There is absolutely no denying that time with my kids ranks highest when it comes to how I enjoy spending my time at this stage of life.  We do all sorts of fun and engaging things together, which I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.  In the same breath, I can’t lie that time away from the kids, once in a while, can be a lovely and refreshing retreat.

It has been a number of years since Alison and I really got to feed the piece of us that thrives on travel.  No longer can we just ‘pick up and go’ to parts unknown on a whim.  Soaring costs and pandemic aside, the stage of life we are at isn’t necessarily conducive to worth-while, long-distance travelling.  We take our day and weekend trips here and there, don’t get me wrong, but we’re selectively holding off on trips like, say, Hawaii, until we know that we will be able to truly explore and experience without needing to take a snack break every 10-minutes, have confidence in being able to walk at least 1km without walking 500m backward to pickup a lost of article of clothing, and that we can get though at least a 2-hour car ride without someone poking someone else in the ear with a French fry.  At this rate I figure we’ve got another 16 years to go.

That said – we are planning a big trip next year to the Magical Kingdom, and we couldn’t be more excited.  The kids don’t know yet, and that’s almost just as fun; knowing that they are about to have their minds blown when we tell them where we’re headed (perhaps I need to quell my expectations, but I envision this to cause more excitement than Santa).  Anyway, that has given us something to look forward to, but for now Alison and I really wanted to get in some type of interim getaway that would just allow us to feel, once again, the freedom of walking at an adult pace, without an agenda, and without so many pee breaks.  We looked at everything from a quick all-inclusive, to a week away in some unfamiliar city, and to all of the choices I’ll say this:  I’m a curmudgeon who wants to have his cake and eat it too.  Cost of living has gone up, I get it,  but the fact that I can fly to and stay in Vegas for a week at the same price I would drive to Collingwood and rent an Air BnB for 3 days is asinine.  Train tickets to Montreal?  Forget it.  Flight and hotel out west?  Not today.  Travel costs within our country are wildly unjustifiable in my opinion, at least the way way like to explore and travel culture and cuisine.  So with our eyes on the prize of the big trip next year we had to hone in our plans a little, from a full week away to a weekend of care-free, guilt-free, kid-free fun.  Toronto, here we come.

I’m pretty confident that I’ll be the first person to ever say: I enjoy being in Toronto, but I don’t like getting to Toronto.  The drive, the slog of it all, is long, stressful, silly, aggressive and just not my style.  The stress of traffic aside, even to take some form of public transit into the city gets under my skin.  As someone who values time and truly sees it as a non-renewable resource, the act of sitting in traffic when I could be experiencing or bringing value, is a painful one to endure.  I could never be a commuter in that sense, and I can’t think of a scenario at this stage in my life when you would find me saying “I’d love to live here one day.”  That said, once I’m in the thick of it, I do appreciate much of what T.O. has to offer.  The food, of course – the eclectic bouquet of the city is equal parts enticing, curious and at times repulsive, but the fact that one could get just about any form of cuisine within the borders of the city is certainly an inviting and exciting prospect.  Apart from food, the mix of arts, culture and entertainment certainly don’t leave one wanting for more.  From museums to escape rooms, and bocce bars to performance art, there are so many ways to spend an evening, no matter your darkest desires, I suppose.  I don’t know what half the clubs I walk by are actually about, and I’m certainly not mature enough to peak inside, but it’s genuinely heart-warming to know that there’s seemingly something for everyone in this place.

With two night away from home, our adventures, while certainly not sordid, were nevertheless exciting.  The way that Alison and I travel best is to pick a destination, with perhaps one or two specific events between the bookends, but. our itinerary pretty much ends there.  We’re less focussed on the “be here at this time to do this thing” than we are interested in the goal exploring and experiencing.  We have 36 hours to do whatever ‘stuff’ we want to do, so let’s not limit that time to one particular restaurant or locale, and instead open ourselves to ALL of it.  Let’s eat an appetizer and this interesting looking hole in the wall, grab a drink from this place with a happy hour drink menu, grab a couple of shareable mains at this place we’ve never heard, carry on to “this interesting looking place for dessert” and then, “what the heck, let’s turn left down this street because….squirrel!”  We are exploring at our pace and finding either the good or the humour in our decisions.

When we are in the vacation mindset, we generally like to travel and venture out with a ‘make the best of it’ mindset, knowing that our tendency to say yes is either going to yield brag-worthy recommendations and highlights, or reward us with a story of terrible food, terrible service, or the questionable upholding of various by-laws that we won’t soon forget.  With the right mindset, and safety in mind, of course, the collection of stories one can find in a city is really what makes it all worth while.  Because of that approach, in 36-hours we were able to take in various course at no less than seven different restaurants (including the best authentic Mexican cuisine and an excessive number of margaritas), some strange arcade theatre, an escape room (crushed it…still undefeated in 100+ rooms, baby!), a museum, a stage production, a tour through the Christmas market, a couple of reading breaks by the pool-side, breakfast hotdogs at Ikea, a tour through the Eaton Centre, a terrible movie (sorry, J-Law), and we were still in bed by 10:00 each night.  And while I will say that we clearly tend to wake earlier than the rest of the city, I still say: Boom; that’s how you maximize a 36-hour vacation.

While our kids may not yet be at the age for the type of far-away travel Alison and I enjoy most, there is still a world of opportunity for adventure.  Experiencing and learning that the World is greater than just us is something we value and hold greatly, and we encourage that thinking in our home, no matter how close or far we venture out.  Though we are excited to take the girls on epic, cross-country, cross-continent trips, for now we will take in the joy and appreciation for what fits our current stage of life.  From Nashville to New Orleans, or Rome to Dujiangyan, and many, many more, we have a past full of adventures to reflect upon and a future full of new ones to look forward to.