Monday morning our daughter was first up to shower and make her way back to the residence where her daughter would be spending the university year as home-away-from-home. Meals weren't to be served until the following day, so they planned to go elsewhere for breakfast together. One other thing about that residence was that after it was converted from a hotel to a university residence, the chefs who worked for the hotel stayed on as cooks for the new residence. Former students who had been in residence there were fulsome in their praise for the food. Our granddaughter would be eating strictly vegetarian as her choice.

We took our time, getting Riley out to the little parkette behind the hotel before moseying back, noting that even at that time of the morning there were ample people about, this long-weekend Monday. Shops were not yet open, and the busy restaurants that had been packed with people the night before were closed up tight, neat and orderly within, lines of huge garbage bins lined up on the exterior.

The hotel puts on a rather lavish breakfast for its guests. Adjacent to the lobby there is a fair-sized room beyond which is a small serving area. In the room, open to the lobby and hallways are tables and chairs and a buffet breakfast offering fresh fruit, cereals, milk, various kinds of toasted bread and breakfast toppings, along with tea and coffee freshly brewed were there for the taking of guests. We had brought along our own fruit; oranges and bananas, cereal and banana muffins I'd baked the day before, since we couldn't very well trot Riley into the dining area and couldn't leave him alone, either. The small refrigerator and microwave, along with a coffee maker in our room made do, very nicely.

Afterward, we decided to walk over to a park my husband recalled well from the time he lived with his family as a child a short walk from the hotel. The streets by then were beginning to host hordes of people. It was overcast again, but very warm, a haze appearing on the city skyline, the faint outline of distant high-rises rising against the sky and the CN Tower barely to be made out. The first park we came across seemed familiar after all those years, but it was securely fenced in and a sign posted that it was private, no dogs allowed, part of a Chinese community centre. Just across from it was the park we accessed, again with giant Chestnut trees beginning to prepare for fall with dried, crumbling leaves tumbling to the grass below. Inner-city parks tend to be well-used and they look it, with a forlorn air of being plumb worn-out, and this one was no different, though the benches were robust and comfortable, and we sat there awhile.

And then decided we'd take the car and drive over to High Park, our most favoured greenspace hang-out when we were young. High Park is a huge public park abutting the lakeshore. One of my aunts and her husband owned a large three-story house on Indian Road, a block over from one of the park entrances and it was that part of the park we were most familiar with. But we drove along Bloor Street until we came to the northern entrance to the park, and entered as did countless other vehicles, all of us looking for an empty parking spot. We did eventually find one, and made our way down the first of the pathways, recalling details about the park and how, the last time we had been there, our two sons were young adults, with the photos to recall that time.

We first ventured toward the garden beds, where magnificent tree specimens presented themselves, among them a wonderful Camperdown Elm.

And then we came to the rockeries that cascade down the hill to Grenadier Pond. In the extended rockery, a stream runs from top to bottom, with small pools on the way down to the Pond.

It was somewhat more than a little nostalgic, to be there, to enjoy the wonderful landscape, and marvel at the plant specimens, including Aloe Vera, and cacti, Japanese maples, and other exotic species among the Japanese anemone and hostas that made such a wonderful garden out of the landscape.

Eventually we made our leisurely way back uphill toward another pathway that took us on a short descent on the opposite side, leading to the zoo. It's been there forever, that zoo. Not much of a zoo, and truth to tell, one whose presence would better be absent, than to see the sad-looking yaks, and mountain goats and sheep and bison, along with shrieking peacocks that refuse to display their colourful fans. And who can blame them?