Susan Solo – Photographer | Traveler | Adventurer

Tag: North America

36-ish Hours in Toronto

(Note: I’m interrupting my Ireland/Scotland coverage for a moment to post about our weekend in Toronto. I’ll return with another Ireland post shortly, and then I’ll finally move onto the Scotland photos and stories!)

Sometime a while ago, I decided perhaps a bit arbitrarily that an eight-hour car ride is my one-day road-tripping threshold. Four hours before lunch, four hours after, and that still leaves an evening in the destination city. So when Chris and I were deciding on where to road trip on a long weekend (Columbus Day), I looked at the map and figured out where we could drive within eight hours. Chris had been wanting to go to the Hockey Hall of Fame, and I pretty much just wanted to go anywhere, so lo and behold we headed to Toronto!

We actually ended up leaving after work on a Friday evening so that we could get a few hours behind us and have a good bit of Saturday in Canada. After an overnight stop in Du Bois, Pennsylvania (pronounced “doo-BOYS” and not “doo-BWAH” as one might think if one studied French for five years), we followed the changing foliage up through the rest of PA and New York.

Since Niagara Falls was on the way and neither of us had ever been there, we planned to stop by for a bit to take photos pending good weather. As luck would have it, the weather cooperated and we were even treated to a rainbow!

We stopped at Horseshoe Falls on the Canada side after parking near the Table Rock welcome center. I couldn’t believe how crowded the whole park was, although it was Saturday on a holiday weekend so maybe that’s a big “duh” on my part. We hadn’t planned to stay long and didn’t have a strong desire to do any of the falls-related activities. That said, Niagara Falls is a spot where you can spend as little or as much time as you want. It looks like a lot of people make a day or several days out of it, but we were happy to take pictures, look through the gift shop, and be on our merry way. I would have loved to see the falls from a helicopter, but the view from the ground is pretty spectacular, too.

After leaving Niagara, we ended up getting to our Airbnb condo in Toronto around 5:30pm, leaving us enough time to settle in, explore a little bit, and to grab dinner/drinks in the city. Let our almost-a-day-and-a-half in Toronto begin!

The weekend was evenly divided between Chris’s picks and my picks for things to see, do, and eat. To go along with Chris’s Hockey Hall of Fame theme, we ate at Wayne Gretsky’s on Saturday night and perused some hockey memorabilia.

We considered going up to the top of the CN Tower to check out the views, but we opted to give it a miss this trip since we were limited on time and didn’t want to spend it in a queue. As one of Toronto’s top attractions, I read that the tower often requires quite a long wait in line to ascend and to descend, especially on holidays and weekends. Next time!

On Sunday morning, we walked over to the Hockey Hall of Fame when it opened (10:30am on Sundays). We spent a little under two hours touring the museum plus the gift shop, and found that it was starting to get busy as we were leaving, so getting there at opening hour was a good call.

Of course, we looked for Washington Capitals artifacts wherever we could find them. Go Caps!

The museum features plenty of interactive opportunities for kids and kids at heart. You can try your hand at shooting the puck in a life-size computerized game, play a round of bubble hockey, or compete against another player in NHL ’15 for PlayStation. We also watched a hockey-related 3D movie that I thought was a smidge on the cheesy side, but still good fun.

Perhaps one of the biggest highlights of the museum is of course seeing the Stanley Cup. We didn’t hop up there with the trophy (I only snapped the photo below), but a photographer is on-hand to take a professional souvenir photo of each guest with the cup, and then the image is for sale in the gift shop.

Onto one of my picks, we headed over to the Dundas West neighborhood downtown to check out a new bar I heard about all the way down here in Virginia. The Lockhart, an otherwise unassuming and cozy little bar, is receiving quite a bit of press worldwide for being a “Harry Potter-themed bar.” I’m going to give The Lockhart its own post so stay tuned for that, but here are a few photos from our visit.

And as my other pick, I’m a total sucker for a good aquarium, so after a delicious dinner at Taverna we headed across the street to Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada for a sea creatures fix. I expected the aquarium to be more on the quiet side since we visited well past peak hours, but at 8pm it was still hopping. Monday was Thanksgiving in Canada, so I assume that might have attributed to what would have otherwise been a quiet Sunday evening. Nevertheless, we enjoyed exploring the various tanks and features, especially the Dangerous Lagoon with the longest moving sidewalk in North America.

To finish off our quick jaunt to Canada, we ended on a sweet note Monday morning with a cinnamon roll and an apple fritter at Tim Hortons. The sugar rush gave us a much needed energy boost for the 8.5-hour ride home.

So that was Toronto! It was a pretty easy drive from the Washington, D.C. area, so I’m keeping it on my list as somewhere we need to revisit in order to see a bit more of the city. Let me know if you have any favorite spots that we need to check out next time!

October 13, 2015
Photo Friday – Bluemont

Chris and I have spent several weekends over the last few months working our way through the brewdoun.com list of Loudoun County, Virginia breweries. This past weekend we stopped at Dirt Farm Brewing for the first time where we were treated with this beautiful view of Bluemont’s farms and vineyards. I absolutely love Virginia countryside and I enjoy every opportunity I get to explore it. Stay tuned for more detailed posts about the breweries we visited!

August 21, 2015
Tourist at Home: National Building Museum

I have to confess, I didn’t even know the National Building Museum existed until earlier this month when I saw a Washingtonian article about an upcoming bizarre-but-fun art installation called The Beach running through September 7th. Chris and I love to explore pockets of D.C. that we haven’t seen before and I’m all about the bizarre-but-fun genre, so we decided to make a field trip out of it.

The museum is located four blocks from the Mall on F Street. We took the Metro and got off at the Gallery Place-Chinatown exit; Judiciary Square is a little closer, but it was closed at the time. Despite issues on the Metro that caused us to arrive at the museum much later than we anticipated, we still had enough time (1.5 hours) for a good visit before they closed at 5pm. Admission to the Great Hall and the gift shop is free, but all of the exhibitions require a ticket.

When we arrived, the line for The Beach exhibit snaked back and forth around a long queue and stretched far alongside the enclosure, so I gave up on the idea of paying for an exhibition ticket and getting into the ball pit because we only had an hour until closing time. (The lesson here: if you want people to flock to your museum, simply install a giant pit of plastic balls.) We walked around the second floor of the Great Hall for free instead and perused miniature models of interesting buildings throughout the world. Plus the stunning design of the Great Hall itself is something to admire.

After almost an entire lap around the floor, I admit I felt a little disappointed in the amount of stuff to see in the Great Hall, but then a museum employee standing outside of the House & Home exhibition let us know that the exhibition was free after 4pm so we popped into a side room full of beautiful photos and displays related to the history of American homes.

We loved looking at the homey vintage objects. Chris saw the cassette tapes and the Apple computer and mused out loud, “Stuff we had when we were younger is so old now that it’s in a museum.” So that’s great.

We may have misunderstood the exhibitions-are-free-after-4pm thing, because we let ourselves into the Scaling Washington exhibition next. The website clarifies that only House & Home is free after 4pm on weekdays; reduced admission is available for the museum’s other exhibitions. Oops! (We ended up paying for a ticket anyway though – more on that shortly.) Scaling Washington features the impressive photography of Colin Winterbottom, documenting the post-earthquake restoration of the Washington Monument and Washington National Cathedral.

We finished our free tour of the National Building Museum with a visit to the gift shop in which we found books, photos, stationery, apparel, puzzles, games, toys, and kitchen gadgets for the home cook who has everything.

By the time we finished perusing the Great Hall, two exhibitions and the gift shop, the line for The Beach had significantly dwindled down to only a few people, so we decided to see if we could jump into the ball pit for the last 10 minutes before closing time. Lo and behold, the museum’s hours were extended and we had plenty of time to see The Beach! We purchased tickets, which included admission to all of the exhibitions, so we retroactively paid for our accidental foray into Scaling Washington.

I actually felt conflicted about playing in the ball pit. My first reaction: germs. The ball pit will inevitably be covered in germs. But there’s also the side of me (the kid side) that reminded myself I can’t go through life worried about every little germ, so in I jumped.

And alongside all of my fellow ~~narcissists~~ art enthusiasts, I took selfies. And pictures with Chris. And we took pictures of each other. What can I say? It was a weird, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take a photo of our heads surrounded by white plastic orbs in the name of art.

There were moments, though, where it was difficult to appreciate the art – a boy chucked a ball at my head more than once. And as I sank deeper into the seemingly bottomless pit of plastic, (spoiler: it’s about three feet deep) I feared being stepped on, or losing the contents of my camera bag. I did sacrifice a $5 Metro ticket to the ball pit gods. I’d love to see what is uncovered at the bottom once the exhibit is deconstructed and the balls are removed for recycling.

But there was no denying it – despite the crowds and the germs and the fact that I skinned my knee getting out of the pit, The Beach was silly shark-free sunburn-free fun! And art. The Beach is art.

Verdict: we enjoyed the National Building Museum! I’m interested to visit again when new exhibitions are installed.

July 13, 2015
Photo Friday – Mini Movies

I forgot Chris took this photo of me when we saw Birdman at a cute tiny movie theater in Steamboat Springs last December. I came across it just now and it made me laugh. Other people showed up eventually, but for a while we had all five rows to ourselves. I love cozy little theaters like this!

June 5, 2015
Ashburn Brews

Since we were recently on a bit of a local brewery kick, Chris and I decided to try the two closest to our home in Ashburn. Oddly enough, we hadn’t been to either brewery yet so it was high time we remedied that and the Memorial Day long weekend was the perfect opportunity.

Lost Rhino Brewing Co.

We set out around lunchtime on a Sunday afternoon and decided to start with Lost Rhino Brewing Co. because they serve food alongside their craft brews. The location is a little tricky to spot among several rows of similar-looking business suite buildings, but our GPS knew the general area where to find Lost Rhino based on the address. Or you can just look for the sign along Red Rum Drive.

The large tasting room has a few seating areas – the main space is furnished with sets of long picnic tables and a few high-tops with stools, and then a smaller room to the side includes more picnic tables. From what we observed, Lost Rhino seems super family friendly with a kids’ menu, highchairs available for use, bottled craft sodas and even root beer on tap (more on that in a moment), so there were several kiddos enjoying the brewery along with their parents on a Sunday afternoon. We plan to go back on a Friday or Saturday night when Lost Rhino is open until 11pm and they have live music – I’m guessing there is a difference in atmosphere. And on Saturdays between 1:00-5:00pm, you can pop by for a tour every hour on the hour.

Chris sampled a Brewer’s Flight, a pre-determined selection of five 5-ounce beers. You also have the option of making your own selections in a custom flight. And for lunch, we noshed on sandwiches from the food menu. The selection is small, but we both found something we liked and all of the items are made with fresh, locally sourced ingredients.

As I mentioned in my last brewery post, I’m not really a beer person (but Chris is, and I love visiting breweries with him), so the highlight for me was Lost Rhino’s amazing root beer on tap, made with locally sourced honey and pure cane sugar. I don’t usually drink root beer since I often find it too sweet, but I ordered it on a whim and the stuff is perfect. I actually couldn’t stop thinking about it, and we went back in the evening so I could get some to go! We didn’t realize they close at 5pm on Sundays, but the staff were incredibly nice and rang us up even though it was shortly past closing time.

I’m excited about the opening of their new location Lost Rhino Retreat in Brambleton next to the Fox movie theatre. It goes without saying (but I’m saying it anyway) that I hope they have the root beer there as well. I’m officially obsessed.

Old Ox Brewery

Our second stop of the day brought us to Old Ox Brewery. We drove to the also somewhat hidden location tucked away behind the data center buildings of Ashburn, but Old Ox is also easily accessible by cyclists on the W&OD Trail. In fact, the brewery provides a completely cyclist-friendly atmosphere including a bike rack, a tire pump, and of course refreshments. We saw several patrons donning helmets and gloves, and lots of bikes in the rack near the outdoor seating area. Old Ox is just a few miles down the trail from our house, so we actually made the trek out on two wheels the next afternoon as well.

Chris made his selection of samples on tap and we found an open spot at one of the tables inside. I noticed a collection of board games in addition to the big TV for entertainment options. A group of four next to us engaged in a nail-biting round of Jenga. When I wandered back to the restrooms, I discovered a second indoor seating area with a view of the production area, so there’s quite a bit of room to spread out whether your group is large or small.

Old Ox has live music, happy hours, and other special events such as, “Work Out & Beer In” which sounds self-explanatory. Tours are offered on Saturdays at 2:00 and 3:00pm; tickets are available on a first come, first served basis. It turns out we could have eaten lunch at Old Ox as well (but we didn’t; we don’t need to eat two lunches), since they often have visiting food trucks on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Note: Someone has some serious chalkboard skills as evidenced by the upcoming events list. See below.

As far as I know, those are the only two games in town, but we’re happy to have both of these breweries right in Ashburn and we’re looking forward to visiting them again. Let us know if you’ve tried either one and what you thought!

June 1, 2015