4-Day Self-Care Retreat in Toronto, Canada: Day 4 – Accomplish – Bowsing Nom Noms

Featured image: Tea, carrot loaf and chia pudding @ Page One Coffee

Note: this is part of a 4-part series. Links below for Days 1-3:

Day 1

Day 2

Morning person

As a morning person, I tend to wake up 2-3 hours before Aaron (the night owl). On days I don’t have to work, I sometimes fall into the bad habit of just browsing on various forms of social media for an extended period of time until I get bored. The infinite scroll is really infinite and is a real time-suck. This morning, I decided to be productive and headed upstairs to the hotel gym. I didn’t do a full workout but I did work on my physio exercises. It wasn’t very busy, so it was nice to have some quiet time to just focus on my exercises while taking advantage of the equipment that I do not have at home.

Carrot cake for breakfast

Again, Aaron joined me for breakfast and we headed over to Page One Coffee. I had the chia pudding, carrot loaf and black tea. Aaron had the yogurt parfait and americano. I did not enjoy the chia pudding as much because it was made with coconut milk which has hardened in the refrigerator. The carrot loaf tasted a lot like carrot cake. In actuality, I guess I had carrot cake for breakfast! Oops.

Train sandwich

After breakfast, I decided to do some last minute shopping at Uniqlo, while picking up some items for Aaron as per his requested. Time flew by as it was almost time for my train. I mustn’t forget to pick up a train sandwich for my train ride home. I stopped by Banh Mi boys to pick up their Kalbi Banh Mi before heading back to the hotel to finish packing. Then it was a quick walk to the train station.

Kalbi beef banh mi @ Banh Mi Boys — *Kalbi* beef *banh mi* @ Banh Mi Boys

Inception train ride

There is always a sense of sadness as we near the end of any trip. I booked an afternoon train ride home, to allow for less rushing in the morning and time to do some (self-care) “work” on the train ride home. I love travelling by train. One word: easy. It’s just so much easier to get to (right in the middle of downtown), check in (non-existent, just show up), board (walk up to the gate, no need to go through security and have to remove my liquids, computer, shoes, and jacket), and ride (free wifi, no need to stow my laptop, not having to worry that it’ll get too cold, or about the seatbelt sign being on and not being able to go pee when I really need to etc.). The banh mi was good. The baguette was not as crunchy as I had expected although I like this better as it was not as messy. The kalbi was flavourful but I think prefer good old cha lua and pate in my banh mi more. After enjoying lunch, I was very productive. I managed to finish my 8760 project and drafted my blog posts about this trip (inception much?). It ended with listening to the latest episode of Gretchen Rubin’s Happier podcast.

Thanks for coming along with me on my 4-day self-care/mental wellness retreat. There were some nice parts, some not-so-nice parts but overall a good trip to reflect and recharge. I hope you will all have the opportunity to embark on your own retreats soon!