Our whole toronto trip was guided by the parking laws. Really. We woke up super early simply because the parking was only until 6am. Which was good I guess. I happily munched on yday's beef noodles [cold, but still quite good] while praying that nothing will happen to me for eating non reheated food that wasnt chilled as well. haa. We went down to the most trustworthy Macs for breakfast.
Did I mention how much I love the maple leaf in the golden arches for the Canadian restaurants? So cool right. Singapore macs shld have like, the merlion or something. haha.
Did I mention how much I love the maple leaf in the golden arches for the Canadian restaurants? So cool right. Singapore macs shld have like, the merlion or something. haha.
Salsa, instead of chili sauce.
Nursing my coffee
Toronto Zoo
Next up, the Toronto Zoo! We reached there really early and were delighted to see that parking was FREE there. Fantastic. I think free parking evrywhere in US has spoilt us, dunno how i'll survive if i drive in Spore. Well we were too early and it wasn't even open yet, so we had a good nap in the car.. zzz. There were many canadian geese [yes those pesky things which shit evrywhere outside our office building] and they made hell lot of noise but i still managed to rest quite a bit.
We first visited the indo malaya domain..
Next up, the Toronto Zoo! We reached there really early and were delighted to see that parking was FREE there. Fantastic. I think free parking evrywhere in US has spoilt us, dunno how i'll survive if i drive in Spore. Well we were too early and it wasn't even open yet, so we had a good nap in the car.. zzz. There were many canadian geese [yes those pesky things which shit evrywhere outside our office building] and they made hell lot of noise but i still managed to rest quite a bit.
We first visited the indo malaya domain..
eeeeeky stuff.
Hehe the orang utan was damn cute! kept hiding underneath the sheet!
This fish can actually drown. freaking loser lah.
These things eat shit, literally. So happily hopping from shit to shit.
super adorable and playful Sumatran tiger cubs, Indah and Kali. I love their paws. I want one of these!!!
Beautiful fish!! Reminds me of the school of fish which give directions by arranging themselves in different shapes in Findin Nemo. However, I can't help wondering if it's kinda wrong to overcrowd these fish in a small tank just for a beautiful display.
We tiptoed past a sleeping crocodile..
And we saw its young! Half hatched! The freaky thing was that it wasn't moving at all. Haiya. So it's either 1. fake 2. dead 3. fell asleep after hatching half way cos it was too tired. Hmm.
Looks like a confident young lad.
Alien like primate
We strolled over to the African Savanna, and we heard a huge Roarrr! It could be heard from a distance, and we hurried toward the lion enclosure to witness this magnificent event. This is the first time I've heard a lion roar.. and so close to me. It was awesome!
This is what we normally see them to be doing.. Ha.. But today I heard a lion roar! damn shiok.
We also saw lynx [what's the plural of lynx? lynxes?].. Scary as they seem, I don't know why they kept moving in figures of 8! Like they were in a trance or something. Freaking weird things. Maybe they are robots.. hurhur.
Next up was the grizzly bear trail towards the Canadian Domain.
We saw arctic wolves! Pretty.. one of them were growling at another though. Bully. Nvm about the tiger cubs, I want an arctic wolf instead!
Starting to get hungry, thanks to CY who had prepared chocolate bars for us! yum.
We were thoroughly enjoying ourselves. In fact it was so fun that we decided to heck our plans for the Science Museum in the afternoon and just spend the whole day at the fun filled zoo! We trekked back the Grizzly Bear Trail and trodded towards the Americas Pavilion.
We were greeted by a half sleepy owl at the entrance of the pavilion. The owl on the right was found inside the pavilion. It was so so adorable and curious!! See how it doesn't even flinch when we are so near it!
Reminds me of bubbles' cat, bubbles.
Ok, no arctic wolves for me. a little owl would make a great pet for me!
One animal I would like to be. The sloth.. Wouldn't it be great to just do everything in slow mo, everything at your own pace, even when the world is whizzing past you.
prairie dog! sooo furry ahhh
This little froggie is such a cam whore. Instead of hopping away from me, it came closer and closer. And it posed its tummy in its full glory for me to take a photo! And yes, these are poisonous froggies!
I think it liked me very much.
I think it's really sad to lose your sight. We spent a freaking long time trying to take a decent photo of these blind fishies cos they just kept moving.
One spider you wouldn't wanna encounter.. the deadly Black Widow
a High Tech Snake
If it's smelly it's a goat!
At the Mayan Temple Ruin.. which was just some gushing water.
We dragged our tired feet towards the last domain, but also one of the largest.. Eurasia. They had this superbly cute little animal called the Red Panda! No idea why it's called a panda, but a guess is that cos it eats bamboo shoots.
This guy is so camera shy. He keeps walking and walking, stopping occasionally to just rest his butt on the ground before moving on again! We spent a really long time trying to capture him as well. The cutest thing is that he walks in the same route every single time, along the perimeter of the enclosure towards the back, and then into a little hut at the far corner where he walks along the walls for a round, before emerging and doing the same thing again!! We were beginning to suspect if he was a robot as well. just like the lynx. =p But he definitely wins my cutest animal of the day award.
Curly wurly branched tree and me taking photo of it
His butt is freaking ugly!!
Notice the lady wearing the same ugly coat as me? heh heh.
A visit isn't complete until you fall prey to the gift shop. A couple of my favourite animals.
The toronto zoo was, the best zoo I've ever visited. Learned lots, saw lots, heard lots, smelled lots (ew). It was really enjoyable! helped that the weather was nice and cold, not like in Singapore where you'd be drowning in perspiration within 5 minutes.
CN Tower
We were pretty hungry by then since we didn't have lunch, but we had one more attraction to visit, in fact the most important one, which was the CN Tower! We originally wanted to catch sunset on top of the tower, but the sun was already setting as we rushed down to the tower. Funny how the zoo actually gained priority over everything else. The CN Tower is the tallest tower in the world! Even though I've never heard of it before until I came here. Hurhur.
CN Tower
We were pretty hungry by then since we didn't have lunch, but we had one more attraction to visit, in fact the most important one, which was the CN Tower! We originally wanted to catch sunset on top of the tower, but the sun was already setting as we rushed down to the tower. Funny how the zoo actually gained priority over everything else. The CN Tower is the tallest tower in the world! Even though I've never heard of it before until I came here. Hurhur.
Toronto Sunset Skyline
In the tower, after clearing the security. There was about 40 minutes wait, before we managed to take the lift up up and up! The lift had a glass wall so you could look out! Sadly I was all the way inside in the wrong side of the lift so I missed it.
The view is pretty awesome isn't it? Well, other than the view, it's just fun to be on top of the highest tower in the world. I learnt that it's one of the 7 modern wonders of the world! pretty cool. And by some stroke of luck I've visited empire state building which is also a wonder but I never knew muahhaa. Now gotta try to collect the rest!
After the empire state building's long waits I was super turned off by such stupid attractions where you pay to queue and queue and queue and in the end the view from the top is usually not exactly very spectacular. But luckily I did that [since it's a 7 wonder haha] and for this tower, I had the citypass so it was already paid for.. and the wait wasn't THAT long.
On top of the tower, I also decided. That if I ever own a country, I'll have a road spell out the country's name. So that when tourists come and go up the tower [then of course there must be a tallest tower in the world in my country] they can see the name of the country on the ground! Whee! Cool anot? If not very boring right.. just normal streets and buildings.. Now, what country can I buy over?
After the empire state building's long waits I was super turned off by such stupid attractions where you pay to queue and queue and queue and in the end the view from the top is usually not exactly very spectacular. But luckily I did that [since it's a 7 wonder haha] and for this tower, I had the citypass so it was already paid for.. and the wait wasn't THAT long.
On top of the tower, I also decided. That if I ever own a country, I'll have a road spell out the country's name. So that when tourists come and go up the tower [then of course there must be a tallest tower in the world in my country] they can see the name of the country on the ground! Whee! Cool anot? If not very boring right.. just normal streets and buildings.. Now, what country can I buy over?
Left: Some glass floor thing which is so scratched you can't see a thing.
Right: An outdoor skating rink we thought was the one we were to visit the next day but later found out it wasn't...
Right: An outdoor skating rink we thought was the one we were to visit the next day but later found out it wasn't...
Because we skipped lunch, we were famished by the time we finished the CN Tower. We WALKED back to our favourite Dundas Street in Chinatown to search for some food. Bobian, parking is expensive lah. I wanted to eat my roast pork which I ordered wrongly in Vancouver the other time [went to order BBQ Pork which is char siew instead] so we looked for a shao1 la4 dian4.. And stupid us had no Canadian $ [refused to change la] so we had to find a place with Visa/Mastercard.. and we found this..
Food, glorious food. They asked us if we wanted soup and we stared back blankly.. And the waitress kindly said 'It's free' and I immediately said 'Oh free then we want! Heehee' I wonder if I freaked her out. It was really good, with tender pieces of pork in it. We ordered a plate of roast pork + char siew + roast duck, and a plate of hong2 shao1 tofu, and a plate of oily chicken and BBQ baby pig! ok baby pig sounds really cute and wrong but fwah, the food was fantastic!!! You notice they even had the ginger/spring onion oil thing like Crystal Jade.. I think it's even better than Crystal Jade lah!
See? You can't go wrong with crowded restaurants.
Very satisfied indeed.
Being Christmas Eve, we decided to ask the lady at the cashier if there was any place to go count down.. She looked quite hip with dyed hair and all so I thought it would be ok. And I think she was probably the boss cos she spent a lot of time explaining this location to us [as opposed to a waitress who will not be able to spend so much time on your nonsense requests]! Some mall something. Impressed with their friendly service, we set off to get our car [which was parked near CN tower, a loooong distance away]
Along the way we stopped by a few very special benches outside the Art Institute next to the Art Gallery of Ontario. We had noticed these the previous day but didn't have time to take a photo cos of the bloody parking. See anything special?
Along the way we stopped by a few very special benches outside the Art Institute next to the Art Gallery of Ontario. We had noticed these the previous day but didn't have time to take a photo cos of the bloody parking. See anything special?
Really cool right? I think it is a simple yet fantastic design. If you still haven't realised what we are doing, we are converting the bench, from a bench to a table with a seat.. And it can be done easily! Really clever.
Along the way to our car..
We walked past the place where we were supposed to go ice skating the next day!! We had brought our ice skates.. Well it was definitely something I've never seen before, people ice skating in the open! And it was a free rink, people just went in and out.. So cool! The ice wasn't conditioned though so it looked really rough and fall-inducing. This rink is right in front of the City Hall, and next to the Old City Hall (below).
Old City Hall. I love the gargoyles next to the clock.
We finally reached our car park after a long time. We realised something was amiss when we saw that the barrier was up.. Could it mean free parking for us? Upon reaching our car.. we saw a nice yellow slip on our windscreen. Bloody hell! The car park was closed at night and we were being fined for leaving it! But thank goodness they only charged us the cost of parking there for a night which was what we were gonna pay anyway.. Haha so dumb!
Feeling lucky that we weren't fined an exorbitant amount, we drove off towards the mall that the lady recommended had a happening countdown. We were so tired that cy and me fell asleep on the way there.. think it took about, an hour? Poor Erwin had to drive all the way, and when we reached, we saw.. no one. It was some china town with a mall that looked like one of those in our chinatown haha. and there was absolutely no one around.. Everything was dark. I don't know what the hell that lady was thinking when she recommended us this place. My my. To think that we were so grateful for her helpfulness, she even drew it on the map for us.
By then we were so tired we didn't really give a damn anymore so we just drove straight back to the hotel and slept.. So much for a happening Christmas countdown in Toronto.
Feeling lucky that we weren't fined an exorbitant amount, we drove off towards the mall that the lady recommended had a happening countdown. We were so tired that cy and me fell asleep on the way there.. think it took about, an hour? Poor Erwin had to drive all the way, and when we reached, we saw.. no one. It was some china town with a mall that looked like one of those in our chinatown haha. and there was absolutely no one around.. Everything was dark. I don't know what the hell that lady was thinking when she recommended us this place. My my. To think that we were so grateful for her helpfulness, she even drew it on the map for us.
By then we were so tired we didn't really give a damn anymore so we just drove straight back to the hotel and slept.. So much for a happening Christmas countdown in Toronto.
No comments:
Post a Comment