We returned to Toronto in the first weekend of May to visit the CN Tower. As before, we drove to the Kipling Subway station and caught the subway in to Toronto. This was all very easy. We then took a short walk from Union Station into the entertainment district where, similar to Melbourne, they have the sports centres sitting amoungst the Railway lines, making good use of otherwise unpleasant land and also good access to the arenas. As we walked up to the Roger’s Centre, we had scalpers everywhere offering us tickets to the Blue Jays baseball game that was on that day. I didn’t ask the price of the tickets, but found it interesting that the game definitely wasn’t a sell out so why buy from a scalper.
Rosie heard that the best way to see the CN Tower was to book for lunch since you then didn’t have to pay to go up. We did this and it was a relative bargain. We had a really good 3 course dinner for $39 each, Liam was $19. The meal was excellent, with Bruce having a really tender beef dish and Rosie had the salmon. Liam had chicken fingers and chips. When you consider the price of the lift was $20 for adults and $15 for kids, the meal was unbelievably good.
We sat in the revolving restaurant for over an hour, which was just more than one complete revolution. This gave us a very comfortable view of Lake Ontario and the islands as well as the city of Toronto. We even had our maps out so that we could try to determine what we were looking at.
A great day and highly recommended to anyone. We will take Dave and Barb here for an evening meal and try to time it to see the Lake in daylight and the city in the dark.
Towards the end of May we celebrated Victoria Day (or May 2, 4 as everyone seems to refer to it). This was an interesting weekend since approaching it, you start to see Fireworks tents spring up everywhere and my students started to get quite excited. Apparently the tradition is to go camping, drink a lot and let off fireworks to celebrate the end of the snow and the beginning of the warmer weather.
We used the weekend to see a couple of attractions around Mississauga. We went to the Mohawk raceway on the Sunday night to watch the pacing and then enjoy the fireworks afterwards. It was a really good night with plenty of atmosphere (similar to Gloucester Park at New Year). Unfortunately it took us over an hour to get out of the car park afterwards so it lost a bit of the glamour.
On the Monday we went to Canada’s Wonderland, a theme park full of roller coasters and rides. It was packed and Liam only managed to go on a couple of rides in four hours, he wasn’t impressed. We vowed to return to both locations later to see what they would be like at normal times.
At the end of May Liam also had his class photos taken. They are a bit different over here with student’s encouraged to pose rather than just stand there. They are given a choice of possible poses and as you can see, props are used.
We liked the final product.
Only a few more teaching days before exams and then holidays. Rosie is busy planning the holidays and Bruce is looking forward to a break where we can just relax for a long period of time.
