So, if any of you have been to my website, you will know that I have a bucket list page. Well, I recently crossed off items 37, 47, 48, and 58 just in the week leading up to my wedding and on my honeymoon! Oh, and 47 was actually last year and I just forgot. What were those items? Well, 47 was try brow threading. I did that last year before my sister’s wedding and I will likely never do it again because it hurt more than waxing! I’ll talk about the rest in the order they happen and try to share pictures if I have them.
Number 48 was to get a professional massage. Now, I didn’t know when this would happen until my wonderful friends (pictured here when we went to dinner) treated me as part of my bachelorette party day. It felt so good! It was a great start to a fun, exciting day full of laughs and making me turn bright pink. I don’t think I could have had a better group with me to stand by me on my wedding day than this group of girls. They’ve stood by me through a lot of good and tough times.
Number 58 was take a double decker bus tour. My honey and I did that in Toronto last week. It was our first day of actual sight seeing. I was getting tired of walking and saw these buses all over the city. So, we got tickets and had a blast. Joe is in architectural work so he was in heaven with the mixture of old and new buildings throughout the city. We learned so much and got an idea of what we really wanted to see in our week there.
What was also cool about this bus tour is it included a ferry ride around the Toronto islands. That was something we also had to make sure we saw on our visit. And, we were not disappointed. The islands are gorgeous! Only thing I was sad about was the water was COLD so we couldn’t swim a lot.
Finally, the most exciting thing was crossing off number 37 off my bucket list. I didn’t think this was possible in North America but there it was right in the middle of the city of Toronto.
We toured a castle. An. Actual. Real. CASTLE! Casa Loma was built by Sir Henry Pellat, he was a prominent businessman in Toronto and was knighted by the British crown. So, what better way to show off his status than to build his own castle? It’s what I would have done. So, he spend a year traveling Europe to get ideas from medieval castles throughout the continent. In the end, he created a mishmash of various designs into his own. Complete with tall towers and suits of armor!
He also had an extensive art gallery and gorgeous gardens. He owned several businesses throughout the city and his wife was one of the founders of the Girl Guides, which from what I read was the Canadian version of the Girl Scouts. He was so proud of his status that there is a bedroom known as the Windsor room, where he hoped the Royal Family would come to stay. But, they never have.
However, he did lose his fortune when he lost his monopoly on the city’s electricity supply and thus lost his knighthood so had to leave the castle and retire to his family farm.
Before it became the attraction it is today, there were many suggestions for the use of the property. Including a high school, veterans home, art museum. But, nothing seemed to work. The city even considered demolishing it before the Kiwanis Club stepped in to make it a tourist attraction. It can be rented out for weddings. There are restaurants inside. Movies have even been shot there, like X-Men and The Pacifier. They do an escape room event and stuff for Halloween.
When Joe and I were looking up things to do on our trip, this was one thing several people told us we had to see. Joe, of course, was in heaven over the architecture. I loved the history and just the fact that I was actually standing in a castle! There are 2 towers you can go inside. One is the Norman Tower, I’m pictured with the skyline in the background. Or, the Scottish Tower. This one is enclosed. And, I instantly had a story idea! I’d love to be able to stay here for a writing retreat. Or, just spend the day there again with my camera and a notebook and get ideas and inspiration from the layout. Don’t know when but we definitely want to go back to Toronto. So, maybe I’ll just take a day by myself to work.
So, yeah! Pretty cool, huh? I still have a lot on my list but we’ll see what the future holds and how many I’ll cross off.
Bye!