Surfergeeks

Sorry this is a little late. Yesterday didn’t feel much like a writing day.

Saturday. Downtown Toronto. The plan was to visit the ROM and the CN Tower. And that’s what we did. We did make a stop on the way in Mississauga at a construction site. You see, they’re building a really cool condo project called Absolute World (sadly it has nothing to do with vodka). Two of the buildings twist as they rise up into the sky a la Turning Torso. I wanted to see it and get some pictures. Then we headed of to the ROM to see some dinosaurs, bats, and terracotta warriors.

I’d never been to the ROM before so I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. Now that I’ve been, I’m still not sure about my experience. For starters, it was crowded – ESPECIALLY the Chinese Warriors exhibit. Too crowded. It was virtually impossible to hear any of the video presentations and you felt like you were obligated to keep moving. That said, what I did see and hear was really cool.

I was super impressed with all the dinosaur skeletons they had on display. Probably could have spent all day there if I was by myself just wandering through the display reading and learning about the various species. The bat cave was kinda neat although lacking in real bats. Alex like it. He also liked some of the dinosaurs as well but the Chinese Warriors exhibit was boring for him and Ryan.

We ate lunch at the Studio Cafe inside the ROM and the food was quite yummy. I had this chorizo sausage thing that had roasted peppers, pickled red onions, and a spicy mustard on it. SOOOOO good.

The highlight of the ROM visit was by far the Extreme Martial Arts shows put on in the Eaton Theatre. It was a half hour show that was a perfect mix of showmanship and action by a local martial arts company. Fortunately they had no problem with video cameras so I captured the entire show.

After the ROM we headed to the CN Tower for Alex’s first trip. Sadly the trip wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as I had hoped. We were in line for about an hour or so to get up to the top. Ryan had become super cranky by that point. When we finally got up to the top I took Alex around while Nikki sat with Ryan. When Alex & I got back to them Ryan was asleep, poor little guy. We then made our way to the glass floor portion and Alex hopped right out onto it. No fear at all of the 500m of nothing between him and splatsville. I was good looking over the edge.

We hit a Subway on the way home and ate in the hotel room. Sunday was a straight-forward day. We were up about 8:00, had breakfast, packed, checked out, and headed home. Traffic was smooth the entire way and we were back in London by 11:30. We then took the kids out mini-golfing at North London Golf Centre. That was a miserable experience as Ryan was really really cranky. Alex, while still need MUCH more practice, did have a few good shots and actually scored an honest 3 on a couple holes.

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.

But is anything ever?

So after breakfast we strike out for Ontario Place. No issues at all getting there although the signs along Lake Shore Blvd. were warning of traffic delays at night due to fireworks. Once there the GPS had us turn into a spot that isn’t actually parking but instead a drop-off for the West entrance. We didn’t know that at the time or else I’d have dropped off everyone then and went to park. Parking was $12. I have a feeling it’s not normally $12 but since last night was fireworks they bumped the price a bit. We were there before 11 so the rides weren’t actually operating yet but some of the other things were. The first thing Alex & Nikki went on was a dinosaur simulator ride. Alex didn’t like that and apparently they needed to stop the ride early so they could get off. Fortunately, they were actually the only ones on that particular ride so it’s not a big deal. Pretty much at the stroke of 11 Alex headed for the “Wilderness Adventure” ride. It’s a log ride that he was quite excited to go on. I went on with him as I’m always game for a good log ride. He loved it! I almost cried as my brand new Tilley hat flew off at the bottom of the drop. Fortunately, it fell inside the boat so I didn’t lose it. We weren’t even off the ride yet and he was asking to go on it again. For round two Nikki joined him and I watched the little dude. He wanted to go again but there were other areas of the park to see. He also loved the Go Zone which was basically a giant play village area like McDonald’s or Fantasy Fair from the day before. We finally dragged him out of there to explore the rest of the park. There were a couple driving rides he went on as well as a couple other smaller rides. The other big hit of the day was the water park area. Needless to say he was too small for the real water slides, although I think he could have gone on one or two of them if Nikki or I went with him but we didn’t take our swim suits so he was out of luck there. Inside the kids area he pretty much stuck to the one water piece there that feature two small slides. He would slide down one and run back in line to go down the other. Watching from a distance I saw that he was very good in line and didn’t try to shove his way to the front and he listened to the guy at the top to tell him when he could slide. Ryan ran around but didn’t really get into the water. I think that the lake shore breeze made it a little chilly for him. Of course that didn’t stop me from dragging him through some of the sprays of water. We had lunch at The Marina Grill inside Ontario Place. Reasonably priced restaurant quality food overlooking the marina. Some of those boats were beautiful. Must cost some serious coin to berth at Ontario Place. We made another trip back to Wilderness Adventure. This time I left the hat with the stroller and off we went. Nikki then went with him right after and then I followed it up with a third time in that block. Yeah, he went five times total and would have went many more times if we’d have let him. By this point Nikki’s feet were killing her and she couldn’t walk much. We went to the Cinesphere and watched The Wild Water on the IMAX screen. Pretty neat movie about sardine migrations and their predators (seals, sharks, birds, dolphins, and more) of the coast of South Africa and Eastern Africa. We didn’t really care which of the two movies was playing, we just wanted to sit down but it ended up being a really cool movie. The boys were a little restless for it but overall not too bad. About 7:00 or so we found a spot on the grassy hill to watch the fireworks from. They started at 10:30 so we had a lot of time to kill. Alex and I finished eating the hot dogs we had picked up on the way there then I took Alex back to go on this one race car sort of ride. We settled onto the hill to wait as the sun sank behind the Cinesphere. Us, being the smart ones that we are, didn’t really put a lot of thought into this whole spend-the-whole-day-late-into-the-night-at-Ontario-Place thing. We had shorts and T-shirts. Yeah, no pants, no blanket, nada. We are smart – S-M-R-T smart. With the lack of sun it cooled right down. Ryan was already fussy, Nikki was beat and her feet were still killing and finally Alex asked “When can we go back to the hometel?” (Yeah, he calls it hometel) Those eight little words sunk the fireworks. We packed up and headed home. Both were out in the van but did wake up once we got back to the room. They settled down fairly quickly and went back  to sleep. I was the last to call it a night and I think I was asleep by 11:30 at the latest.

Wheeeeeeeeee!

I was originally going to write this last night but really was rather exhausted. The lot of us were in bed by 9:00! Crazy. Of course the kids had us up at 5:50am this morning. And there was NO way Ryan was going back to sleep.

We saw a *little* bit of excitement yesterday on the trip up. Around Guelph the traffic slowed to a CRAWL in all three lanes. We figured either accident or construction. A little while later we noticed that there was NO traffic in the other direction. We now concluded that it must be an accident. Eventually I see some flashing lights up ahead in the other lane. As we finally get to the scene, just west of the 401 McDonald’s, there’s an 18-wheeler with a bit of fender damage and a ton of cop cars. Nothing else. Our lanes were slowed because everyone was rubber-necking. Once past we got right back up to highway speed. They had closed the westbound highway at the next exit meaning that the McDonald’s wasn’t getting ANY business (unless the dozen cop cars were hungry). When we got here I checked google and found out that a car was involved and the dude had to be airlifted to Hamilton with life threatening injuries. I’m assuming it was the dude in the car and not the dude in the truck with a bit of fender damage. Remember kids, 18-wheeler vs. car is NOT a good game to play if you’re in the car.

Yesterday we hadn’t planned on doing much but got to the hotel right around 1:00. Since we had some time to kill we ended up going to the Fantasy Fair which is an indoor amusmement park for kids inside the Woodbine Shopping Centre. It’s actually pretty cool. There’s a play village (think McDonald’s play place to the ultimate degree – it’s HUGE), carousel, ferris wheel, train ride, bumper cars, bumper boats, and more! Since some of the rides require someone over 54″ for those under 54″ Nikki had to buy a pass as well. Okay, she didn’t HAVE to buy a pass, but if she didn’t Alex wouldn’t have been able to go on the bumper cars or the train. By far, the biggest hit was the play village. We’ve got some video and pics that I’ll get uploaded. It may not happen before we get home but soon after. The video definitely won’t be uploaded as I have to edit it together so that’ll take a bit of time. The hotel is nice. It’s no resort by any stretch but it’s also not very busy. We had the pool to ourself for almost an hour last night before a man and his son came in as we were getting ready to leave. Breakfast isn’t bad – it covers your basics: juice, coffee, toast/bagel, yogurt, cereal, waffles, “scrambled eggs”, some fruit. It filled us up anyway.

Now we’re just killing some time before packing up and heading out to Ontario Place. The plan as it stands now is to spend the day at Ontario Place, have supper there, kill some more time there until it’s time for the fireworks. However, they don’t happen until 10:30 and we’re not really sure that the little dudes will last that long. So if there’s no pics or video from Festival of Fire fireworks please consider this my preemptive apology.

So Happy Canada Day to everyone that reads this. All two of you. In the mean time, here’s one pic to keep you satisfied.