So I went to this Procter & Gamble event in Toronto…

First, I have to tell you… Do you know what my favourite part of any trip to Toronto is? The train ride there on VIA Rail. Four hours alone with my netbook, free wifi, gorgeous views out the window and coffee delivered to my seat. This is my idea of heaven.

Upon arriving I met up with a couple other bloggers who had come in on the same train, and we teamed up to navigate the subway on our way to the hotel. Oh yeah, and that’s my second most favourite part of any trip to Toronto. I love taking the subway! To me, a trip to Toronto without a ride on the subway would be like visiting Disney World and not riding on the monorail! It’s all part of the fun.

I had looked the hotel up online, looked at pictures of the room, and generally had an idea that this was one posh place, but I was still floored when we arrived. We arrived fairly early in the day, so I thought we would have to check out bags at the desk until the listed 3pm check-in time, but they had out rooms already prepared. I hopped upstairs just to drop off my bags and I was stunned by how gorgeous the room was. I actually started crying. There was an iPad in the room to use during your stay. There was a gift basket from P&G full of any product you could possibly want to use while in a hotel room. There was a giant marble soaker tub in a bathroom that may have been bigger than the front room in my old apartment. It was incredibly nice. I was wowed.

 

After spending part of the afternoon lunching on spicy Indian food with some very cool ladies that I was delighted to have face time with (@gingermommy, @orangeheromama and @callista83), I holed up in my room for a bit as I had a deadline for an article due that night, and Baby-G’s refusal to sleep the evening before had set me behind. Yeah, what does a blogger do when left in a fancy hotel room by herself? Blog. But I was blogging at one beautiful desk, in a very cosy chair, with a nice cup of coffee at hand, and a beautiful 16-story up view out the window behind my back.

 

In the meantime most of the other out of town participants had trickled in, and at 6:15pm we all met in the lobby to head out for a group dinner that P&G had arranged for us. We ate at a place called Terroni. We sat at one very long table and were served a three course meal on platters, family style. The food was amazing. The service was impeccable. The kind of service where they are just ever present, invisibly at your elbow, topping up your drink, whisking plates away and replacing them with fresh ones as the courses progressed. I enjoyed meeting a few other bloggers, as well as a couple of employees from P&G. We talked about our family, and our kids and swapped silly stories. It was a fantastic meal and a great ice breaker.

@gingermommy and I snuck out of dinner as soon as dessert was served because we had promised two local ladies that we would meet up for coffee. Of course when making plans we had no clue that dinner would be a three hour affair. Very much enjoyed, but far lengthier then expected. As is was already well after 9pm, we nixed the plans for coffee and dessert and instead had a little gathering in gingermommy’s hotel room. Again, it was awesome to just get to hang out in person with some of these people that I enjoy talking to daily online.

 

Happy to be hanging with @BewilderedBug, @AerynLynne, @orangeheromama, @chancesmommy, @gingermommy and @nugglemama.

Around midnight I headed back to my hotel room where I had a bath in that luxurious soaker tub, while enjoying the novelty of a TV built into the bathroom mirror. I tried some of the products so thoughtfully included in our P&G gift basket. I had a nice long bath, followed by a shower. Yeah, seriously. I couldn’t pass up trying out the walk in shower with the rain style shower head, which was just as luxurious as the marble bathtub.

 

I lay in bed in the incredibly cozy robes they provided with the room and browsed around on the hotel’s iPad. It was pretty darn blissful. P&G wanted to pamper us a bit, as fitting with their mission to help make mom’s lives better, and I have to say they pulled out all the stops. I was one very happy (squeaky clean) lady as I drifted off to sleep, looking forward to the full day event to come.

Disclosure: As part of the PGmom program P&G invited me to Toronto for the day and paid for my accommodations and travel.