Sunday, July 28th. Our friendship with Theresa & Kent dates back to when Ted and Theresa worked for computer programming firms that shared office space. Over the 40 plus years of our friendship, our families have shared cottage (theirs) and timeshare (ours) vacations, attended each other’s kids’ weddings, and had countless dinners together. We most recently saw each other in Mérida Mexico in March of 2023, when we were both spending the winter there – a whole year ago! They live just west of Ottawa, but were able to combine a visit with Toronto-based family with time with us, and lunch at The Olde Stone Cottage Pub in Scarborough.

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Our brunch (eggs Benedict, and fish & chips, above) was great, but it’s the in-person hugs that really are priceless.

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Monday July 29th. Nancy, Marcia, and Jill are friends from the years when all 4 of us were school secretaries in Halton. When Halton began to grow, Nancy and I were involved in opening new schools, and shared “office space” in a portable classroom for almost a year while our schools were under construction. That’s when we found out that we’d grown up one street away from each other in Burlington (in houses that were mirror images of each other!), but never knew each other because Nancy was 3 years younger and our school paths never crossed.

Marcia and Jill were already Nancy’s friends (or Nancy and Jill were already Marcia’s ? one of them will hopefully help me correct this after the fact if I’ve got it mixed up). At any rate, through one all three became my friends instead of just colleagues. During our years at the Halton District School Board we shared semi-regular after-school drinks when we had something to celebrate (or complain about). I retired first, and we haven’t seen each other since Ted and I started travelling, with the exception of pre-covid visits in South Carolina and Collingwood with Marcia and her hubby.

When our grandsons asked what we were going to do in Ontario, I told them we’d be visiting friends. Smart-aleck #3 immediately said, in a fake-shocked voice, “Wait, YOU have FRIENDS?!” Well … here’s proof.

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All of them live west of Toronto, so Marcia met me at the Appleby GO Station in Burlington, from where we headed to Kelsey’s at the Burlington Mall. Three hours absolutely flew by. I can’t believe how much I’ve missed these wonderful women!

This was definitely not a Ted-included activity; he took the opportunity for a rare father/son lunch with Zero at Square Boy’s, a burger joint that Ted frequented when he was in high school in Toronto in the early 70’s.

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After a leisurely “girls” lunch and lots of conversation, it was time to get back on the train. Since the next day Ted and I would both need to be in Mississauga, instead of going back to our Airbnb I headed to The Esprit, the condo where we lived from 2010-2017, to visit my good friend Josie.

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Josie and I email and FaceTime regularly, but this is only the second time since Ted’s and my move to BC that I’ve seen her in person. As is always the case when we’re together, the intervening years simply disappear snd it’s as if we’ve never been apart.

We reminisced about how our friendship initially grew out of shared recipes (hers Croatian, and mine German/Hungarian) for what turned out to be exactly the same foods, but with different names based on language differences – and a shared love of reading. Josie is a wonderful cook, and I was not surprised when, instead of letting me bring pizza, she made a full chicken paprikash dinner (with plenty of sour cream in the sauce) AND baked custard with whipped cream and fruit AND lemon squares (my favourite) for dessert.

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Tuesday July 30th. After all that food the day before, Josie put together a hearty breakfast featuring one of our shared favourites – the Polish version of black pudding. (She must think I’m moonlighting as a lumberjack in BC!)

Ted came by just before noon to get his own hugs from Josie, and then his Random House colleague and friend Sharon picked us up to take us to her Mississauga home for a reunion with more of Ted’s colleagues. It’s fun to see how much more relaxed everyone is now that they are retired!

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And THIS is the magic that came out of Sharon’s kitchen for lunch, including salad straight from her garden and a to-die-for pineapple upside down cake with a delicious secret ingredient (cinnamon – now no longer secret).

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We grabbed the bus and subway back to our Airbnb, replete with food, stories, hugs, and new memories made with our friends.

Wednesday July 31st. It’s another hot, humid, body-temperature day here today (37°C/98.6°F with the humidex), and after our whirlwind of social engagements we’re just laying low in the air conditioning, packing, and looking forward to one more delicious dinner before we head back to BC.

Just up the street is a franchised Indian (mostly take-out) restaurant called Hurry Curry that has an option for Thali, a divided plate that allows sampling of 6 items: 2 meat curries, a vegetable dish, rice, salad, and a sweet or savoury side dish (I chose raita, a cucumber and yogurt combination). You can watch them roll out your naan dough and bake it to bubbly goodness in the deep cylindrical oven. The food was not nearly the best Indian we’ve eaten, and could have been (temperature) hotter, but the portions were generous and the spicing on my lamb curry, beef vindaloo, and palak paneer (spinach with cheese), and Ted’s butter chicken, was spot on.

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Tomorrow we’ll check out of our Airbnb around 9:00 a.m. Toronto time, headed for the airport and our flight home, which is scheduled for shortly after noon. If all goes smoothly, we’ll land in Vancouver around 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time and catch either the 4:20 or 4:50 West Coast Express getting us back to our Maple Ridge accommodations by 6 p.m.

It’s been an incredibly busy two weeks, but filled with so much joy that it was worth every bit of how tired we are.

The social butterflies are flying “home”.