in Vancouver, had a gift shop that sold all kinds of kitsch, including a fairly decent collection of the new Warner Brother's Looney Tunes watches. I nearly bought one, and probably should have, because it turned out to be the only thing in all of Canada that was cheaper than in the US.
After the movie, we went back to the dark, but slightly warm hotel room. We pretended to read books, but my real agenda was to go through the phone book, to find someplace that might have a decent selection of Len Deighton novels. I found a place that specializes in mystery and spy novels, which seemed like a good place to start.
It was. It was also a bit hardcore. Real hardcore book types running the store, too. I found a couple of books I was looking for, and while I was standing at the register, doing plastic protocol, a woman walks in:
"Excuse me, but do you have a phone book I could borrow for a moment?"
To which the storekeeper replies "Hardbound or paperback?"
Judging from the expressions around the room, this wasn't intentional. The guy looked properly embarrassed, and the rest of us tried to inhale.
The place was run by a fairly genial Sikh descended person, and an English woman named "Mister". Nothing special in that, but I just wanted to get that in: A woman named "Mister." Oh well, you can see that it takes very little to keep me humored.
While the phone book was out, we decided that maybe we should also check it to find the address of that Greek place that was advertised in our hotel's services directory. I should have known ahead of time that finding it in the phone book without a clue as to its name wasn't going to be easy, as we'd already seen that Toronto has a whole neighborhood with street signs in Greek. This kind of told us that there would probably be more than one Greek restaurant in the phone book.
There was. There were a couple dozen of them. This didn't bother me too much, as I wasn't particularly attached to the idea of going some place just because they advertised in a hotel's services directory. If I think about it real hard, I guess I can come to the conclusion that there isn't really any relationship between quality and the ability to buy advertising space.
No, the trouble was that since I wasn't particularly predisposed to any place in particular, I was faced with the problem of deciding between about two dozen places, none of which I knew anything about. Shoot. And all I was looking for in the first place was a half decent slice of Moussaka.
Ms. Mister, seeing us standing over the yellow pages opened to "Greek" and looking very puzzled, came to our rescue and recommended her favorite place for Greek food: Pappas Grill. She even went so far as to write down a very detailed set of directions for us, which I though was a right neighborly thing to do.
With her directions in hand, finding the place was no problem. The problem was that they didn't have Moussaka on their menu, clearly catering to a higher cuisine. It was too late to walk out by then, because we'd already been seated and had started in on our drinks. We also had a table, which was a lot more than could be said about all people in the mob lining up at the front door. Seeing the simple value of having something that a few dozen other people didn't have, but wanted badly enough to stand under the un-air conditioned sun, we decided to stay there and make the most of it.
Really, judging from the number of people who wanted to eat there, when there were at least a dozen other Greek restaurants on the same block, it did show promise. Most of the Greek places we found in the phone book were either on the same street, or just off that street. The name of the road was "Danforth Street," although Ms. Mister just referred to is as "The Danforth." I don't know. Whatever you call it, there was still something to the sound of the name that bothered me.
Back to the menu: I still hadn't got my fix of caviar, so the Taramosalata seemed like a good enough substitute, even if it was a whole lot more lower class. It was a promising start to a good dinner, and even got me over the pain of not having my Moussaka. We also shared a plate of Dolmades, which were made with pine nuts in addition to the usual ingredients. Pretty good stuff.
This brings us to the main dish, and the otherwise lame punchline to another stupid, boring "foodie" story: Robert had their rabbit special, which looked to be a slightly upscaled version of what I had back in Edmonton. I had the quails. They were great, but there was something eating away at me about eating Quail on Danforth street.
Naw. I has halfway through dinner before it hit me. Not nearly as fowl as it sounds, eh? As our Aussie friend on the train would have said, "Goodonya."
I have no idea what the heck that means. Well, unlike the other, this quail was certainly no turkey.
I think that was it for the day. We went back to the hotel, watched an episode of Star Dreck, had a couple of drinkie-poos in the bar (thankfully without the accompaniment of the Laser Karaoke crowd of the night before), and went back to the room to get a good start on those Deighton books I'd bought earlier in the day.
Maybe not a very scenic vacation, but still a very pleasant substitute to normal day to day life.
On to Day 23, Out for a Drive
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