Surfergeeks

The weather was amazing today! The Toronto Zoo made for a much more laid back day than yesterday’s journey to Ontario Place. I don’t know why that is exactly – maybe familiarity? I hadn’t been to Ontario Place since *I* was a kid (probably around ’81/’82 maybe?) so everything was more-or-less new to me and there was that urgency of wanting to do everything. The zoo doesn’t hold that allure as it’s only been a couple years since we’ve been there. There have been a few changes however in those two years. The African pavilion was closed for renovations and the central dining spot has a new name and is also operated by Coyote Jack’s. They seem to operate in a niche zone where the food services of a company/location are contracted out – there’s one at Fanshawe and they run the food at Western Fair’s ice pads as well as other places. If I remember correctly, that central dining spot used to be a Pizza Pizza and a Harvey’s? I think that’s what it was. I still remember back in the late 80′s/early 90′s when McDonald’s ran all the food at the zoo (and the SkyDome Roger’s Centre).

So as I said, today was kinda laid back. Unfortunately Ryan still didn’t take much interest in the various animals. He’d look and point at some of them but that was about it. And Alex kindly suffered through the animals to get to the splash pad. As such, we kinda skipped some of the areas. One thing that I found interesting was as we were getting there I asked him what animal he was wanting to see and he came back with a jaguar! I’m guessing he pulled that off of Diego or Dora but really have no clue. We did *very* briefly see a jaguar on our Zoomobile trip around the park but sadly Alex didn’t. Then when we got off at the Americas stop we ran into a bit of a problem finding the path to the jaguars. Still, Alex seemed quite happy with the day and wasn’t the least bit upset about the lack of jaguar-spotting. The highlight for him was Splash Island.

Upon arrival we hiked around Eurasia – don’t ask me why i picked that, it was left or right so I chose right. Then we went through the Austrailian pavilion. Since we didn’t get there until just after 11 and didn’t get in until closer to 11:30 (line-ups!) we had lunch right after those two things. Then we headed off to Splash Island. For those that have never been, it’s a big splash pad area. It has a couple slides but they aren’t actually water slides. They’re covered tunnel slides with water spraying toward you at the bottom. Alex loved them. Up and down. Up and down. The kid barely paid attention to any other aspect of the area. We were sitting about a quarter to third of the way around the perimeter from these slides. We could still see him go up and come down. One time he stood at the bottom and I could see he was calling for us and couldn’t see us so I walked over. He had a runny nose and needed a kleenex. Just before leaving the splash pad I saw him walking down the one side with a staff member. Oh oh. She stood with him for a second at the bottom and I could see him looking around so I jog over. By then she had walked away but when I got there I saw three band-aids on one foot and one band-aid on the other. I asked him what happened and he said that somebody ran into him. She was gone so I don’t know exactly what happened but somehow he ended up with a couple scrapes and cuts. That pretty much ended his splash pad fun there as he didn’t want to get the band-aids wet. Ryan, well, it was pretty much a repeat of yesterday. He didn’t want to get splashed or sprayed on. He reluctantly got wet a couple times as we walked under stuff holding him but he wasn’t having anything to do with it himself. Which is weird as he loved the splash pad in St. Thomas. Meh. Oh, and to top it all off, Alex managed to pick up a cold sometime before yesterday. Most of yesterday was spent coughing and sniffling. We got him some tylenol today and it helped some.

So there is some video from today and some pics but nothing’s been transferred off the cameras yet so no preview picture with this post. Tomorrow looks like we’re heading to the ROM and to the CN Tower. At least that’s the plan as it stands right now.