Canadian Bacon

So ahoy from Toronto! 

The fam and I took advantage of a long weekend and unfortunately fled the US for the 4th of July to seek out adventure and good eats in Canada! Lame, I know. Trust that I was rep'ing America as much as possible this weekend and I'm finding Canadians don't really like that. :/

For starters, I must say the drive up here has been one of my favorite parts - the drive through PA and Buffalo is amaziiiing and we couldn't have picked better weather for the drive!

What's even better is that we settled in at a hotel in Scarborough and THIS happened:

EXPOSED BRICK in the hotel room. Seriously. My love for exposed brick is about as mad and as deep as they come. I started referring to this hotel room as 'home' immediately.

And with shelter settled, it was time to sightsee. We settled on checking out the Ripley's Aquarium in Toronto, a brand-spanking new (and by new I mean less than a year old) $130 million dollar project. I love love looooove aquariums and was pumped to be able to squeeze this one in on the trip.

Stingrays! This was one of my favorite tanks - stingrays and hammerhead sharks all up in there! 

And this octopus just scheming to take over the world. I fell in loooove with this guy. 

The craziest seahorses I've ever seeeen!

And I looooove me some jellyfish! I could watch these guys all day!

They did have a neat tunnel-y tank you moved through with these guys all over the place. Sharks aren't my thing, too flashy I usually don't spend too much time on them. But no disrespect. I'm all about you guys and what you do - all that nomming on seals and people and whatnot. Get on with your bad selves.

I suppose hanging out with marine life all day and not being able to eat any of it is a bit of a tease for Asians, so we quickly and quite violently remedied that with a visit to Fisherman Lobster Clubhouse Restaurant, a relatively well known Chinese seafood restaurant amongst the peeps of Scarborough.

I say Chinese seafood because it's not steamed crab legs and shrimp cocktail. It's garlic and scallions, salted egg yolk, whole fish (with the bones!) - and that's just the PG stuff.

Giant tanks of King Crabs greet you at the entrance. We've all seen deadliest catch. This is where they come to die.

And we (of coooourse) got seated right next to the tanks. Sorry you had to watch us eat your little friends crabbies. :(

And this is the dish everyone comes for... It's pieces of lobster lightly coated in a salted egg yolk batter and then fried and topped with a gingery, spicy, sweety sauce of awesomeness, then fried little fishies, lettuce, and scallions. Phew.

This is the reason why gloves are provided on each table. Sure, Asians have mastered eating with two sticks, but even master chopstick skillz were no match for this meal.

So tomorrow morning, after a quick stop at one of the gajillion Tim Horton's up here for coffee and doughnuts, we'll scoot our way on back home to Sweet Virginia. Canada was alright and all, but there's nothin like good ol' AMURICA.

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend!

To my sweet bed, I'm coming home to you and I've missed you dearly. I'll never leave you again.