Epic East Coast - Day 1

Sandra asked me to rename the trip, since this isn't really a regular trip, so this is now our EPIC East Coast trip of 2016.

We woke up at 4:00am, so that Dad could take us to the airport at 4:30am.  Despite what felt like extra time and lines that weren't stalled at any point, we arrived at the gate after the flight had already began boarding.  The flight to Toronto was quite uneventful - I sat with Jonathan and Bradley, who both watched Frozen, while Sandra sat with Evan and Alex, who are old enough to entertain themselves on a long flight.  At Pearson, we picked up our luggage, took the train from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1 and then caught the UP Express to Union Station downtown.

The trip in to the city was pretty uneventful, except that we arrived just before the Blue Jays game, so the train was full of ball fans going to the game.  (In fact, as I am writing this, the game is currently in the 17th inning, so the fans got their money's worth.)  We tried to pack light, since we knew we would be walking around, but even so, we still have too much luggage to easily move around.  In addition to that, Pearson and the entire Union Station / Skywalk / Rogers Centre area in Toronto is not conducive to strollers.  There are multitudes of elevation changes that just have stairs and escalators, with a tiny slow elevator tucked into a far corner.  In fact, to get to our luggage at Pearson we took an elevator down a floor, then up a floor, then down a floor.

Anyway, at this point everyone was tired and hungry and we had no idea where we should grab some food.  We tried the "food court" at Union Station, but it just had a McDonald's McCafe, and the kids weren't interested in McDonald's food that did not involve Happy Meals.  Eventually, after a little too much walking, we made our way to a Boston Pizza right across the street from Rogers Centre.  We shoved all our luggage under the table and had our first meal of the day, 8 hours after we woke up.

During the meal, a thunderstorm opened up, which concerned me a bit, since we had to walk to Yonge Street for our condo, carrying all of our baggage, in the rain.  Luckily the rain stopped before we left, and we dawdled because we couldn't check in until 3:00pm.  We then walked over to the condo we are staying in and rested for the rest of the day, except for a quick trip out to a grocery store to buy food for tomorrow.  Everyone was exceedingly tired and Bradley already misses home, so this trip may be a bit hard on the little guy.

We're in Toronto until Tuesday, with tickets to the Royals game on July 4th - it should be a good start to our trip.