Don't look at the date. We just didn't take any pictures today.

I didn't have anything new to give Lisa for her birthday. She'd cashed in the birthday chip several times already. So I decided to do the laundry again and let her sleep. Probably the best present at this point. The pool was open this time and a woman was already swimming. She was celebrating her 45th anniversary and was pretty bitter that her husband wanted to sleep late and she liked to get up early. I was proud of us for having solved the problem more than 20 years faster than they did. Her husband teases her for doing needlepoint on vacation. She only does it because she's bored. My wife teases me for being on my computer on vacation. I only do it because its fun.

The perfect vacation.

I woke her up in time to leisurely get ready to check out. I think my words were, "Get up old woman! You're going to have to live to be 90 to be middle aged now." I eventually had to tell her it was her birthday. She'd completely forgotten.

We had to be out by one and be ready to board the train by five. We had a very slow lunch at the hotel restaurant, enjoying our last view of the falls (and another of Mike's Hard Lemonades). Our cabbie to the train station answered several of our geology questions (it recedes about a foot every 10 years or so, depending on how much they manipulate the flow of the river) and showed us where the edge of the falls had been 12,000 years ago.

The train was late leaving Buffalo, then American customs decided to do a surprise search before the customary Canadian customs. So we had lots of time to hang out in the station. I used the time to delete the completely useless photos from the 300 shots we'd taken. A woman from Detroit was as early as we were and viewed all 300 pictures with us, many of them twice. She politely seemed to enjoy them. I hope it was better than sitting alone. Lisa told her how little we knew of the eastern half of the US and that we'd never met anyone from Detroit. She said her name was Aleeta and now we've met someone from Detroit. She said Detroit isn't as bad as we've heard and anyway its getting better.

The station was small and stark. The benches were hard. But it was far better than the train, which was more like the stereotypical bus. It was filthy and stunk. The smell was apparently coming from an Indian woman who staggered into the station shortly before the train left, long after it was scheduled, banging on the ticket window and yelling. I went into the same bathroom she had used and there was crap everywhere. I wonder if she was one of the casino junkies we'd heard about who won't even leave their machines to go to the bathroom. Some wear diapers, one had to be thrown out after not leaving her machine for 2 days.

Fortunately, it was only a two hour ride. Then we dragged our suitcases up and down stairs to get through the tunnel to the hotel. (Don't be a handicapped passenger in Toronto.) The beautiful old hotel was adequately preserved, but not restored to its original class, like La Reine Elizabeth. (They're both owned by the same company.) Lisa saw an old picture of the ballroom that reminded her of the final scene of The Shining. As we walked down the long hallway, we were both looking for Jack and hearing, "Honey, I'm home." Our room was large, but noisy (it sounded like the trains were coming through the walls) and had a view of the next building. Ok, we're spoiled now.

It was time to salvage the birthday. I checked room service. It was a club sandwich menu. We'd seen a sign for Benihana in the lobby. The hostess asked us if we wanted a cooking table. Lisa said no. When she offered us a tiny table practically in the doorway I thought, "Oh shit. Lisa's curse strikes again, what a lousy birthday." I asked if she was sure she didn't want a cooking table and she said, "Cooking table? I thought she said smoking table." So we sat around a big teppanyaki grill with two Japanese couples.

Two midwest couples in suits were at the table behind us. Their chef was giving them a show with flying food and knives. Lisa noted that they were trying very hard to be unimpressed. We ordered tempura asparagus and shitake mushrooms, crab and avocado salad with a plum-beet dressing, some sushi, soup and, just for the show, grilled shrimp and scallops. The food was incredible and the chef had us all laughing and clapping. The couples at the next table were studying us, and our food, very carefully and finally joined in our enthusiasm. Silly white people.

As we were winding down with tea and wine, we told our table mates about our anniversay trip and that it was Lisa's birthday. The man next to me, Motoaki (Mo) Aoki, disappeared briefly. Then our waitress came out with a candle in our dessert and they all sang "Happy Birthday and Anniversary to You!" and the waitress told us that Mo was buying our dessert. Turned out he and his wife own a restaurant in a nearby town (the best Japanese restaurant in Canada according to their card), the other man, Yoshi, was their sushi chef. This was a business dinner (for tax purposes) as they were considering putting in some teppanyaki tables. Yoshi was very interested in learning to flip the knives and asked the chef if he still had all his fingers. He did.

So it wound up being a great day and birthday after all. A few hours later we were staggering our way back to the train.

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