I have a bunch of banked time off I need to burn sometime, so I decided to take the day off and fly Terry to Toronto for lunch. Toronto has a very nice little airport on an island right next to downtown - Toronto City Centre Airport. It took 65 minutes to fly there (vs a five hour drive), and 79 minutes to fly back (including the time for an instrument approach, as the ceiling was about 900 ft).

This photo shows the view as we were on an extended base leg to runway 33. You can see the east edge of the airport on the left side of the picture.

Here is the aircraft parked right in front of the Porter FBO.

I wanted the meal to be worth the flight, so I did some research yesterday and found Le Select Bistro, which gets rave reviews, and is only about a 15 minute walk once you get off the ferry from the island to downtown. It was perfect. The menu was extensive and interesting, the staff was friendly and both our meals were superb. And lunch for both of us was less than $30 before taxes and tip. My only regret was that I couldn’t have a beer, as they had some very interesting ones on their menu.

The view as we taxied for departure.

The main ramp, seen shortly after take-off from runway 26.

The airport and downtown, seen after we had turned towards the east.

On the way home we were still in cloud at 9,000 ft and it was quite bumpy, so I climbed to 11,000 hoping to be in clear air. But, we were still going through a few cloud tops at 11,000 ft, and we picked up a bit of ice as we went through each one.

Ice was collecting on the wing leading edges too, except for the inboard 80% of each fuel tank where the warm fuel kept the skin temperature above freezing. I waited a few minutes, but it was clear that the situation was not improving so we had to go back down to 9,000 ft. The ice disappeared very quickly as we descended through 10,300 ft and the air temperature warmed above freezing.

All in all, it was a great day. Next time though, we may stay the night and catch a play. That way I can try out one of the beers on the lunch menu.