Holiday to Canada in Aug 2024: Day 3 – Toronto to Wellington

We have enjoyed our short stop in Toronto. We have done plenty, but now it’s time to hit the road.

The day started early for me again. I was up around 2am, with Vick hanging on for another couple of hours.

The in-room coffee machine was very basic but delivered some reasonable coffee, helped along by the expensive milk delivered to our room on our first evening.

We spent the first hour in bed planning our route for the day. We would only be driving 100 miles to Wellington, but it was complicated by the fact that we needed to head back to the airport to pick up the car.

Very few Starbucks stores were open early. We ended up walking 2km before finding one that was really open.

The first we tried wasn’t open even though the US Starbucks app suggested it should have been.

We ended up at a Starbucks close to the Rogers Centre, so it was a good walk back once we had enjoyed our caffeine intake.

After showers, we had breakfast in the Exec Lounge, and we ordered an Uber to take us to Hertz at the airport at around 8:30am.

With it being Labor Day, it was pretty quiet on the roads, so it wasn’t long before we were engaging with the Hertz Gold member team, securing our Tesla Model 3.

Apparently, I had booked the car from T1 and we had arrived at the T3 Hertz office. Later on I wondered why my name was on the Gold member board at T3, if I wasn’t supposed to collect the car from there? Ugh?

We were on our way by around 10am. First stop was a Starbucks at Bowmanville, about an hour away.

We were both starting to feel tired; the jet lag was catching up with us.

After our caffeine top-up, we set our sights on Port Hope for some lunch, a walk, and a battery top-up.

We had high hopes of Port Hope (pardon the pun), but we were left a tad disappointed.

It seemed pretty dead, so we picked up some subs (from Subway) and headed to the Waterfront Trail.

We sat on a bench in the sun, cooled down by a strong breeze, and ate our subs. A wasp joined us to annoy Vick, which gave me much pleasure!

After a quick walk, we jumped into the car and took advantage of a Tesla Supercharger close by.

Supercharging took about 40 mins. I took the opportunity of leaning back and resting my eyes. I was awoken by Vick playing a video on her phone at full pelt. So considerate!

The final hour’s drive seemed to take forever. There was a long queue to leave the 401 to enter the small township of Colborne.

Once into the town, it was fairly easy to drive through and out, but the queue on the other side of the road heading towards the 401 was humongous!

It was as if everyone from Toronto had been away for the weekend heading in the same direction, and they were all heading back into the city at the same time, ahead of the schools starting term tomorrow.

We finally arrived at The Drake Devonshire not long before check in time of 3pm.

The Owners Suite was amazing. It was probably the second most expensive hotel we had ever stayed in, and it was very well appointed.

It had character, most of the mod cons anyone would ever need, and they threw in a free bottle of rose sparkling wine. No jacuzzi though.

We were offered complimentary ice cream, which was just what we needed.

We chilled in the room for a while. The chilling process was helped by starting on the sparkling wine. Enjoying a glass of wine on our deck in the sun felt very decadent.

There were not many options for eating in Wellington and the hotel restaurant seemed to have a pretty good reputation, so that was our eatery of choice for the evening.

Vick wanted to sit in the sun, so we ended up needing to rotate where we sat so that we could even out the burn on our faces!

In the early evening, the sun wasn’t too intense anyway, so it wasn’t too much of a problem.

To get the eating started, Vick suggested we share a starter of pimento cheese and crab with tortilla chips.

That seemed to be an odd choice for a fish-disliker, but the crab was pretty meaty, and the dish was really tasty.

Vick decided to go with the chicken supreme as a main course. It came with ortzo pasta, which Vick didn’t want. She asked whether an alternative could be provided (e.g. fries) and the answer was no.

Considering there were lots of alternatives available as side dishes, that was really cheeky. So Vick had to order some fries as a side dish, and side dishes weren’t cheap. Cheeky blighters.

I fancied some steak, so I ordered the flat iron steak with fries and a chimichurry sauce.

The flat iron steak was a lot thicker than the flat iron steaks I have had in the past. The sauce and fries were excellent.

We decided not to bother with sweet. We had some cookies in our suite, courtesy of the hotel, so that would be just the ticket to finish off our calorie intake for the day.

Overall, the food was good, although we were not as convinced about the level of the service offered.

Follow the whole story here: Holiday to Canada in Aug 2024