August 20, 2025

Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Sonoma, California USA > Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Good morning, finally back on the road. Up at 04:00. Took my medication and headed back to bed to wait the thirty minutes for it to take effect. 04:15 time to make my cappuccino. 04:30 out to the smoking deck with my cappuccino and cigar. Enjoying the peace and quite while watching the sun break through the trees. A couple of the early birds visited the feeder.

05:00 shaving, into the shower and getting dressed. 05:20 time to wake Mary up, start her coffee and take our bags up the the driveway. 05:40 cleaning up the kitchen, taking out the trash and the last of the bags up to driveway. Opening the gate at 05:50 for our driver.

06:00 in the car and on our way to San Francisco International Airport. We have a 09:54 United flight. Mary has preordered breakfast, although none of the choices sounded all that great. We arrived at curbside at terminal 3 just about 07:15. Lots of people and traffic at the airport. There was a long line of people checking bags at the curve so we chose to go inside, thinking it might be faster and since we are in first class maybe a shorter line.

The line inside was nearly as bad and they only had one guy checking bags in. Most of it is automated now days anyway. Get your own luggage tags and put them on, etc. Looking at the people we began to understand it is the beginning of the fall college term. Lots of young people heading off to school.

Once the bags were checked in we headed to the gate. Terminal 3 is under construction, again. So, we are directed to Terminal 2. Still plenty of time. The line for security isn’t all that long. It is still amazing that some people just can’t understand the rules for going though security. All three of the people ahead on me had to go though multiple time because they forgot something they had in their pocket or wherever. I think the officer was surprised when I made it through on the first pass.

We had more than an hour and a half before the gate opened. So, we stopped at Pete’s for a coffee and pastry. The cappuccino wasn’t too bad but the blueberry muffin was bad. After the coffee we walked around a bit before settling at the gate.

09:18 they called for pre-boarding. We boarded and got to our seats. I quickly fell asleep. Mary woke me when breakfast arrived. It might had been better if it hadn’t. Nothing was really worth eating. After breakfast I fell back asleep, thankfully.

We landed on time at 17:40. Quickly got out bags and got a taxi to the hotel. Unfortunately, Toronto has a traffic problem, so we didn’t get to the hotel until 19:00. What should have been a forty-minute ride was almost twice as long. We are staying at the Marriott Residence Inn Downtown. Unfortunately, there was a mix up on the reservation. We don’t have a room until tomorrow night.

We planning this trip we went back and forth several times. Once the tour was cancelled by the tour company. Then our flights were changed by United. What we finally settled on apparently never got communicated to the tour company. Now being good Bonvoy Members with some status, we were able to get a room without a problem.

The rooms are small but nice. We were hungry and asked the desk attendant for a recommendation for a steakhouse near by. He was quick to recommend the Keg. The Keg Restaurant is located at 515 Jarvis Street just a fifteen-minute walk from the hotel. It is through Toronto’s “Castro” district, so a little interesting.

The restaurant is located in a building with a lot of history. The building was originally built in 1867 for Arthur’s MsMaster, nephew of a Canadian Senator and banker, William McMaster. The building was initially known as Euclid Hall. At the time Jarvis Street was one of the wealthiest parts of Toronto and the street was lined by large manors. The house was set back from the street and surrounded by large gardens.

The former house has a neutral color palette with pops of color as in the green brass accents over the windows and red shingles on the turret. The hall uses the soft, deep colors to contrast the hard, crisp edges. As a residence, it consisted of twenty-six rooms and seventeen fireplaces with a stable and large brick carriage house in the back. With significant alterations to the interior having been made since its era as a dwelling, the interior is now very different from the original.

In 1882, it was purchased by Hart Massey and his wife who had just returned to Toronto from Cleveland. The Masseys renovated the house and added a turret, verandah, and greenhouse, but the original Gothic façade was not significantly altered. Hart Massey's sons bought homes surrounding the manor. To the north his son Chester D. Massey built the home where Hart's grandchildren Vincent and Raymond were raised.

As the area became more urban and various commercial operations moved into the area, the Masseys decided to leave. In 1915, the building was bequeathed by the Massey family to Victoria College, a federated college of the University of Toronto. The manor served as the first home of Toronto radio station CFRB in the 1920s and was home to an art gallery for several decades until 1960. It later was bought by Jules Fine, and became a restaurant named Julie's Mansion, with the Bombay Bicycle Club existing on the top floor. After Fine suffered a stroke, the grounds were sold off and the greenhouses demolished and replaced with a service station. In 1976, it became home to a The Keg restaurant, and it was renamed the Keg Mansion.

All of this is really to set the stage for the restaurant. It was a really neat old house, even if it is nothing like it was when it was built. It brought back recollections of having dinner at the Ingomar Club in Eureka. Dinner was very nice. We started with an iceberg wedge for Mary and lobster bisque for me. There was a freshly baked load of bread to share. Mary went on to have the prime rib and I went with the peppercorn steak. Both were very nice. We would highly recommend this place for both the atmosphere and the food.

After dinner we head back to the hotel and slumber. It has been a long day.

Buonanotte and ciao, Enrico and Maria.