CANADA TRIP - Day 4

Day 4 - Goalie Heaven/Casa Loma
As has become the norm, today didn't turn out to be exactly as we had planned, but it has been a great day nonetheless.

We did set an alarm to get up and get down to breakfast a little earlier. Unfortunately there was no variety from yesterday's breakfast. That was fine... there's still plenty to choose from. After breakfast, we all got showers and then headed out to Goalie Heaven.

What is Goalie Heaven? Well, it's part of a hockey store (Toronto Hockey Repair Ltd.) in Toronto... it has TONS of goalie equipment. TONS. And Keeper Boy needed some. We found the store with little trouble, and got parking on the street right in front of the store. The owner, Fiorenzo, helped us personally and took good care of us. In little more than an hour, we walked out of there with a new blocker glove, chest protector, neck dangler, helmet bag, and skates. And the skates were "baked" to Keeper Boy's foot to make them more comfortable. And, he's fixing Keeper Boy's catch glove as we speak. We will go back tomorrow to pick it up before we leave. We think we got a very good deal on the equipment. I know we only spent about 50 - 75% of what I was thinking we were going to have to. He gave us a bunch of discounts because we were buying so much, I think. And he threw the helmet bag in at no charge. Can't beat that.

We had kinda blocked off the whole day to equipment shopping, but we were done before Noon. So we decided to go ahead to Casa Loma today instead of waiting until tomorrow. It was a pretty straight shot from where we were, and we found it with no difficulty.

What an amazing, beautiful, and ridiculous place! It's a castle built by Sir Henry Mill Pellatt on a hill in the middle of Toronto. It took 300 men more than three years to build and cost almost $3,500,000 to build at the time. (It was begun in 1911.) He and his wife lived there for fewer than ten years before he lost it to financial ruin. Parts of it were never finished.

We wandered around Casa Loma for a few hours marveling at the intricacy of the wood panels in the rooms, and the molding. Everything about the place oozes wealth. Underneath the castle, there was to be a swimming pool and a bowling alley. Each was started, but never finished. The bowling alley is now the gift shop. The swimming pool is ust there unfinished. There are turrets, acres of gardens, and secret stairways throughout the home. It's one of those places you wish you had free reign to explore.

We drove back to the hotel in some pretty good rain, driving down Carlton Street and the old Maple Leaf Gardens along the way. Keeper Boy thought that was pretty cool.

We've been relaxing in the room for almost an hour. Everyone had a snack and we have the Jays game on TV. Hubby is dozing (at least in between outbursts from J-Mav... he gets very excited over the silliest things sometimes). I think we're going to try a restaurant down the street for dinner. It specializes in southern Italian food. We're going to remain low-key tonight. We told the boys maybe we'd do a pay-per-view movie in the room. We'll see.

So now we have no plans for tomorrow, other than to go back to the store to pick up Justin's catch glove at 1pm. We'll have to look through the guide book and see if there's anything else we want to check out while we're here. If not, I guess we'll head south a little earlier than we'd planned.

We have a reservation at a hotel in Williamsport, PA tomorrow night. We will meet my aunt and uncle for breakfast on Monday morning before heading down to Mom and Dad's house to drop the kids off for a week at Camp Grandma and Grandpa. :)

Less than 24 hours left in this great city...

Later...
We ate dinner at the Italian place. Tretorria, I think it was called. It was good, but we probably would've done better to walk over to Yonge Street and pop into somewhere over there. The boys just had plain bowls of pasta. I had a panini. Hubby had a pizza. He said it was good, but he didn't seem over the moon about it. Oh well. After dinner, we walked down Yonge Street, over by the Eaten Centre, and went to a theatre to see Up (Pixar's latest movie). It was very cute. The kids (and us) enjoyed it. Afterward, we walked back and the boys went immediately to bed.

A few observations we've made about Toronto...
It smells like trash. Moreso in some places than others. This is a direct result of the trash strike and we have to assume it is not the norm; however, it's hard to ignore as it's an almost constant visual and arromatic assault.
It seems to be quite environmentally conscious. There are recycling bins everywhere. There are bike taxis. There are Smart Cars. There is lots of public transportation. Lots of people walking and biking around downtown. We have seen ads in the city, in the papers, and on TV for rebates on energy-saving and water-saving appliances. There are recyling bins in the hotel rooms. There are signs posted to turn lights off when not in use. The overwhelming thinking definitely leans toward "green."
It doesn't seem to be overly health-conscious. We haven't seen a lot of people running, or walking for exercise. We've seen several gyms and fitness centers, but not a lot of people in them. There seems to be a lot of people smoking. We haven't seen "health conscious" items on restaurant menus like you see in the United States. I don't know if it's because obesity is not an alarming concern as it is in the United States, or what. Maybe people get their exercise from toting around all the change in their pockets/purses. Because Canadian currency includes a $2 and $1 coin, it seems like we often get ALL of our change in coins. It does get heavy.
It's a modern city. There are a lot of young and "hip" people here. Fashion forward trends, extremely modern hair styles, progressive attitudes. It's an interesting contrast to the beautiful, historical architecture that is all throughout the city.
Rain boots seem to be an "in" fashion trend. I can't tell you how many people we've seen wearing rain boots. It's very weird.