Day 3 - Toronto Trip - Sunday

My cousins Liz and Raymond came over and the four of us ventured our way to Chinatown Sunday morning at around 10:00 AM with grandpa. My grandpa had this Dim Sum lunch to attend to, so we were to split once we got there. Liz's mom gave us all a ride to the nearest subway station Downsview so that saved us $3.00 on the Viva. At the Spadina station, Liz, Ray and I recalled the moments when the moving 'sidewalk' was there to link the subway train to the street car, but that has been removed. We used to sit on the rails because we thought we were cool by doing that when we were younger. After arriving at the Dundas stop (Chinatown), we remembered that we forgot to get TTC transfers...oh well, what can we do...We got there a little early, it was before 11 AM and nothing was really open because it was Sunday. We walked into the two malls (Dragon City Centre and Chinatown Centre) but nothing was open. We decided that we would come back later. We saw the CN Tower from Chinatown and decided to walk to there, we didn't want to take the street car because we would have to pay for that short trip. We passed by an MEC building on the way. I took some pictures but I think ours in Winnipeg looks way cooler. We finally got to the Roger's Centre/CN Tower at around the noon hour. There was baseball game, Blue Jays versus Boston, and people were everywhere trying to sell us tickets to the ball game, of course that wasn't the purpose of our trip. We had trouble locating the main entrance to the CN Tower and we took these stairs that brought us all the way around the CN Tower whereas we could have just kept going straight and we would have seen the entrance....oops! We got to the ticket booth and saw this City Pass deal that included multiple attractions in Toronto (CN Tower, ROM, Castle Loma, Ontario Science Centre, Hockey Hall of Fame, and the Zoo) for $64 so we got it. They told us it would be a 80 minute wait to get to the top but took no longer than 45 minutes to get the elevators. The last time I was in Toronto in 2001, we waited for hours to get to the elevators because it was in the afternoon. Only Andrew and I went up while Liz and Ray sat and waited outside and had hotdogs from the hotdog stand. We took pictures from up above and it was neat to see the city that way considering we were at ground level all Saturday evening. We saw these interesting buildings and we tooks pictures and vowed to find them once we were back on ground level. We took a few pictures for one another and then took a picture together. Then came the glass floor...I've been on it before so I wasn't freaked out and just stepped right on it and even jumped a couple of times but I could tell that Andrew was a little freaked out and so I took a picture of him and his reluctance. He eventually got on the glass and we took a few cool photos. The line to get back down was a half hour wait and while we were going down it began to rain outside and it was sunny when we were up. We grabbed some pizza from the little cafe on the main floor and ate lunch while waiting for the rain to stop. The rain stopped (but I had my umbrella out just in case) and we ventured to the nearest subway station. It was already 1:30 and the next two attractions, ROM and Casa Loma both close at 5 PM so we didn't have time to spare. It took us a while to find the subway station, we eventually found the Union Station but there was a closer one that we couldn't find...oh well...ROM is located just above the subway station "Museum" so that easy. We got in and had to turn in our bags. There was a huge line up at the ticket booth but seeing that two of us had passes and two of us didn't, the very kind lady allowed my cousins to jump the queue and we got in as soon as we got there! The place was quite interesting particularly the Michael Lee0Chin Crystal by Daniel Libeskind was really cool and we got some great pictures of us (me) being stupid with it, lol...we were quite close to being kicked out...lol...In the dinosaur section, they had a giant turtle and fish hung in the exact same way as in the Wallace building at the U of M and we think they are massed produced and if you buy the turtle, you get the fish for half price or something. We weren't really there to learn so we just took pictures of some interesting artifacts and skipped much of the descriptions :D My batteries were dying by the end of the museum and I forgot my charger at home so I had to buy 4 AA batteries for $7 at the souvenir shop! I also bought souvenir edition of Bold Visions - The Architecture of the Royal Ontario Museum and that has come in handy already while I'm typing this up. They also had a lot of beautifully designed pieces of souvenirs but they were really expensive. For only $99, you can get this lemon juicer that I'm pretty sure Sharon Ackerman showed us in her Theory Class, that looks like a 3 or 4 legged spider. After ROM it was 3 PM, and we were getting hungry so we bought hotdogs at the hotdog stand...for $3 and a bottle of water...because we forgot to grab them from home. While we were eating, there was an olympic parade with Chinese Canadians celebrating the success of the 2008 Beijing Olympics in their BMWs, Acuras, Mercedes, Lexus, etc... We asked the ladies at the backpack pick up to see how we get to Casa Loma and it was only a few more subway stops north. So we paid again for the fare for the third time that day. After we got off the subway we still had to walk another 10 minutes to get to Casa Loma. We followed these signs on the road but they were meant for cars so we took this big detour when there was this other 'pedestrian only' route. It was hot and humid and we were going up hill. On top of that, the castle had no A/C (duh) and had these huge fans to cool the building off. The place was nice but I found every room similar, the highly decorated Victorian style that I'm not much of a fan of. We had these hand held that served as our guides. We didn't have much time left so we had to rush through our trips in ROM and Casa because they close at 5 PM. The tunnels at Casa were cool (both ways) but were smelly, lol. After Casa, I couldn't take the sun anymore and I had to take my umbrella out and use it for shade, and Andrew made fun of it and called it my "Michael Jackson Umbrella". We walked back to subway station and inquired about the family pass, we were shocked to find out that for a flat fee of only $9, we could've rode the TTC for unlimited number of times! The TTC employee wasn't very helpful at all...The sign was confusing it said...$9 at the top... and then at the bottom it listed "2 adults and up to 4 children" or "1 adult"...the guy was quite rude to me when I asked what the difference was...he said he didn't understand my question (Though I had been using Chinese fairly often in Toronto, I was speaking English at the time)...then we paid closer attention and read the fine print...On weekends, the pass is good for a family, but on weekdays it is only good for a single adult. After all that, I left him with the words "And here we are paying for the fare for 3 times without anyone telling us about it" and I walked away... Later, Liz told me he had this "well, good for you" look on his face. I was in a bad mood after that...It was about 5:45 PM. We headed back to Chinatown to find food...Charlene recommended Gold Stone so that was where we were headed. We passed this 'Watch Repair' store that sold TVB Series for only $4 each. It was funny because they just had this old guy with a table set up at the store window but inside it was all DVDs. I tried to bargain some more but she said no. Liz said she saw it in my eyes that I was going to get them anyways. Andrew said my hands were shaking when I went to grab them off the shelf. Whatever, it was such a deal! Then we went to Gold Stone, we sat down and had the recommended BBQ Pork Rice. Since I got such a deal with my DVDs I decided to treat my cousins! We were being cheap, I asked if we could order two plates for $5 something and then got four extra bowls to share it. The waitress told me "okay, but the minimum spending is $3 per person ($12 for the group), so could you just get a drink/pop?" I'm like "okay". It was really good though probably full of MSG. I left $10 on the table and Andrew left $5, so we left a $2 tip for them. After we ate, we rode the street car down towards the lake front and we took photos there. They had this man made beach and boardwalk which was nice, but seemed really really fake...After that we took the subway back uptown to Queen's Park where the U of T is. We saw the Ontario Legislature building and we wanted to see the U of T Faculty of Architecture building to compare it with ours. After wandering around finding a map, we had to hurry as it was getting dark out. We found the building but only to be disappointed. U of M's is so much better looking and bigger too. They only have one old building to house the entire faculty including landscape architecture too. Even there biomed buildings look nicer than their architecture building. After that, it was dark and we hoped on the subway again and headed for the Downsview Station. Liz's parents came to pick us up from the station and we headed out for Pho (Vietnamese) for a late night snack and Andrew and I got the "Special Pho"...it was good and I was so close to finishing the soup but my uncle told me to stop fearing that I would burst (I knew my limits, I could have finished it). Then it was home time when we showered and headed to bed...End of Day 3...