There's nothing like a getaway to the "big city" to cure the February blues. We started it off by meeting our good friends Al and Helen at Terroni's, a restaurant specializing in Southern Italian fare. Then we continued our wonderful evening together by walking over to the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre to see Sandra Shamas' performance of "Wit's End III: Love Life", a comical look at some of women's mid-life issues! The next day, we took some time to go to our favourite jewelry suppliers to stock up on some silver findings and ended up falling in love with some of the strings of stone beads to incorporate into our designs.
Picture Jasper, line agate, lava, and granite beads...hmm...what to use first??!!!
We ended the day with with an amazing performance of "The Secret Garden" at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. Both music and story were beautifully performed by the Edinburgh Festival Company. We loved it!
Day Three started with a delicious brunch at Commensal, a restaurant specializing in vegetarian and vegan gourmet delights! DELISH!
Then, off we went to the Art Gallery of Ontario(AGO) to take in the special exhibit, Maharaja: The Splendour of India's Royal Courts. We were quite taken with the beauty of the silver carriage which had amazing enameling detail on it.
The famous Rolls Royce called "The Star of India" custom built in 1934 for the Maharaja of Rajkot was also part of the exhibit. Following the AGO exhibit, the "Star of India" will return to India after 42 years in exile.
The Art Gallery of Ontario is always an inspiring destination!
This photo shows the light-filled atrium of the AGO that stretches
for almost a city block. It was part of the AGO re-design
created by famous architect, Frank Gehry.
The interesting architecture of part of the Ontario College of Art and Design(OCAD)
located behind the Art Gallery
(with Toronto's icon, the CN tower, in the background)
Then it was off to Umbra to do some jewelry display shopping. It's always such fun to shop at this very pink retail establishment!
We ended up getting a state-of-the-art recipe book holder! It's a thing of beauty! It will proudly hold some of our new cook books to inspire gourmet cooking-a creative pursuit that seems just as popular as jewelry making these days!
To end a wonderful getaway, we headed to Guelph and had a delicious tempeh reuben sandwich at the Cornerstone restaurant. Then it was off to the River Run Centre to hear Jesse Cook perform. Jesse is a Canadian guitar virtuoso, who had us up on our feet, dancing to his upbeat, flamenco-style original music. He's been nominated for a 2011 Juno in the World Music Album of the year category. What a perfect ending to a wonderful getaway! As always, it was great to return to Waterloo and recuperate from all the excitement! Tomorrow...time to go to the studio and create with some of those beads-or perhaps cook something from a book held by the new cookbook holder-or BOTH!