On Sunday we made the drive across to Toronto. The weather wasn't great so we didn't explore too much along the way other than to the A&W "restaurant" for lunch, which was better than we thought, and they served all drinks in a frosted mug. Since we arrived earlier than we could check into our condo, we stopped first at Casa Loma, Toronto's castle. This was quite an impressive place. When you get down to it though, it was built by a rich man who always wanted to live in a castle in the early 1900s. He lost his fortune during the depression, the home became a hotel, then was abandoned for a number of years before a local rotary-type group who have revived it into the tourist attraction it is today. It has also been used in many hollywood movies. The favorite feature of everyone was the long underground tunnel that took you down the block to the most elaborate carriage house and horse stalls around. That evening we settled in to our new home and were treated to an beautiful view of the Toronto skyline.
Monday, we headed out early to visit the CN Tower. To be completely honest, I had no idea that the CN Tower was the tallest building in the world for over 30 years. It was built as a radio tower, so there are no offices or companies within it except for the restaurant and other tourism related entities. We spent a few hours up on the observation deck which had a glass floor that allowed you to look down to the plaza below. James, Ben and Audrey were unphased by the floor and were dancing on it. Noah, however, was scared to death of it given his fear of heights. We were so proud of him though, because he wouldn't give in to his fear. By the end of our time he managed to walk out on to the glass all by himself!
After we finished we were taking pictures outside at the CN Tower sign when a group of Chinese tourists joined us. Ben wasn't paying attention while we were yelling for him to get out of the way of their pictures. But, instead, they insisted that they wanted him in their pictures and started taking turns posing with him. Before we knew what was happening one of them came up and took Audrey to be in their picture too. We realized too late that we should have given Audrey the choice to say no, but they whole thing was just so bizarre we went with it:)
Across the street was the Toronto Railway Museum with a real round house.The museum itself was closed, but there was still lots to see in the yard. We ate lunch at the Amsterdam Brew Haus on the water. We spent the afternoon at Ripley's Aquarium. This contained a really long moving sidewalk to take you through an enormous tunnel under an aquarium. The coolest thing we did was to get our nails and cuticles "cleaned" of their dead skin by the prawns. Also, at the base of the CN Tower was the Rogers Center, the home of the Toronto Blue Jays. We had dinner at home then drove down to check out the beach and the over 100 beach volleyball courts.
Tuesday was a bit dreary so we explored the Royal Museum of Ontario. I can only liken it to parts of most of the Smithsonian Museums under one roof. There were exhibits of dinosaurs, ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, lots of sculptures, a bat cave and amazing modern architecture. We drove through Eaton Square where the Eaton Center was, but decided it wasn't worth parking and getting out to explore. Instead, we went back downtown to check "eat a bever tail" off our list. We had one with Nutella, peanut butter and Reeses pieces. The other one had cheesecake icing with Skor bar bits... they were awful...;)
Wednesday morning brought our trip to Canada's Wonderland. It was a large amusement park something like Six Flags. The characters known at Wonderland were the Peanuts gang which the kids got to meet a few of. Everyone tried out at least one roller coaster and had a blast riding all of the rides. They even let us leave the park to have a picnic lunch outside, then come back in. Needless to say, spent the entire day here.
After we finished we were taking pictures outside at the CN Tower sign when a group of Chinese tourists joined us. Ben wasn't paying attention while we were yelling for him to get out of the way of their pictures. But, instead, they insisted that they wanted him in their pictures and started taking turns posing with him. Before we knew what was happening one of them came up and took Audrey to be in their picture too. We realized too late that we should have given Audrey the choice to say no, but they whole thing was just so bizarre we went with it:)
Across the street was the Toronto Railway Museum with a real round house.The museum itself was closed, but there was still lots to see in the yard. We ate lunch at the Amsterdam Brew Haus on the water. We spent the afternoon at Ripley's Aquarium. This contained a really long moving sidewalk to take you through an enormous tunnel under an aquarium. The coolest thing we did was to get our nails and cuticles "cleaned" of their dead skin by the prawns. Also, at the base of the CN Tower was the Rogers Center, the home of the Toronto Blue Jays. We had dinner at home then drove down to check out the beach and the over 100 beach volleyball courts.
Tuesday was a bit dreary so we explored the Royal Museum of Ontario. I can only liken it to parts of most of the Smithsonian Museums under one roof. There were exhibits of dinosaurs, ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, lots of sculptures, a bat cave and amazing modern architecture. We drove through Eaton Square where the Eaton Center was, but decided it wasn't worth parking and getting out to explore. Instead, we went back downtown to check "eat a bever tail" off our list. We had one with Nutella, peanut butter and Reeses pieces. The other one had cheesecake icing with Skor bar bits... they were awful...;)
Wednesday morning brought our trip to Canada's Wonderland. It was a large amusement park something like Six Flags. The characters known at Wonderland were the Peanuts gang which the kids got to meet a few of. Everyone tried out at least one roller coaster and had a blast riding all of the rides. They even let us leave the park to have a picnic lunch outside, then come back in. Needless to say, spent the entire day here.
There were a few things we didn't get to experience in Toronto we wished we could have. We weren't able to go to Toronto Island because of flooding due to the high water level of Lake Ontario. We did get to see the flooding from the CN Tower and it was pretty impressive! We also tried to go to the zoo, but it was closed because due to a workers strike. Despite those set backs, I am not sure we could have fit anything else in! Tomorrow we are heading out to Niagra Falls, but not before a stop at Ikea... Gabe is super excited about this stop;)
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