12-31-2011

Even on mini-vacation, my OCD still makes me make sure I go running. At least I went to High Park to have a very scenic run to finish my 700 miles for the year (really since 4-11-11). I even ran though the park zoo and saw/smelled llamas, goats, reindeer, and a buffalo.

Toronto is really a pretty city to look at and I can only imagine how much better it would be in the summer when it's warm. This is the CN Tower that they built so you can see how pretty Toronto is from high up. Look at the picture, the blue sky looks clear and nice right? It should be perfect to go up the tower! But let's go get some poutine first. Yelp told us that the best poutine is from a blue chip truck that parks outside of City Hall. As we were looking for parking, look what we saw drive by. I was really worried that blue truck was leaving, since I was really hungry and ready to eat after my morning run. Luckily, they were just parking like we were, but they weren't open yet. We wandered around waiting, and found this crazy camera store owned by an even crazier camera guy. I really wish I took a picture of him, but his crazy was too crazy and intimidating for even my "must take a picture of everything" crazy. Finally, the fabled "blue chip truck that parks in front of City Hall" is open! This is way way better tasting than it looks, and made me love Canada just a little bit more than I already did.

Then we dawdled around a bit looking at where the New Years Eve party was going to be that night. Did you notice that the sky changed colors? We didn't. We probably should have before going up the CN Tower to admire the incredible view. The observation decks have views for miles. But only when the entire sky isn't one big, giant cloud of fog. I blame poutine for making this fog while we were waiting for the truck. It's ok. It was worth it. Besides, at least the glass floor was cool to look down and jump on to make Nicole nervous. We decided to have coffee and dessert while waiting for the smoke to clear. It didn't. Oh well, at least we can say we went up the CN Tower.

Something I may or may not be proud to say I did was go to an all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ place for my last meal of 2011. Korean BBQ is fun because you get to cook on fire. All-you-can-eat is embarrassing because I can't stop eating food like this until I'm physically incapable of motion.

After waddling out of the restaurant, we went here. How exciting, we're at the biggest celebration Toronto has! There's even going to be a Backstreet Boy (singular) performing tonight! Look how excited Nicole looks! That picture was taken exactly 30 seconds before we realized that this concert thing was really lame and kind of boring. It was really cold, crowded and we didn't have any booze. In contrast, our hotel room was warm, spacious, and stocked with wine and the Crown Royal pictured yesterday. It was a pretty easy decision to run away before even more people trapped us there. Besides, even in the wonderful land of Canada, they enforce open container laws (I know because I Googled it), so no one was really getting trashed on the street. This makes for far less exciting street people picturing, so I had to settle for just weird/embarrassing ones. Like this guy actually using a pay phone, this picture of big girls in tights, matching funny looking bicycles, and Nicole's seduction face.

We got back to the hotel in time to see where we just were on TV, but like good Americans, we watched the ball drop in Times Square instead. Happy New Year!

And so concludes year #2 of my 365 picture project (I guess it's now a 730 project). I'm looking forward to see what year #3 will bring as long as I don't get sick of posting stuff. Besides, 2012 will be my most difficult 365 so far (since it's leap year and I'll have to cover an extra day), and I might get to take pictures of the end of the Mayan world. Bye!