May 2018 Road Trip Adventures- Toronto

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.

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;)

May 2018 Road Trip Adventures- Montreal

We are so excited to be taking a road trip/vacation making a loop up through Canada and back through upstate NewYork.  Our trip started Thursday night after Gabe got out of work.  We drove from Wilton, to Montreal where we will be for the next three nights.  

Our condo was "close" to Old Montreal so we went on foot during the day Friday. By the end of the day we had covered over 6 miles! The kids were still upright and a little grouchy, but they hung in there;)  We strolled Old Montreal and by far the favorite stop of everyone was the Basillica Notre Dame. It is an amazing building, the kind of which we just don't have on this continent like they do in Europe.  We stayed visiting much longer than we thought we would, but the kids were enthralled and asked lots of great questions of the tour guide.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the area, seeing the Old Port and eating frozen bananas.  We took a bit of a detour on our way home to walk through the underground city.  It is amazing that there are miles and miles of an underground network so that in the winter you virtually never need to step outside!  We finally made it home in time to hop in the car in search of poutine at La Banquise.  The poutine and dinner was amazing, but since they only took cash and we didn't bring enough Canadian money on this outing, we had to be careful not to go overboard trying all of the different types of poutine:)  We finished the day at the playground and all slept very well!

On Saturday we drove up Mount Royal for an impressive view of the city.  From there we spent the rest of the morning at the Biodome museum in Olympic Park.  Here the kids got to feed the otters and check out several different habitats and the animals that live in them from the Arctic and penguins to the tropical rainforest.  The elevator to the top of the stadium at Olympic Park was under repair so we had to skip that attraction. The Biosphere was our next stop.  We intended just to look at the outside and marvel at the ingenious designs, but to our surprise, the environmental museum inside it was open, so we headed into the second museum of the day.  There were lots of exhibits on environmental conservationism including alternative energy and other innovations.  They view from inside the sphere on the top platform afforded us our second amazing view of the city that day. On our way home we stopped at Schwartz's for smoke meat (for Gabe) for dinner while the kids and I tracked down Viader's for what were claimed to be the best Montreal Bagels. After another full day, we are off to Toronto tomorrow!

Midsummer's Night Dream

This weekend was definitely full!  For the past week, Noah and James have been working very hard at play practice through a children's theater group. The culmination on that work being the play "A Midsummer's Night Dream".  These are always fantastic because they present more complex plays into a manageable and entertaining way for kids.  Noah was Duke Theseus and James was a woodland sprite.  All of the kids did a fantastic job!

After the play, the Western Maine Play Museum was having a tropical themed dance party as a fundraiser in Farmington. So, we grabbed a quick dinner and headed there for lots more fun!  It was a long day and everyone was exhausted, but we had lots of fun:)  This week we are getting some school wrapped up in preparation for our upcoming road trip to Canada!