BTW, pictures have already been posted on my Facebook account and on my ofoto page http://www.kodakgallery.com/elibap/main/aharons_wedding?UV=847889148351_445622758605. It’s just a pain to post them here so I’m not going to post too many, if any at all.
Anyway, we get to Toronto about 7:50. About 45 minutes late. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t be so bad but the thing is there is only ONE minyan for Shacharis in Downtown Toronto which had started 15 minutes before. So the decision was made to send the men uptown in a cab to the Boat Shul to daven Shacharis. The Boat Shul is like a minyan factory which has many minyanim during the day. The thing is that shul is a good half hour away, or more with traffic. So that really threw our plans for a loop.
Anyway,back to the bus station; we got off tired but happy to be there and were met by our wonderful and hospitable Aunt Chanie who lives nearby. She also had her husband and coworkers with two cars. We threw everything in cuz we were blocking traffic and flew to her apartmetnt in a very nice building on the 19th floor. She actually rented a second, furninshed apartment for the stay (our and an aunt and uncle coming in later). She had prepared a gorgeous spread of bagels and bread with cream cheese and cereal with milk, coffee and fruit. Really amazing hachnosos orchim, my uncle Frank Jessie and Aunt Sarah (who had gotten there previously) had gone uptown to buy the groceries the day before.
So we ate and drank and freshened up. We were all kind of tired and we tried to relax a little. Problem is everything took a long time and by now, the rental cars that I had reserved downtown were long expired. So I went to Aunt Chanie’s apartmnet and did my magic on the internet, and found a pretty cheap place not far from the boat shul that had two cars available. And they pick up people! So I reserved the cars and sent the driver to the boat shul. Problem is the men didn’t know to expect them because noone had told them. After a bunch of confusion and waiting on both ends, we finally connected the rental car driver with the men and they went to pick up two cars. Problem is my BIL, Aharon only had one piece of Photo ID and this place needed two so in the end, Adiel and Aharon the chosson (who barely slept the day before) were drivers and they were finally on their way home. We’re talking like 11:30 already when we thought we’d be on our way at 8:30.
Back in the apartment, we were struggling to keep the little Kosters occupied. With a little help from Aunt Sarah who took them for a walk and an unnamed black box, they were kept out of trouble. Now, we had to find a third car downtown except there were NONE. Call after call and nothing available. It was getting very FRUSTRATING! And that coupled with little sleep, babysitting the nieces and nephews and seeing the day just waste away put me into a little bit of a bad mood. I gave up on making any more calls. Lo and Behold, Mommy takes over and the first number she calls, Enterprise, has a car available. They are a block and a half away and will even allow the return to be in Thornhill, our final destination! That was good news, especially now that the car rental wasn’t till 12:30, it really gave us more time to return it on Friday instead of the original 8:30 that we thought it would be.
So Mommy gets that car, Aharon K becomes the second driver, the men finally get home (one car got lost along the way), park in the spots that Aunt Chanie had reserved and come upstairs for a quick bite. At this point, Yitzy our cousin had joined us. And finally, finally at about 1:30 we were all ready to go to Niagara. Only about 5 hours later than we had thought. There was some thought to just cancel Niagara and do something local, but we decided to do it anyway. Also SR was flying in to Buffalo and landing about 3:30 and needed to be picked up. So we scrambled into 3 cars (the big Koster girls came with us and we played GHOST and Geography the whole time) and drove to the falls. Adiel stopped along the way for a 10 minute power nap and I got a soda and card for a cell phone that one of the H.com members so nicely lent to us.
We get to Niagara, look at the Falls and walk around a bit. We want to do something as a family, but the car with Aharon and Aharon K went to pick SR and that took a long time dealing with the border and all. They finally came as we were going on to the Maid of the Mist but the two Aharons had to park the car so they ‘missed the boat’ and went on the next one. We snapped pics and then hurried back. We wanted to get back to Toronto in time for Mincha (shkiya was like 8:10 or something) and it was already 6:30.
TBC
Thanks! I’m enjoying!