Day 13 - Back to Toronto

Day 13 today and what a day it was!

We started relatively early and were at the Toronto Zoo by 10:30am. The zoo is great. A lot of exhibits to see, many animals and species I have not seen before and the kid's attention was held well. Maria was her usual explorer following her own will and having endless energy and ideas!

Margie had the kids in their "Thing 1", "Thing 2", and "Thing 3" red t-shirts. Besides being very cute, it is easy to spot the kids in them in a crowd and God-forbid, if we get separated, we can describe the missing child very well: the kid in the red "Thing 2" t-shirt. We got a lot of compliments on the t-shirts - people just walking by and realizing what the kids were wearing were reacting in a very friendly and amused way - and a couple of parents just stopped us and asked where we got them! Well, we show them in the Universal shop in the Orlando Florida Airport, but yours truly being afraid that we were late for our flight that day did not get them then. It took Margie to look at the Universal Studios Web site and notice a line at the bottom of the page saying that you can order merchandise over the phone; she called and had the t-shirts delivered at our house for our trip!

We finished the day in the zoo by petting the sting-rays. We have done this before in a couple of places - Sea World in Orlando, and recently during a visit to the Milwaukee zoo - but it was a lot easier to pet them in the Toronto Zoo. They were just coming up to you as if they liked to be petted. Well, the personnel there told us that they indeed seem to enjoy the contact and seek it.

It was 4:30pm when we were eventually all beat by the heat and exhaustion that we decided to leave. I omitted to say that this was maybe the warmest day we have so far experienced in Canada - the temperature was close to 29 Celsius, thus 84.2 Fahrenheit today.

We did not encounter the traffic we saw yesterday as we came to Toronto from Ottawa. We managed to be in our hotel before 5:10pm and both adults had the chance for a quick shower. We had more plans for today. I had reserved over the internet about a week ago dinner for all of us at the 360 restaurant on the top of Toronto's CN tower.

The reservations were at 6:45pm and we left the hotel at 6:00pm. Delilah gave us once more great directions and we made it to our destination, parked and checked in by 7pm. Our table was ready and sat down as soon we made it to the top of the CN tower.

The experience was very similar to what we had seen at the Seattle Needle. The kids had never seen something like this before and they had fun. The restaurant rotates slowly (a full rotation in 71 minutes) and you get to see the entire city-scape this way.

The dinner was very good, we went down to the observation floor - the view was better from the restaurant - and then the glass floor. This was an interesting experience. They have several glass panels - OK, OK, this is not regular glass that we are talking about - that you could stand on and see all the way to the bottom of the tower. Margie did not come close. The kids had fun for a few minutes, but we cut it short to stop terrorizing our unfortunate mother, dedicated driver, trip organizer, etc, etc.

Unfortunately, today being the 13th day of the trip indeed, we had our first little scare. When we left the parking garage, the gas empty light of the van turned on. I had hoped to find a gas station before that, but I was wrong. By that time it was 9:30pm and it was dark. We asked Delilah for help, but she sent us to a couple of convenience stores first that we found, but they did not have any gas... We started to feel a little uncomfortable in a city we did not know having a van full of kids and stalled in the middle of a street - we exited the expressway promptly to not have to deal with a stalled car in the middle of the expressway at least!

Eventually, we targeted an Esso station (Mobil in canadian :-)) that we found... What a relief! We have never been happier to pay 134.9 cents a liter for gas!

The rest is history. We followed Delilah back to the hotel - it was 10:00pm by then - and the kids fell asleep almost instantly...

Tomorrow, we hit the road for home!