Grigsbys' Visit

This is our lunchtime view of Niagara Falls from the restaurant.

Keith and Barb at a restaurant just off Yonge Street after a long day of sightseeing.
They look like they are ready for more.

That is the Holiday Inn on the right and our apartment building on the left.
Temporarily we were neighbours once again.

Wow! Here it is November and I am just now getting around to writing about our visitors from September! No excuses.

Barb and Keith were great neighbours from our Lake Quivira days. They have been practically members of our extended Lavery family for a very long time. Barb went to Bishop Miege High School with my youngest aunt, Theresa Boydston, and they have maintained their friendship over the years. In addition Barb and Keith lived a couple of doors over from my Uncle Frank and Aunt Ann for a very long time and were frequently included in many family parties. They moved to Quivira a couple of years after we did and Keith and I immediately started golfing together on a weekly basis. It worked out well as we both had pretty high handicaps but we shared a tremendous enthusiasm for playing. We were also both flexible enough to call each other up at the last minute and arrange to be teeing up on the course in thirty minutes or so.

The Grigsbys stayed at the Holiday Inn immediately to the east of our building. This was incredibly handy for our daily excursions. Keith could still get his morning jogging in and still be ready to roll when the rest of us got our acts together. Barb and Toni had put their heads together for an extremely full itinerary for the week. It was a nice mix of places we had been to before and others that we had not experienced yet.

We were lucky to have dry weather that was just a touch on the warm side so we wound up going on foot the whole time. A walking tour of the University of Toronto campus was first. From there we went on up to Bloor and the Royal Ontario Museum or ROM. We spent most of the day there and hardly saw half of the exhibits. Since we were in the area I suggested that Barb, who is a librarian at the Johnson County Central Resource Library that we go a couple of blocks over to see the Toronto Reference Library. Barb managed to get a behind doors tour and learned that this is the second busiest reference library in the world. When she was asked to guess the busiest library Barb did not hesitate to say Hong Kong and of course she was correct as she has also been to that location.

We rented a car one day and returned to Niagara Falls. Although Toni had been there just a few weeks earlier she was just as entranced as the rest of the group. Again, on the way back we detoured to Niagara on the Lake where we had drinks at the Cork Winebar and later for dinner went to The Shaw Café where Keith and I both had fish and chips. We agreed it was the best either of us ever tasted. You should check the link to see how beautiful this place is.

We spent most of another day returning to Toronto Islands to see the cottages and to finally check out The Rectory Café on Wards Island where we enjoyed the back patio setting.

No trip would be complete without the big splurge dining experience. For us this time it was Canoe. We had heard great things about it and we knew the view would be spectacular as it is situated some 50+ floors up at the top of one the downtown bank buildings. From there you can see most of the western end of Lake Ontario and the CN Tower looks like you could just reach out and touch it.

More photos: HERE

It was over four years ago that Toni and I shared our long term plan with the Grigsbys. That was our plan of selling our house and moving to Canada. They were the very first people we told about it so it only seems fitting that they should also be our first visitors from the States and in a way complete the circle.