We woke up at 8am, with the intention to leave by about 9, but as it usually goes, we didn’t get out the door until about 10. Once we were out, our first task was breakfast. We found a nice place near the Royal Ontario Museum called “Yorkville Crepes” and decided to go. To get there we had to take Line 2 on the subway, something I’ve not done before. Spadina station connects both the 1 and 2 lines, but despite being a transfer station the tracks are actually pretty far apart, which is where the infamous Spadina tunnels come into play.
The Spadina tunnels are the set of tunnels connecting the two parts of the station, and while most places have tunnels to navigate the station, the Spadina tunnels are just kind of depressing and way too long. It also looks as though there used to be a moving sidewalk - similar to the ones they have at airports - but have since removed it. The Spadina tunnels will take the joy from your life. The Spadina tunnels will rip your soul from your body. The Spadina tunnels will break your feet. The Spadina tunnels will turn a joyous train ride into a hellish experience comparable to the greatest suffering known to mankind. Or something along those lines.
Once we arrived at the crepes place we took a seat in the relatively small seating area - only about 10 seats total. We received our menus and placed our orders before sitting and chatting for a while. It took some time to get our orders, but when we did they were some of the best crepes I’ve ever had. I don’t often have crepes so it’s possible my scale is completely off, but they tasted really good to me. While sitting there, we noticed that across the street was “1 Yorkville”, an apartment building with apartments for rent. We looked it up, and while high, it wasn’t too unreasonable if you had a roommate. Image the prestige of someone saying “What’s your address”, and your reply being “1 Yorkville, Unit 3402” or something.
After breakfast, we walked 15 minutes to the Royal Ontario Museum, where we had about an hour or so to walk around before we needed to leave to get to the puppy cuddle session. Sophia has a yearly membership, so I was able to get in for free as a guest. The museum is huge, and so we unfortunately didn’t have enough time to look at it all. We focused on the fashion through history section, which brings you through the ages from about the 12th century to modern day, discussing and showcasing the different types of fashion and textiles. After that, we headed very quickly to the bat cave section, which is basically exactly what it sounds like: a fake cave designed to house fake bats with information signs all over explaining bat-things.
We then left the museum and walked to Museum station where we took Line 1 and a streetcar to get to the puppy cuddle place (Pudgy’s Place!) around 2pm. We were a bit early, but they let us start early anyway so it wasn’t a huge deal. The people there are very nice and told us the backstory behind the place. It turns out it’s really new, only being open for a few months when we went. They deal a lot with rescues both in terms of rescuing dogs from things like snowstorms, but also rescuing them from puppy mills, which are apparently a big thing in the rural Ontario communities.
We only paid for the half hour session, but while we were there they were setting up for a puppy reunion where they bring back a bunch of the dogs that were previously adopted to hang out together and have a little party. They were struggling to set up some balloons as the tape wasn’t sticking, so Sophia offered to help out using her experience in events. About 30 seconds later she came back and said “Done!”, and she’d managed to find a way to get it to stay up. They were amazed and very thankful for the help, and because of that they let us stay as long as we wanted.
We stayed another 45 minutes or so, during which Sophia cuddled with a tiny dog named Alfie for almost the entire time. Alfie was a very quiet, very sleepy little dog who wanted nothing more than to sleep in your lap and stay away from the hustle and bustle of the other dogs. We even got to feed him which he very much enjoyed.
Once we finished at Pudgy’s Place, we perused the street a bit, walking up until we saw anything interesting and then investigating it. Our first stop was a furniture store, since despite not needing any furniture it’s still fun to look at. There’s a lot of weird stuff in furniture stores, such as lamps whose stands are shaped like various types of guns. I really have to wonder who actually buys some of this stuff.
For this street perusing we set a rule that we weren’t allowed to buy anything, since it can get out of hand pretty quickly. This rule was quickly broken at our next stop: a fabric store. It wasn’t too bad though, and Sophia bought something she actually needed: a little sewing kit. From there we walked up the street a bit more and ended up at another fabric store where Sophia was in heaven. She didn’t buy anything here but we did walk around a bit and she explained some sewing concepts and told me about some projects she’s worked on before, and which kinds of materials she really liked.
After these two, we kept walking up the road and ended up going to Popeyes for lunch since Sophia has never been. It was their opening day and so we got 50% off our food which brought it down to $20 for two full meals, a very rare thing nowadays! The food was pretty good, not the best Popeyes I’ve had though. After lunch we walked across the road to a record store we’d seen earlier, and we looked around at some records, though with no plans to buy any. I have a record player at home but I don’t really want to spend the money on a record and then have to care for it all the way back home. Sophia doesn’t have a record player, so she wasn’t very inclined to buy anything.
We then started walking back to the streetcar to head home, but then remembered we wanted to get boba. We walked a few minutes to the boba place and got our drinks. Mine was pretty heavy on the sugar and I could certainly taste it. It was pretty good though up until I ran out of the milky stuff and it was basically just sugar slop at the bottom at which point I had to stop drinking it. We hopped back on the streetcar and took it back to the subway, which we then took all the way back home.
At home, I found out that Sophia can name any (I mean any) Taylor Swift song within about 2 to 10 seconds on average. After testing her on it a bit, we tried it on an album I know pretty well, and I wasn’t able to get anywhere near as fast as her. I could barely identify the names of half the songs she played, despite having listened to them a ton. After these revealing tests, we mostly just hung around at home for the rest of the evening before calling it a night somewhat early, as Sophia works tomorrow and I’m heading down to the US.