Southern Wedding north of the border 🥂

“You look good wearing my future.”

from the movie, “Some Kind of Wonderful”

Royal gardens, a breezy 75 degree afternoon, and an intimate collection of best friends and family.

With whirlwind flight travels from NC, we flew in ✈️ late morning, combatted formula 1 🏎 race traffic between the Toronto airport and our hotel downtown. Luckily as we arrived starving, popped into the hotel restaurant and had the most delightful fortune of running into our great friends, the Butlers and were able to lunch together… a fabulous start to our wedding jaunt getaway!

The first of the “Fab Five” to tie the knot. One of our son Jack’s best buds, Douglas Cameron married his Canadian born lass, Alexandria (Allie) in a beautiful outdoor ceremony nestled amidst lush hydrangeas and Queen Anne’s lace in Hamilton, Ontario’s Royal 👑 Gardens.

Then we celebrated with dinner, poutine! And dancing in the glass orangery in the adjacent Royal Rock Garden. The bride and groom were generously and loving toasted by the best man, maid of honor, and their parents. So thankful to be part of this event, making memories, celebrating 🥳 this milestone for those of us that have watched these boys grow into fine young men.

And since Toronto was a destination wedding, we stayed over with our great friends to enjoy the city. First off, we jumped in the car and drove to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Any road trip is usually an adventure but taking one in another country always makes for fun and side splitting laughter when you ride with Autry and Johnny as pilot and copilot.

Cool nighttime cityscape from our hotel room.

Toronto has been dubbed NYC of Canada, and yes there are some big city similarities. Great sites, eats, interesting people everywhere, especially these peeps!

Monday morning walk through Chinatown, visit to a Cannabliss store….no purchases thank you! Just satisfying my curiosity.

part of a Netflix movie set filming Sunday morning.how did they know?I really had to peddle…no help from guy in the second seat…

fun looking bars1670!City Hall and a small Chapel wedged behind our hotel…

No trip to Toronto would be complete without a fancy lunch at the 360 revolving restaurant 1500 feet up in the CN Tower. Spectacular views bottom to top.

glass bottom view is a longgggg way down!

Next up Harbor Tour of the Toronto Islands..

CN (Canadian National RR) Tower view from harbor. Built for RR communications and observation tower is the 9th tallest freestanding structure in the world topping at 1813 feet.

Royal Canadian Yacht Club founded 1852 is one the world’s oldest and largest yacht clubs.

One of the most unusual things we experienced was a truly unisex bathroom…a stall for all!

(Photo cred and idea, Autry)

The last half day John boy and I visited Casa Loma, castle built by early utilities magnate Henry Pellatt. Not quite the scale of our Biltmore House but grand living in it’s time.