Summer in the Canadian City

When I was thinking about us taking our trip to Toronto, I asked you my blog followers for some recommendations. Some  suggested a number of venues. As it turns out, all of the suggested locations are available from some program called the City Pass. In this case, five attractions at about 45% off the regular price, with nine days to see them all.

On our first full day, we took the subway to the CN Tower</a>. Well, close to the CN Tower. We walked to an adjacent plaza as the signs suggested, but were obstructed by new construction. We followed the detour signs, and ended up exactly where we had started. We got to our destination eventually, and purchased the one child and two adult City Passes.

The CN Tower, which is one of the tallest human-made buildings in the world, was the most touristy of the five locations, with long lines. Recommendation: get there early. Don’t stop to go to the bathroom; you’ll have plenty of time to do so while waiting in queue. Still, the view of the city was magnificent, especially overlooking Lake Ontario. The glass floor was wonderfully scary. The IMAX movie was entertaining.

Next stop that day: the Royal Ontario Museum</a>, which featured several things the Daughter particularly liked, such as dinosaurs and mummies. I liked the Chinese sculpture. "Biodiversity is a core theme" there.

The next day, we went to Casa Loma, the former home of once-rich industrialist, financier and military man Sir Henry Mill Pellatt, who controlled about a quarter of Canada’s finances for time. He brought streetlights to Toronto, helped create hydroelectric power at Niagara Falls, as well as several other ventures. Casa Loma came into the hands of a not-for-profit shortly before his death, and around the same time as the death of his wife, Lady Mary Pellatt, the first Commissioner of the Girl Guides of Canada.

The building, built in the 1910s for some $3.5 million, back when that was real money, is a castle. We walked up the turret, some seven stories; the trick, actually, was climbing DOWN some of the spiral staircases as others traversed upward. The site also lovely gardens. Note that if one takes public transportation, it's three blocks up, then about four flights of steps. It was a good thing we didn't go to the CN Tower that day, for it was quite overcast. Having the City Pass, or at least some prepaid ticket, saved us some time getting inside.

The third full day in Toronto we dedicated to going to the Toronto Zoo. It is on the eastern edge of the city, and required both train and bus to get there. One could make the case for driving there, I suppose. One of the selling points of having the City Pass is that one could avoid lines. Never was this more true at the Zoo, where we avoided at least a 15-minute wait just to get inside.

The zoo is massive. We saw only about 40% of it. We went to the Malay and African sections but never even got to the Americas or Australia or Eurasia.  We considered taking the train around, and we might do that on a future trip. We're already thinking about that.  The only comparable facility I’ve been to is the San Diego Zoo in California, and that was over a decade ago, maybe two decades. The SD Zoo was $32 per person then, whereas the Toronto Zoo retailed for under $25 US.

There were some extra features, such as rides, which we did not use. But we were pleased that the splash park was part of the admission. It was a particularly warm day – I got a bit of sunburn – so it was welcome relief. To give you what a full day it was, the Daughter fell asleep on my shoulder on the bus trip back to the train, and then fell asleep again on her mother’s shoulder on the subway ride back to our hotel.

We went to the Ontario Science Centre on our way out of town, and may have given it short shrift.  The quirky thing about this building is that the 6th floor is down, while the 1st floor is up.  The Daughter enjoyed the reptiles, and especially the  area where one plays with a hot air balloon, lights, bubbles, and a lot more. She particularly liked dancing to her image altered by some nifty effects. Most of our time was spent in the play area.

But the highlight may have been a Rube Goldberg-type machine.  The one we saw had a bunch of billiard balls, and the patrons had to keep loading the balls into the machine, from a half dozen locales, to keep the effect going.  The kids LOVED it; heck, *I* loved it.  

There are City Passes for about a dozen other cities in North America. I’m not sure I’d use it for a city I’ve visited, such as New York or Boston; I’ve been to the Empire State Building.  But for a city I’ve never been to, such as Seattle, I think it would be ideal