banana-haters have feelings too

toronto! this is the full story. you can also check out lindsay's xanga for her version. :)

monday:
we left in the morning from joyce's house... despite the funky poopy smells (joyce thought they were my feet!) the ride over was pretty smooth, especially once we got the mp3 player working. when we got there our first stop was pacific mall. of course! after some yummy dim sum, we wanted to go take pictures at one of those fobby places with the funny backgrounds. so we found this place that had a pretty good deal, but the guy made us wait for over an hour! but, we didn't have anything else to do so we waited. the photo shoot was pretty fun! haha... well he only took four shots. we decided on a light blue background to match our clothes, we were all wearing a blue and white by coincedence! i wish i could show the picture... it was really cute! hehe... we watched the guy add eyeliner and color our eyebrows in. joyce even had her moles removed! haha... so after that we got some bubble tea and then headed off to the korean barbecue restaurant, which is aptly named "korean barbecue restaurant." (haha...) although we weren't hungry, we ate SOOOOO much! the deal was 10.95 for all you can eat! plus tax and tip it came to about $14 canadian. pretty sweet deal for the amount we ate. i think my favorite was the short ribs. :) after dinner we checked into our hotel, crowne plaza. we explored the hotel for a little while, mostly cuz we needed to digest all the meat we had eaten.

tuesday:
the next morning we drove to ivan's house and met his mom. she's so talkative! nothing like ivan. haha... jk. she drove ivan and us to the subway station, where we took it down to the bloor st. area (kinda like michigan avenue in chicago). after walking for a bit we turned the corner to go to yorksville, another nice upper class shopping area. we came upon a starbucks, and i commented on how funny it was there were so many starbucks... i was saying that i should take pictures of all the starbucks and show my sister (who works at starbucks). so i was actually reaching for my camera, and then i look underneath the starbucks sign and i see... ETHAN HAWKE! it took me a second to recognize him, but the four of us were like, oh my gosh, that's ethan hawke! he was getting up from his table and leaving, and he walked right past us! he even looked at lindsay! we were too starstruck to say anything or ask for a picture. we just watched him walk by! aagh! too bad. that would have been pretty cool.

after our first celebrity encounter we went to queen street to check out the much music studios (canadian equivalent of mtv). we found out that hanson was coming to their afternoon live show, but the tickets were all sold out. after lunch (we had salads to balance out the meat we ate the night before) and a visit to eaton centre (which really, was not all that exciting...) and a bathroom break at the movie theatre, we came back to the much music studios. there was a crowd of girls already surrounding the window. unlike mtv, much's studios are on the first floor. they open up the window so people outside can see and hear! we waited on our tiptoes for about an hour before hanson even came onto the show. i, being in the very back and being very short, couldn't really see anything... finally they came out and the girls were screaming! it brought me back to the good ol' teeny bopper days, and we're not even hanson fans! they came out to sign autographs and lindsay and i were going crazy with our digital cameras. i stopped after a while because i realized i was taking pictures of tops of heads and hands... but i did get a few good shots of the hanson boys. but i have to say, they are much better looking now than in their mmmbop days. haha... ivan was complaining cuz they were blocking the girl vj that he liked.

after our 2nd celebrity encounter, we figured the day probably couldn't get any better. but oh it did! hehe... we had dinner in the theater district at this restaurant called verona (yummy italian!) and then we went to try to scalp tickets for mamma mia. we didn't get any, but we did end up buying some seats on the right side that the lady at the box office said had limited leg room. but for small asian girls like us, it was fine. so mamma mia was pretty amazing... great music and fun dancing and funny acting. there was this one cast member who looked EXACTLY like nick carter! okay, so except for his face. hehe... but he had the same hair, the same body... it was funny, we kept calling him nick all night. later on we found out that the lady sitting next to us was the mother of one of the cast members! hehe... so she wasn't a celebrity, but close enough eh? she told us it was her 22nd time watching the musical! crazy! she was really nice... for a minute i thought of asking her to get us backstage... but, i guess that would have been a bit much since we just met her. at the end during the curtain call we waved to the cast a little, and they waved back! there was this one guy who caught joyce's eye and she blew him a kiss, and he blew her a kiss back! okay, so neither linday nor i were paying attention (i think lindsay may have been watching nick...hehehe...), so this is all according to joyce. the rest of the night she was gushing about caden (isn't that such a cute guy name?). she even saved her program so she could draw hearts around his face. hahaha...

wednesday:
we got up "early" to use the indoor pool at our hotel before we had to check out. it was this huge circle pool underneath a glass dome. after showering and stuff we headed back to asia-town for lunch at congee wong. after a meat dinner, salad lunch, & pasta dinner, our final meal was actually well-rounded. afterwards we went to market village to buy groceries and bao's for our families. lindsay bought hello kitty dolls with her tuneys... haha. we got our last bubble tea and then decided to leave for home. so we start driving, and then we see a karaoke bar, open 24 hours! joyce turned in before we could really think about it, and next thing we knew, we were singing karaoke for the next four hours! the deal was all you can drink, tea or pop or whatever. so each of us got some iced tea and we were peeing ALL afternoon! it was really weird. my theory is that they put something in our drinks to make us pee so much that we wouldn't want refills. does anyone know about anything that does that?

anyway, we drove back home afterwards and it was a good drive home cuz we got a chance to talk, which we didn't really get to do during our trip.

so all in all it was a great trip! it was pretty adventurous... just me and my gals. i'm glad we got to go because it's the last time we'll all be able to spend a few days together... for a long long long time. :/

anyhow, sorry the story ended up being really long... i hope you were entertained! my pictures are on ofoto.com. i'll get you the link later.

see ya!

posted by Laura @ 8:15 PM