It's a civic holiday in Canada today meaning banks were closed today which kind of threw a kink into our currency exchange ideas, but made downtown very empty allowing us free reign of parking garages and little to no traffic into the city this morning. After reading our travel books/brochures on our way downtown, we located a currency exchange in Union Station which was only a few blocks away from our first stop of the day -- the Hockey Hall of Fame. We slowly made it over to Union Station after enjoying all the architecture of the buildings downtown from the old ones to the new ones. While exiting Union Station a man behind the counter yelled over to us asking what we were doing today (guess we look and sound like foreigners). Since he had an accent, we stopped and chit-chatted with him for a little. He offered us discounted Hockey Hall of Fame tickets since he was working a tourist attraction stand (legit). We accepted that, of course. He also said we should consider taking a double decker bus tour through downtown, showing us "the world" of Canada featuring things like Chinatown, Little Italy, etc. Chris said he'd give us a discount for being his first customers of the day. We declined, but he told us if we reconsidered to come back and see him.
We sauntered over to the Hall of Fame, and attempted to find the entrance as it is a bit hidden come to find out (located in the bottom of a building). Walking into the HHOF, we were in awe of the "wall of pucks." We didn't spend a lot of time looking, but we did find a Blazers hockey puck in the mix and 2 Memphis (not Mississippi) Riverkings pucks. 
We walked around the HHOF in awe of all the memorabilia. Then had to have some fun in the interactive exhibits. We were able to pretend to be goalies and have foam pucks shot at us; we were able to shoot pucks at a screen which told us how fast they were going; we were able to go upstairs to the "
production" area and be directors/producers of broadcast games; and we were able to call play-by-play to video clips. We've come to the conclusion through these games that Tana is our goaltender, I am our shooter, Melody is in charge of directing and Pam is our play-by-play announcer (assuming we can't get that French speaking guy to do it for us). We also got to go see and have our photos taken with the replica Stanley Cup they keep up there.We saw a few minor league hockey items in the HHOF, Brendan Morrow's jersey, Don Parson's bobblehead, a Prairie Thunder jersey, and a hockey stick belonging to a Wichita Thunder player by the name of Jackson. He has a first name that I'd love to tell you about, but Pam is asleep and I don't think she would appreciate me waking her up right now just to ask her about it.
After the HHOF, we discussed the idea of taking one of those double decker tour buses around town. We figured it'd be fun to grab our bagged lunches that we packed this morning (or I should say that Melody prepared for us) and eat them while riding around town on th
e tour. So, we stopped by and visited Chris. He gave us an even better discount this time around -- the ticket says senior, but he crossed it out and put "student" -- he also told us that we'd probably enjoy the back of the tour bus the best. He was right. We headed straight over to our pick up location and caught our bus which luckily had people getting out of our backseat cool kid seats. We settled in and started enjoying the ride, which took us over by the CN Tower, the Harbour, Casa Loma, a celebrity hotel, Dundas Square (reminded us of Time Square), etc. We were advised to watch our heads for low branches, traffic lights, bridges. I think Melody and Tana forgot about a few tree branches while we were looking at some of the buildings and cars we saw today -- a Lamborghini and a Ferrari and ended up getting whacked
by a tree branch. Natasha, our tour speaker I think started making a point of getting our attention when these came at us towards the end of the tour. After several hours on the double decker, we learned that our ticket actually was good for two tours and we had only completed one of them. Natasha advised us that our tickets are good for basically forever, even to our grandchildren if we leave it for them in our will so we're looking to go back in the next few days and catch the other part of our tour.Might I add here that people in Toronto are friendly. They'd wave at us, and say hi while we were riding through town and even walking through town. Sidenote, we came to the conclusion that any of the condos we liked would be a little pricey if we were ever to move up this direction ... some of the condos we saw were going for 2-6 million dollars and some of those only feature one bedroom.
After the downtown tour, we were ready to head to the harbour and feel the wonderful breeze from the water. We caught our habour tour just in time. We got seats up front with the Captains where one was
getting last minute tips on driving/docking the boat. Comforting, we know. However, Kristoff assured us that he trained Jen (our driver) and that nothing would happen to us. Luckily for us, the life jackets were kept within reach of our seats. Our Captains, Jen and Laura took us out on the water, pointed out the islands and gave us history on them. One of which was man-made back in the WW2 time frame when it was used to train fighter pilots. Now, it's used for locals and short plane trips. There are non-boating areas marked near the airport located there wherein if our boat crossed it, Jen and Laura would be slapped with a $10,000 fine, loose their Captains licenses, and their land driving licenses as well. We stopped on Centerville Island for a little bit and walked out to the pier overlooking Lake Ontario. BEAUTIFUL! Simply Beautiful.
After catching our tour boat back with a new driver, we saw some gorgeous views of the Toronto city skyline. Saw where 80% of Ontario's sugar comes from (made with dirty harbour water). Oh, and we were introduced to Captain Matthew with his aviator sunglasses. Jen made sure it was known to everyone on the boat that he was single. Should I add here that we were basically the only young females on the tour. Awkward!
Back on dry land, we headed back up to the car, then walked over to the CN Tower. That tower just looks higher in the air each time you see it. The wait time was about an hour so since our ticket included the choice of a motion ride or a cinema show we took them up on the offer to go on the motion ride to avoid the long waiting time. For the motion ride, we had to watch a pre-show which was taking place in the year 2020 where scientists were creating new trees which were fast growing called, get ready for it, the Himamalazon! After the pre-show we entered into this ride which took us on a virtual rollercoaster, basically. It squirted us with air and water, even shook and twisted our chairs. It'd been a few hours since we had laughed that hard on our trip. Did I mention there were alligators on this virtual rollercoaster ride and saws as we followed the trees through the rollercoaster.
After the ride, we got in line for the CN Tower. We went through these "air" security system metal detector type of thing. It was odd, very odd. Then we got in line ... then the elevator. Once inside the elevator, there were two spots that were basically glass floor portions and going up you could see all the way out as well. In less than a minute we were over 1,000 feet in the air. For me, the one scared of heights, I found it all incredibly awesome. Pam and I went and played and sat on the glass floor lookout while Tana and Melody hung back looking at us like we were crazy. Afterwards, we went out to the lookout and were definitely wind blown, but it was amazing to see the city from this view point and the lake. FABULOUS!
Even better, we watched the sunset from the CN Tower. Fun times. While we were leaving we were able to see the CN Tower illuminated with red and white lights.
We slowly drug ourselves back to the car, over to Wendys, then back to the hotel. We got a lot of walking in today, learned a lot of history and just plain exhausted ourselves.
So, here's the deal, it's late - 11:31 here and tomorrow we're going to the zoo (weather depending) and a Blue Jays game (in honour of Pam's birthday). I'll put photos up tomorrow morning before we leave. Until then, good night and sweet dreams everyone. We miss you all, but are having the time of our lives.
ETA: Photos have been included. We're off to the Tim Horton's and going to have a leisurely morning at the zoo.
No comments:
Post a Comment