My First Grown-Up Vacation (part seven in a series)
This time, we finally had it. We confidently walked up the stairs from the Union Station subway station across the alley into the bottom floor food court of Union Station. We took a right, went past the Commuter Bar (I think that’s what it was called, literally!), and ignored the sign that told us how to get to the Sky Walk. We went up the stairs, passed the candy store, and went up the ramp and up the escalator into the glass tunnel through the sky.
The Sky Walk is an interesting device. It is wide enough to be a two-lane road, separated into those lanes by narrow metal columns. It is a continuous archway, made completely of glass with varying degrees of tint. It is not air conditioned – it is a hot house in the summer (though I imagine it is quite pleasant in the bitter winter). It first crosses a huge number of train tracks; I stopped once to watch a two story tall commuter train leave from Union Station. About two-thirds of the way through, there is an exit on the left which goes to stairs that go up a level and back across the train tracks to the convention center. At the end, there are some glass doors which unceremoniously drop the walker into the Sky Dome / CN Tower area.
Now that we were familiar with the trip to the stadium, everything just breezed by. One change, however, was that the previous two days’ super-talented drummer (who screamed “Go Jays!” every time someone threw money in his hat) had been replaced by a mediocre guitarist. Mike commented that they should possibly get together and start a band.
We went to our seats (two to the right of the previous two nights) and settled in for the game. Just as the first inning was getting going, the two seats in front of us were filled by Jays fans. This would not bother me; it is their stadium. But the guy on the left had a habit of screaming rather nasty things about every Red Sox player, and in a tone that actually screamed to me, “Mental patient!” His buddy was a more quiet type, but he did jump to his feet along with his friend on every yell. This again would not bother me; excitement is good for baseball. But this guy was wearing pants that were a bit too big and a bit (okay, completely) belt-less.
After seeing this guy’s ass-crack and hearing his friend’s terrifying scream for the fifth time, I got up to go get a pretzel. Mike came with me, and when we returned… well… we didn’t. We chose seats about 10 rows further back – the area was empty, since the Blue Jays don’t really come close to selling out their games. We had a much more pleasant time watching the game from that point on, especially as the Red Sox eked out the win in the rubber match.
Food consumed at the park on day three: 1 pretzel, 1 bottle of salty mineral water, half of a bag of alternating blue and pink candy floss.
[Side note to the people at Fenway: The pink stuff resembling cotton candy in a cup sucks. Please go back to real cotton candy. And have it in blue. Thank you.]
We went back to our hotel room that night, after checking the news to see about Gabe Kapler. That night, he had snapped a tendon in his leg while rounding second from first when Graffanino hit a home run. At the game we had no idea what happened. I was too busy cheering the home run to see Kapler hit the ground, and we were all wondering what they would be able to do to get his run to count!
After heaving a big sigh, we went to bed.
I snapped awake early the next morning, because I wanted to do some real exercise at least once this week. I got dressed in my sweat pants and tank top and decided I was hungry. So I threw on a sweatshirt and went down to grab a muffin for breakfast. I then tried to figure out how to get up to the 27th floor. I knew I couldn’t take the red elevator – it only went to the 2-7 and 25th floors. I eventually found the blue elevator which went to the 26th. Before looking for the stairs, I grabbed a bottle of Dasani (non-salty non-mineral just-plain water) from a vending machine.
It wasn’t a long search, and soon I was swiping my key card to get into “Deck 27.” There was a huge pool, and as I signed my name, I spotted a Jacuzzi, a weight room, several cardio machines, and a training circuit. Perfect!
I had a lot of time, so I did a huge variety of things. I started with the treadmill, moved over to the stationary bike, and then started weights. I went into the weight room to work on my abs, and came back for some circuit machines. I finished the day with a long stretch session, and felt much better. I went back to our room for a shower, woke Mike up, and we commenced wasting time before our flight.
While we were checking out, the lady asked us if we’d like to leave our luggage. We said yes, and she pointed us to the bell man station again. She then asked if we would need transportation provided to get to the airport. We politely declined, saying we were taking the subway. She seemed shocked, but we assured her we knew what we were doing. Mike figures the hotel must get a cut of the airport express fee.
After we left our luggage, we went over to the mall. It was pointed out to us from the Hippo Tour on Tuesday, but it was difficult to distinguish from surrounding buildings – It really did not look like a mall. We went in one entrance, and started poking around the stores. We found a neat board game store where we wasted most of our time. We went up various escalators and down others. This mall is five stories tall and three city blocks long. It has TWO food courts, in addition to a variety of other restaurants. Ridiculous!
We took advantage of one of those restaurants for lunch. It was a very nice place, with an insanely exciting dessert menu. We each got a light lunch anticipating the need for dessert. We chose to share a piece of chocolate cake with chocolate icing, chocolate sauce coating the entire slice, whipped cream dollops surrounding the plate, and chocolate shavings sprinked over the entire thing. Chocolate!
After lunch, we went back to the hotel to grab our stuff and started the much-longer-than-it-ought-to-have-been trek back to the states…