Niagara weekend getaway (picture heavy)

Just the past weekend, myself and 12 others planned a trip to Niagara Falls to celebrate numerous things.
1. Cece's birthday
2. Crystal's Birthday
3. Robin's fairwell
4. Overall reunion of all TD people + John's girlfriend

Saturday Morning, Cece picked me up with Carol, Henry and Kary in the car. We had a small lunch at McDonald's before the long drive. The ride was fun, filled with blasting music and good head drooping naps. We seemed to be the fastest out of the three cars, so we stopped at Canada One Outlet to shop around first. Don't really like it there, not a lot of stores that interests me. I went into Soloman and they had a snowboard clasp that looked pretty good, and i was looking at snow pants but it seems they were all too long for me. I don't know if i'm just ridiculously short or their clothing are just for ridiculously tall people.

Cece + Carol

Henry

Kary

They had a Parasuco outlet, and i fell in love with a winter jacket. I tried it on and it fits nicely, and i wanted it sooo badly. But i needed to save and the girls managed to convince me to not buy it. Happy for that, but it does not stop the fact that my mind tends to linger back on that jacket. *drools*. It was snowing quite badly that day, and it was like that for the entire day.

It's snowing and it's cold!!!

Saw Candy's car at the parking lot of the outlet. Decided to leave a little bit of love =)

It was around 4pm, and we finally checked into our hotel room. We stayed at the Hilton Hotel at the Fallsview Casino, which was awesome, since there is a walkway and we didn't have to step outside in the cold for the remainder of the night.
We had book 3 hotel rooms in total. Each one was a Two bedroom suite, and it was huge and gorgeous! One king size bed, One queen size bed and a couch with a pullout queen size bed. Our room had a Jacuzzi with a huge window that we can open or close the remote controlled blinds for privacy or the lack of privacy. Pretty awesome for $139 a night, but if we stayed any longer than that, i'm sure the price would be very different.We unloaded all the food and alcohol into the kitchen. Our room was going to be the party room for the night since we got our room first and everything was already there.

My bedroom with Candy

The First room

Bathroom shot

Jacuzzi

View from the window

So finally everyone arrived and we all stayed in out room shared between Candy, Cece, Carol and myself. Check in time was supposed to be at 3pm, but then they didn't even have the two other rooms ready yet. We got all the tough looking men to go down to complain and all 13 of us ended up with free buffet breakfast for the next day, later checkout time, and upgraded from falls view instead of city view (beautiful!). Woot woot!

View from our hotel room, foggy and stormy.

Casino View

A few stayed in our room for pre-drinking while some others went back to their rooms to get settled in first. We were watching a horror movie on TV (The uninvited), and Cece was also telling us horror stories during the commercial breaks. Carol, Candy and I were all curled up on the bed scared while Robin and Henry were trying to be very dramatic and scare us some more. After the movie, we all crowded together in one bed telling horror stories in Toronto restaurants and the ghost story of our branch. Apparently our branch is haunted and there is a ghost at wicked 12 that calls people from that phone after hours. More people showed up in our room and as we were still in the scared mood, John was hiding in the Jacuzzi and popped out and banged on the window and scared the hell out of all of us.

Sandwich time!!!

It was so funny, because we kept calling each other in our rooms using the hotel phone, and we all had the same idea of picking up the phone saying "Welcome to TD Canada Trust at Kennedy and Steele's, Why are you calling?" haha, it was great!

We all met up and decided to head down to the Grand Buffet inside the Fallsview Casino for dinner. Everyone had a players card so it was $20 flat for everyone. We went at a rather late time so there wasn't a lot of people, therefore, we didn't have to abide by the 90 minute seating time rule. As a matter of fact, we stayed there for a pretty damn long time! I had a small portion of normal human hot food and then the rest of the dinner, i stuffed myself with dessert! I love the dessert there, it's fancy and yummy and it's a never ending supply!!! I've been there 3 times and always the dessert is the best. I wish i could have taken some pictures but unfortunately cameras allowed in the casino.

It was around 10pm when we were done dinner, and we decided to walk around the casino and around the shops and take some pictures at the lobby. The place was huge, since they have west wing, south wing, east wing, and north wing, i keep forgetting which one we are and can easily end up getting lost. We all met back up in our hotel room and started drinking and dressing up and putting the makeup on. They brought a bunch of tiny shooter cups, jenga and Uno with the automatic card shuffler and dispenser.(We never gotten around to playing Uno though haha). We stayed in the hotel room for quite a while.

Messy

cooling process

It was 1am and we were getting bored, so we decided to head downstairs to "Dragonfly" for clubbing. There was still a small lineup, but it was very quick. $20 cover fee and the security questioned my age but we all got in smoothly. Not that any of us are under aged, but two boys in front of us were only 19 and they were hitting on us, until Cece said "you're too young for us" hahaha.
The Club was actually pretty decent, the music was really really good. Main thing i am picky with clubs are music! And i was really hyping up to their good choice in music. Some had drinks and we danced together, with the boys standing behind us to protect us from unwelcome strangers trying to make a move. It was so cute, once men tried to "dance" their way in towards us and try to grab us to dance with them, John, Henry and Robin would come in right away to make sure they know they we are not interested. Haha, that was great! During the time, there were two very large women dancing with each other and kept hitting us unintentionally... because of the tight space and how large they were. Someone stated "their arms are the size of my entire body". Haha kinda mean but it was true.
We left at around 3:30am and poor Cece and Crystal's feet were aching from their heels, they took them off right away and walked bare feet back to the hotel on the dirt cold tiled floors.

All dressed up and ready to go

In front of the fountain, a random guy got into the pic behind us without us knowing.

At Dragonfly nightclub. Another random guy popped into our group picture

Once we got back, immediately we turned on the Jacuzzi to soak our tired feet. It felt soooo good! Everyone came back to our room after changing itno comfy clothes and we drank and played games all night. I was a good girl, i didn't drink AT ALL (alcohol) except for ONE shot of grey goose for Robin, since he's leaving Toronto for good.

Soaking up our poor feet in the jacuzzi

We got company! Party in the bathroom!

Matrix was playing on TV, so we watched that while playing Jenga, Drinking, and chowing down on chips. We had loud music playing in the room thanks to Cece's laptop and her iphone she plugged in. Cece and Crystal decided to soak in the Jacuzzi for a bit while watching us through the window, since they were the only two who brought their bikini's. I wish i did too, the hotel pool was so big and nice! We also bought too much junk food and alcohol, they even made an extra trip to a nearby LCBO because they were afraid we didn't have enough, but we ended up having way too much that we had to bring some home.

Cheers!

Jenga!

Spying on the girls in the tub

We went outside for a short walk and to get some air and on the way we saw a lot of prostitutes haha. Quite a lot of people out at such an odd time of night.

5:30am, the party started to die down, we were getting tired, and Henry was already passed out on the couch. We pulled the sofa bed out for him to lie down and allowed him to stay in our girlie room but he insisted he could walk. So Robin helped him back to their own hotel room. Sebastian, Daniel and Candy didn't want to go to bed yet, so they went downstairs to the Casino for a while. Since i share a bed with Candy that night, she left me all alone in the room, cold and no one to cuddle with me on the bed :( So cruel. Carol and Cece were sound asleep in the other bed in the other room just behind the door. Just as we all fell asleep, our room phone rang causing all of us to shoot up awake since the sound is so loud and annoying and freaky. It was 6am and John called to scare us saying "helloooo...this is the ghost from wicket 12 calling...". Gahhhhh! I'm surprised i was able to fall back asleep afterwards.

Henry's out

They're all out

And so the room finally emptied out

Leaving a mess, of course.

We woke up at 9am for the sole purpose of free breakfast haha. Last call was at 10am, so we had to get there before then. It was so difficult getting up. Breakfast was all the way up at the top floor and it was sooo nice, it looks exactly like CN Tower's 360 restaurant with the windows that goes all around and the two levels and how the restaurant is a circle. Very nice. Wasn't very hungry so i did not really indulge myself in the buffet-ness of breakfast time. Sebastian was the only one who couldn't wake up so everyone else had breakfast without him, the others were late coming down too. The bill was $300+, so happy it was free lol. But we had more than 8 ppl so we still had to pay the gratuity fee lol.

After breakfast we went back to the hotel room to laze around. Henry came over to our room, and us 5 layed on the bed watching  movie and eventually we all fell asleep together for an hour. It was a good rest. When we woke up it was round 12:30 we thought "Oh crap, we have to check out at 1pm!" A bit late but no problem! So after we packed everything up we went down to the parking lot and shoved everything in the car before coming back in to play at the casino for a while. We split up in groups to play. Our small group of 8 decided everyone to put in $10 and together we have $80 to play. We played the triple 7 slot machine, didn't win a lot there, and the game was so slow, and so then we moved on to the Sex and the City game. We had a lot of bonus games there and it was really fun, and spend majority of the day on that machine but eventually...like 2 hours later we lost the entire $80. Didn't win anything, luck was not on our side that day. Cece had good luck though. After we finally left the Casino, we took a bunch of group pictures by the fountain and finally off to home we go.

We came back to Toronto and had dinner at a Viet/Thai place, we all craved Pho since it was soooo cold. Last dinner with Robin, it was so sad. We all hugged him out in the parking lot and saying goodbye is very hard since we won't be seeing him anymore until maybe a long time when we go Shanghai or he visits us years later after he comes back and after settling down in Vancouver. Good luck on your marriage within the next two years! I will defiantly visit you in Shanghai when i happen to stop by in Asia.
Robin has always been one of my really good friends i met at TD, wonderful coworker and so helpful. Thanks for all those times of offering to drive me home when it's late at night and taking over the business wicket when i didn't want to. Can't forget all those times when you helped me translate when customers spoke un-understandable mandarin and always bring us beard papa's to feed us. Thanks Robin!!! The branch won't be as lively now :(

Bye Robin!

This mini trip has been really fun, it kind of slaps me in the and makes me realize how stressed I've really been and how much of a vacation i really needed. I need to de-stress myself from time to timer and let loose. Need to stop ditching my co-workers so much and go out and do something wild. Life can be very suffocating at times, i'm glad i have wonderful co-workers and friends that can bring me out of my stressful mind so easily.