My daughter Sarah is going away to college this fall, and I wanted to take one last ” just the girls” trip with her before she fully started her own individual life adventures away from home.

But where to go?

Because of time constraints, we wanted to travel some place that was relatively close to the Albany, New York area.  But we also wanted to go to some  interesting international destination that we’d never traveled to before.

After searching around a bit, we decided that Toronto, Ontario was the perfect fit.  We felt that we would like Toronto because it seemed to be a hip, metropolitan city filled with culture, dining, and history. And on top of all that, I could see that the clothing shops that ranged from unusual vintage stores to Top Shop would be an extra plus for my sixteen year old.

This city is a little less than 400 miles from Albany and there are many ways to get there including a nonstop Air Canada flight to Toronto Pearson International Airport which takes a little more than an hour. I decided to splurge for the relatively expensive plane tickets  in order to save time on our special three night trip.

While waiting to check in for our flight in what would be a very small plane, we spoke with passengers who were returning to the Toronto area from trips to the Saratoga Racetrack and to Tanglewood.

The ride was fine, but what we didn’t know until after more than an hour of waiting at a baggage carousel was that Air Canada had decided that, because the plane was too heavy with extra fuel, our bags would be left behind in Albany.  We were told that we would maybe be getting our luggage the next day.

Of course this was frustrating because it forced us to spend some of the day getting replacement clothing  and other necessities. But we knew that we needed to just roll with it, and it turned out to be a wonderful trip in a city that more than fulfilled all of our expectations.  We lucked out by being invited to stay at a fabulous hotel, the Windsor Arms; we  saw great cultural points of interest; we shopped ’til we dropped; and  we ate our way through a foodie heaven that included plenty of gluten free selections for Sarah.

We were very fortunate to have Megan McHale of Development Counsellors International (DCI) and Vanessa Somarriba of Tourism Toronto provide us with assistance in so many ways. We were also happy to be invited by Rachel Jakubowitcz, of DCI as well, to try out Toronto CityPASS.  Thank you, ladies,  for all of your help!

 

Next: The Windsor Arms Hotel– Queens for a few days