CANADA TRIP - Day 3

Day 3 - Hockey Hall of Fame/Blue Jays Game
What a great day! Sports, sports, sports!

We slept in a bit and got down to breakfast just before it was ending. With full bellies, we headed back upstairs to shower and get dressed. Then we walked over to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

We were all very excited to spend the day wandering around memorabilia from all the hockey greats. We decided to start in the trophy room and work our way back down and through. We had our picture taken with the Stanley Cup and looked up all the Caps on the various other trophies. Ovie's name has already been engraved on his trophy haul from this past season. Very cool.

We wandered around the various areas of the HHOF and saw all kinds of awesome stuff. Keeper Boy sat in a replica Habs locker room behind Ken Dryden's pads. J-Mav tried his hand at being a goalie in an interactive game (as did Keeper Boy). J-Mav actually got a better score; however, in reality he didn't make any saves at all. If you even touched the puck a little, it counted as a save... even if it went into the net. Kinda silly, but they had fun!

Hubby tried his hand at making the call on an Ovie goal. Keeper Boy and J-Mav also shot on Curtis Joseph in another interactive game. They both scored once, I think. A good time was had by all. By the time we were done wandering, it was after 3, so we went out to the food court and grabbed some "lunch" and then went back into the HHOF store and wandered around for awhile. We each chose a souvenier and then we headed back to the hotel and rested for about an hour.

Tonight, we hopped in a taxi (my foot was bothering me too much to walk, plus it was raining) and went down to the Rogers Centre to catch a Blue Jays game. The Jays were playing the Rays. We had intended to buy the $9 seats in the 500 level. We just wanted to see the game; we had no stake in who won or lost. However, when we got up to the box office, there was a promotion going on. Apparently they have a few games during the season where they designate certain sections in right field (200 level) as "All you can eat" sections (including hot dogs, popcorn, chips, peanuts, soda, water, and nachos). The tickets were about an extra $15 on top of the normal $22 price. Considering the cost of stadium food and then fact that we had planned on eating dinner there, that seemed like a pretty good deal. Well, the seats were great, and I think we definitely got our money's worth. :) Among the four of us, we had nine hot dogs, two popcorns, three bags of peanuts, eight sodas, one water, and three things of nachos. By my calculations, that's probably at least $100 worth of nasty stadium food!

Unfortunately, the Jays lost in 10 innings and Keeper Boy now has a belly ache. Hallady pitched a great game, but he was pulled after the ninth and whomever the reliever was wasn't much of a relief. I did get to see two former Phillies play... Rollen and Burrell... one on each team. Oh, and it stopped raining so they retracted the roof after the third inning. That was cool, too! My foot felt okay after sitting for several hours, so we walked back to the hotel.

J-Mav was asleep before his head hit the pillow. Keeper Boy thought he was going to get sick, so he now has a trash can nearby as he falls asleep. I game him Tums... hopefully he'll feel better in the morning. He's not used to eating that much junk.

I am icing my foot while I write my blog, and then I'm going to hit the sack. Hubby is doing some work. We plan to set an alarm to make sure we get to breakfast a little earlier tomorrow morning. There was quite a lot of people there trying to get in under the wire just like we were. The plan for tomorrow is to go shopping for Keeper Boy's equipment. The shopping list includes a chest protector, skates, blocker pad, and neck protection of some sort. It'll be an expensive day. But it'll still be cheaper than buying it at home.

We have been observing that all of the trash and recycling recepticles around the city seem to be obscenely overflowing. And some just have tape wrapped around the openings and say "out of service." We were commenting that we thought that was odd and that it seemed to go against the grain of the city, as Toronto seems to be very environmentally conscious. There are lots of Smart Cars, Eco Taxis, and recycling bins in all hotel rooms and by almost every trashcan on the street. Tonight I heard from a friend on Facebook that there was a trash strike going on... he asked if it's still going on. I didn't know anything about it, but from what we've observed, I'd say the answer to that question is yes. It's a shame because this is a beautiful city.

More tomorrow...

CANADA TRIP - Day 2

Day 2 - Niagara Falls/Toronto
We awoke this morning (too late for the free breakfast at the hotel) to rain. Good thing we did the Maid of the Mist yesterday! Cloudy is better than rainy since you get wet enough from the falls themselves! We ate breakfast at a family restaurant next door to the hotel and then walked up the street a little. Nothing really to see. It's like someone took all the cheesyness from a boardwalk and plopped it near Niagara Falls. We went into the Canada Trading Co. -- I was hoping it'd be a neat store like the Alaska Trading Company was, but it was mostly junk.

We let the kids pick the last two things they wanted to do. Yesterday when we bought the tickets to the Guiness World Record Museum, we bought the ticket that was good for three admissions. There were five other places we could visit on the ticket -- a haunted house, a maze thing, a fun house, a playland, and brickland (Legos). They chose the fun house and the playland. Both were sufficiently cheesy, but they enjoyed them.

That done, we hopped in the car right about Noon and headed to Toronto. It was an uneventful 90 minute trip, and we found our hotel with no problem. After we got settled in our room, we took off on foot and spent the next 8+ hours wandering. We went to the Eaton Centre because we wanted to go to the Roots Store. We were disappointed as we didn't find anything there. We wandered around the mall for awhile and then walked down to Wayne Gretzky's Restaurant. The boys and John had fun wandering around looking at all the memorabilia while we waited for our dinner. All of our dinners were great! And all of our desserts were great, too. Keeper Boy got the "99 Brownie" and it was a brownie that looked like a puck with the number 99 on it. I took a picture. He WANTED the 10-layer chocolate cake. We saw someone get that... no joke, it was AT LEAST 24 inches high. We told him Grandpa would've had to have been here to help him eat that!

After dinner, we walked a few blocks down the road and around the Rogers Centre (where the Blue Jays play) to the CN Tower. We payed the exorbinant fee to go up the tower. But the kids loved it, and we all walked on the glass floor. Hubby was just as freaked out this time as he was when we were here 8 years ago! After that we walked back to our hotel... about a 30 minute walk.

We covered a good amount of territory today on foot. The good news is that my foot actually felt better as the day went on. I iced it most of the way from Niagara Falls to here, so that probably helped. Hopefully it will continue to feel good tomorrow. :)

The plan for tomorrow is the visit the Hockey Hall of Fame (woo hoo!!) and then see how we're feeling. If we're up for it, we might go catch the Blue Jays game. Saturday will be reserved for equipment shopping. And we'll catch Casa Loma on Sunday before we leave town.

Lots of fun still to be had...