such a charmer

last week, the boy and i headed to toronto for our big date. we had tickets to see Kings of Leon at the ACC, a room booked at the Gladstone hotel, and a day off to play in the big city.

i was so excited to see the kings. our seats were meh; 100 level but so very far away from the stage. the show was awesome. the band sounded really good. even mix of old and new tunes. i'm new to the band like the majority of the screaming fans in the ACC but i've been digging through their back catalog thanks to youtube and downloading older tracks from iTunes. (question: why are "old" fans so proprietary? why are they so down on new fans to the band? does it really matter? yes, going from the warehouse with a capacity of 2000 to a hockey arena sucks but how can you resent the band's success? get over yourself.)

i was so excited to be staying at the gladstone again. it is such a funky little place and so much better than some generic hotel. the food is still really good. my little man will be 3 in july and this is the first time i've spent the night away from him. Nona stayed with him and he did great.

We spent our day wandering up Queen West. We hit up coffee shops, we ate, we looked at all the things we would spend our money on if we lived in the city. i picked up some superwash merino at romni, the boy got a t-shirt at american apparel (that store gives me the heebie-jeebies), we got a streamlined coat rack at umbra. it was fun. we checked out the gehry addition at the AGO but declined to spend $18 each to walk into the exhibits. we had less than 2 hours and decided we needed more time to soak it all in.

it was all kinds of amazing to walk around without dividing our attention between our surroundings and a 2 year old. it was nice to look around at a leisurely pace; there was no rushing. it's been about 3 years since we've done that.