To review, it’s the 2nd to last weekend in March, I’m in Toronto for a conference, and the first day I’m there, I lost my wallet.

So now it’s Sunday morning, I’ve done a lot of scrambling, figured out how I’m going to get through the rest of the trip with no wallet, and have basically calmed down, hurrah.

I’d reached out to my Toronto friends and was having brunch with fellow Savoynetter Risa, who was in Ruddigore* with me last summer and will be Peep-Bo in Mikado this summer (I’m in the chorus). So we met up at the Sunset Grill a block from my hotel. Perfect breakfast place, and it was hopping, so we had to put in our names and wait, but that wasn’t a big deal.

We had a great time! Risa and I had only met once before Ruddigore and hadn’t really ever gotten to talk during the show, so we really got to have a conversation for the first time. The asterisk above is because she’s the poor soul who dislocated her knee during the Ruddigore overture, stopping the show for a half hour. So after spending all that time and money on travel and rehearsal, she didn’t actually get to do the show, although she did get to see it. So that was awful for her, but she’s basically fine now. We talked about Toronto (she’s lived there her whole life) and other performing and groups, and it was a lot of fun. I’d told her about the wallet thing and said I’d pick up the check, assuming they had tap pay, but their tap pay thing wasn’t working, so she grabbed the (not big) check and I’ll buy her some pints in England this summer.

Then I walked her to a bus stop – she and her violin were off to a fiddling group rehearsal – and then went back to the hotel to reset.

It was a beautiful (though chilly) day and I wanted to reacquaint myself with the main north/south Toronto downtown. So I took the 1 train (the other direction this time) up to the Museum stop, sharing the subway car with an unusual number of families and children. As it turned out, the ROM was free that day, and there was a line of families and kids a mile long waiting to get in. I wasn’t actually going there myself, I just need a starting point to walk from, so I walked through the museum park and kept going south. I was tempted to move a little bit eastward, but found if I went west, I could walk through the University of Toronto campus, which was really lovely. (I love college campuses.) Kept walking south with a vague idea of visiting the very intriguing city hall, which I remembered from previous visits – and did.

(picture of space needle is from day #1. The curvy buildings are City Hall. And that’s the route I took.)

Grabbed a coffee, then back to the room to rest and figure out what was next. I decided to do a late afternoon stroll east to the Distillery District, which I had not seen before. That was a really nice walk as well, through some interesting neighborhoods. Although the district has lots of interesting shops and restaurants and bars, I didn’t actually do anything, just walk through and look at the sculptures, then walk back via a different route.

I’ve said this before, but even though I’m not particularly interested in architecture, Toronto is a fascinating city architecturally. So many interesting buildings. I’m really drawn to the city – it’s so friendly (possible pickpocketing aside) and beautiful. Of course, I had the luck to be there on a really nice day – I’m sure it’s miserable in the dead of winter.

Once back to the hotel, I felt a little safer, because I knew I could get away with being kind of a monk for the rest of the trip. For instance, I never went out for a meal again – I ate dinner in the hotel restaurant (which was very good). And the conference was feeding me breakfast and lunch, so that was covered.

(and although I’d gotten lots of advice to cancel all my credit cards, I didn’t want to do that because then I wouldn’t be able to pay for things with my phone. I just started monitoring my accounts for funky charges and never did see any. I’ll wrap the whole wallet story up later.)

To be continued…