There were so many things to see and do in this beautiful city, that I had to give this post a part two .
When doing a 30 Plus Teams Tour of Toronto, you’ll notice that the skyline of the city is dominated by the CN Tower, just like the Washington Monument in Washington DC, the Stratosphere in Las Vegas and One Observatory in New York City.
There were hidden gems to see in town, like the collection of old train cars right by the Ripley Aquarium of Canada.
Even though my 30 Plus Teams Tour of Toronto, aka the 416, ended on February 3rd, the Sports Diva is STILL going to share it with you via pictures.
Toronto is one of my favorite cities right behind Boston, Las Vegas, Washington DC, Baltimore,Montreal and Philadelphia, yes in that order.
Notice that the city that I live in, New York City, is NO WHERE on my list of favorite cities and if I could move away from New York City, I would and move to either Boston, Las Vegas, Washington DC or even Toronto, but that’s a story for another blog post.
These pictures from Toronto include scenes of this beautiful city and especially a place that every hockey fan should visit when you’re doing a 30 Plus Teams Tour of Toronto, the place that calls itself, “The Cathedral of Hockey,” better known as the Hockey Hall of Fame.
After leaving The Clarence House on 30th January, I changed hotels to go to what’s basically an airbnb.
I booked a condo in the Entertainment district of Toronto.
The condo was located at 14 York Street across the street from Scotiabank Arena, where we were going to an event for NHL All Star week, Union Station, the bus and train station and nearby Rogers Centre, the baseball park formally known as the Skydome.
The condo even in American money came out cheaper than a hotel in Toronto, which is where we were supposed to be staying in until I found this condo on one of the many travel websites that I use.
Our condo, where we stayed from 30 January until 3 February, was located on the 43rd floor, room 4310, and the only way to get into the building or to your floor on the elevator, was by using a key fob.
Enjoy the pictures from the Sports Diva’s “home” in Toronto.
For three days, January 27th until January 30th, the Sports Diva stayed at a place called The Clarence Place Hostel for her 30 Plus Teams Tour of the city known as The Six or 416, Toronto, Canada.
For the rest of my trip, one of my Circle of Sisters and hockey partner in crime, Michele T who’s coming in from Newark on 30 January,will be staying in another place in the city.
More about the other place, which is closer to all the fun and shenanigans of NHL All Star weekend, in another post.
The Clarence Place is located at 7 Clarence Square which is located in the area known as the Entertainment District.
The hostel is close by Rogers Centre, if your 30 Plus Teams Tour of the 416 includes a Toronto Blue Jays baseball game.
If you’re lucky enough to get tickets to a Toronto Maple Leafs game or see the Toronto Raptors basketball game, you’re close enough to the Scotiabank Arena, formally the Air Canada Centre, as well as Union Station, the bus and train station in town.
At first I wasn’t going to stay at this hotel given some of the reviews I saw on line.
Not for nothing, but you can’t always go by other people’s opinions.
What might be a bad place to some people might be good for you.
This was the case of The Clarence Park, which is located in a building that reminded me of one of those townhouses on Fifth Avenue that the Vanderbilt’s, Astor’s or Morgan’s might have lived in when they weren’t up in Newport, Rhode Island.
As a result, there are no elevators in the building just stairs.
Now if you have a lot of luggage or a medical condition like the Sports Diva, (I have osteoporosis)please take your time going up and down the stairs .
Staying at this hostel, like most hostels that I have stayed at, come with rules.
Check out time is 11am, quiet time is 11pm and no cooking after 11pm.
I can’t believe some of you need to be told this main rule of this and all hostels- clean up after yourselves.
Wash your dishes after you use them.
Do you really need to be told this, people?
Didn’t your mamas teach you better?
I stayed on the top bunk of an 8 bed female dorm.
They have male dorms and if you’re adventurous or just don’t care, they have mixed coed dorms.
The main problem for a lot of people who left negative reviews of the hostel was the amount of homeless tents across the street from the hotel in Clarence Park.
Now not to be political or nonchalant about this, it didn’t bother me.
I have been homeless and slept in a shelter not a tent.
There actually weren’t that many tents that I saw and not for nothing, sorry but you go into any big city in the United States like New York,Washington DC, Los Angeles or even Newark, New Jersey, you’re going to see a lot more tents than I saw in Clarence Park.
Now would I stay here again if I was doing a 30 Plus Teams Tour of Toronto by myself?
The answer is yes.
Just keep that hot water in the shower very hot, Clarence Park.
It was basically a two day weekend trip to really do a 30 Plus Teams Tour to watch a couple of baseball games.
Things didn’t work out, as you found out in one of my other posts.
The Sports Diva still made the best of the remaining 30 Plus Teams Tour of Charm City by walking around the neighborhood of the hotel , Orioles Park at Camden Yards and I even discovered a statue of the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who the airport was named for.
There was even a building that had , I guess you would call it a statue, stones around it showing the different counties of Maryland.
The Sports Diva even got a lesson in the geography of Maryland.
There are two counties, Dorchester and Worcester, just like the cities in Massachusetts.
Reason for that? The British settled in the state of Maryland, too.
13 colonies my peeps, remember?
Also the city of Baltimore IS NOT the same as Baltimore county.
The city of Baltimore is just that, the city of Baltimore.
New York Yankees shirts and hats for two games-check
Yankees tickets for both games at Orioles Park at Camden Yards- check
Hotel in Baltimore for 30 Plus Teams Tour-check.
List of things to do in Baltimore for 2 days-check.
Two hour rain delay and having the ushers tell you get out of your seat because of the thunder and lightning.
Nope, sorry, that wasn’t on the Sports Diva’s check list.
The game was supposed to start at 7:15pm on Friday, July 28th.
We should have taken the hint when instead of players on the field, there was the white tarp that covers the field when there’s a rain delay or rain is coming.
At around 7:30 or 7:45, the rain came with a vengeance and she brought her friends thunder AND lightning with her.
You can forget about panic at the disco when bolts of lightning went over the football field of the Baltimore Ravens,which is right next door to Camden Yards,it was more like panic at the ballpark as everyone ran for cover.
As my friend and I had no umbrellas or anything to cover us, we were drenched.
We didn’t seem to care that after all that weather, the game WASN’T postponed, it was delayed until 9pm and it ended around 12:30am.
We went back to the hotel and got under the covers, and followed the game on social media since it wasn’t on regular tv.
The following night, there was another chance of thunderstorms.
We weren’t going to take any chances this time.
If the game was going to be delayed, we were going to wait in the hotel, which was right across the street, then dash over when the game started up.
So much for that plan.
It didn’t rain and the game started on time.
We decided to watch it on TV while we ordered from Broadway Diner.
You might say that this was a wasted trip, but no it wasn’t.
In the words of rapper Nikki Minaj, “sometimes it be’s like that.”
We just didn’t expect it this time that our 30 Plus Teams Tour of Baltimore was going to go “left”.
The hotel is located at 100 Hopkins Place in Baltimore, Maryland.
You would think that since the hotel is across the street from the Baltimore Convention Center and Orioles Park at Camden Yards, the hotel would be called Days Inn Camden Yards or Days Inn Convention Center, but nope, it isn’t.
Instead it’s the Days Inn Inner Harbor because Baltimore’s famous Inner Harbor is a few blocks away.
Because one of my Circle of Sisters and I were in town for our annual 30 Plus Teams Tour to see the home town baseball team, the Baltimore Orioles, play the New York Yankees, this was the hotel we stayed at.
We have stayed at several different hotels in Baltimore but never Days Inn because it was always full.
This time we got lucky.
Rooms were available and we got a junior suite, which just sounds fancy schmantzy , but all it is, is a king sized bed with a pull out sofa bed, which was very comfortable.
Normally there’s a pool and an onsite restaurant.
The pool was closed for maintenance and the restaurant wasn’t open for lunch and dinner.
We ate first at the Pratt Street Ale House and then ordered from Broadway Diner, who delivered our food right to the hotel by door dash.
I would recommend both places to eat the next time your 30 Plus Teams Tour takes you to Baltimore.
I really enjoyed my short stay from 28 July until 30 July, but I do have two complaints though.
Sorry not sorry but two hangers in the closet just won’t do because the Sports Diva just doesn’t bring a little bit of clothes, I bring half my closet with me.
Secondly, guys seriously, coffee makers in the room but no condiments to go into the coffee like cream and sugar, let alone something to stir the coffee with.
Make it make sense.
The Sports Diva likes her coffee every which way but black and no sugar, just putting it out there for my next visit to Charm City.
In spite of these two complaints, would the Sports Diva stay at the Days Inn Inner Harbor again?
Yesterday, January 29th, I entered a new chapter of my life.
Chapter 70, yes I didn’t stutter, I said the Big 7-0, Praise God.
So how did I spend my birthday?
I did it the way any Sports Diva would do it .
I took a trip over to Kenmore Square where you get off at the exit marked BU, that’s Boston University, and yeah, it’s also the stop for Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox baseball team and one of the oldest ball parks in baseball.
Now some of you know the Sports Diva is a fan of three of the four major sports teams in Boston, Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins, or better yet, football, basketball and hockey.
The New York Yankees baseball fan in me wouldn’t stand for liking the hated rivals of the the Yankees, but here I was in enemy territory, Fenway Park.
Three years ago, I was at Fenway Park, for a, you guessed it, a Yankees and Red Sox game.
Like most of Boston, the area around Fenway Park had changed a lot since I had been here and even lived here.
The little bridge that you would walk across from Kenmore Station to Fenway Park never had a name before, or if it did, no one ever knew it.
Now it does.
It’s the David “Big Papi” Ortiz Bridge, named for the very popular Boston Red Sox baseball player who’s loved by fans of the Red Sox and opposing teams as well.
I even like him
As you walk past one of the Fenway gates, you’ll see the retired numbers of some of the Red Sox players.
Ortiz’s familiar number 34 is right up there next to number 42 of Jackie Robinson, which will NEVER be worn by any baseball player in Major League Baseball.
Now being the Sports Diva that I am, I just had to get back to my hostel quickly so that I could watch the football playoffs on TV .
However, as bad as both football games were, I could have stayed a little bit longer at Fenway and the neighborhood around Boston University, just putting it out there.
Needless to say I enjoyed myself exploring “enemy territory”, and I can’t wait to come back to see a game at Fenway.
I don’t need to tell you that it’s going to be against the New York Yankees.
It always has had a bad reputation, but the city of Baltimore has always been one of my favorite cities, especially when the New York Yankees are playing the home town baseball team, Baltimore Orioles.
Every year one of my friends and I do our annual trip to see the game.
We aren’t the only ones, either as many people come up not only for the game but to see attractions like Fort McHenry, Inner Harbor and new areas of Baltimore that tourists rarely see, like the area that John Hopkins University is located in, Charles Village.
As it was very hot and humid, I didn’t take as many pictures as I wanted to.
The hotel’s official name is Doubletree Inn at the Colonnade by Hilton, but on the building there’s a plaque that reads, Inn at The Colonnade Baltimore.
This hotel with the very long name is located at 4 University Parkway in the Charles Village neighborhood of Baltimore.
It’s right across the street from the humongous campus of John Hopkins University, so if your 30 Plus Teams Tour of Baltimore includes a visit to the school, this is the ideal hotel to stay at.
I’ll talk more about John Hopkins University in another post.
One of my Circle of Sisters and I were in Baltimore for our annual trip to see the Yankees and Orioles baseball game at Camden Yards.
We usually get a hotel closer to either the Inner Harbor or Downtown Baltimore, but for some reason, everybody and their mama plus Coco the dog we’re staying in town July 22-24, so the hotels we normally stay at weren’t available.
Other hotels in those areas had rooms but neither of us wanted to mortgage our houses to stay there, that’s how high the rates jumped up to on Saturday night.
My friend wasn’t too thrilled with the hotel, even though it was “cheaper”, I, however, LOVED it, and I would stay here again if I was doing a 30 Plus Teams Tour of Baltimore.
What did I like about it?
The fact that it actually is close to public transportation, as there is a bus stop right in front.
If you walk a block or two, there’s the free Charm City Circular Purple Line that stops at the major tourist attractions in town and stops at Baltimore’s Penn Station if you happened to be taking Amtrak from New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia or Boston.
The Charm City Circular stops right around the corner from the hotel.
If you’re coming from the BWI airport, you could take public transportation, but an Uber or a cab would be your best bet.
The elevators are painted with tourist attractions of the city like the Inner Harbor and the original Washington Monument, which is in Baltimore NOT the District of Columbia.
The bed in the room, which had a refrigerator and coffee maker, was very comfortable.
The Sports Diva wants to know though, Doubletree. Do we really need FOUR big pillows on the bed though?
They have a breakfast buffet in the hotel that is open from 7am until 10am and costs $14.84.
I thought it was worth it and shout out to the waitress, Jasmine, who was so friendly and kept the coffee and hand sanitizer coming.
NoNow what would a visit to a Doubletree hotel be in without the cookie you get when you check in.
If I come back to Baltimore for a 30 Plus Teams Tour, maybe even on a solo trip, I’ll come back to the hotel with the long name.
30 Plus Teams 30 Plus Dreams 
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