As explained yesterday, the hotel is really not in walking distance to the CN Tower or the Hockey Hall of Fame, but in fairness the hotel is relatively close to a subway stop located in the square where we ate last night. The square is called Dundas Square, and for all of you Americans reading this I am sure you are pronouncing this as "DONE-dus" like I did. That is, until I was corrected by a subway worker. The correct pronunciation is "dun-DUSS." So, now you know.
We bought a day-pass for the subway and street cars, which at $10 for the family was easily the best deal in Canada. Our first stop was the CN Tower, which for many years was the tallest building on Earth. It has since been surpassed, and if I wasn't a little tired right now I would look up what building(s) beat it.
We had heard and read that the lines for the tower can be quite long (2-3 hours) so we had decided to get there pretty close to its opening today in the hopes of beating the crowd. Well, either because it was a Sunday morning or because it was a little hazy out, there were no lines at all. We got our tickets and headed right to the elevator.
The tower was built for television and radio transmissions, and the main observation deck is about 1100 feet up. We bought an extra pass that enabled us to go another 300-400 feet up. We got off at the main deck, and went right to another elevator that took us up higher. The views, even though a bit hazy, were quite impressive. It was a little too bad that the visibility wasn't the best, because it would have been cool to see all the way to Niagara Falls or Buffalo (where is says you can see on a clear day). But if the haze kept people away, I guess it was a good trade.
The CN Tower recently added a feature that allowed people to go outside of the main observation deck while strapped in and then let them lean over the edge. My mother actually heard about this before we left and called me to alert me to this possibility. I was so excited about the chance to do this that I signed right up, told them I didn't need no stinkin' harness and just walked right to the edge and leaned over. And if you believe that I have a tall tower in Canada to sell you. Although, some lunatics were actually doing it while we were there.
After checking out the views, we bought our obligatory crap/souvenirs and headed next door to the Rogers Centre (I will be calling it by its original name from here out - Skydome) for the 11:00 tour. We have done a lot of tours of stadiums over the years, and some tours were really in depth. Skydome, not so much. They were busy converting the field back from football to baseball, so we were not allowed on the field. And they don't let you into the clubhouses like other parks do. So, most of this tour revolved around how they convert the field to and from baseball and football and also how they retract the roof. Not quite the glory stories of the Red Sox or Yankees. Also a pale comparison is the fact that while the Red Sox have retired the numbers of players like Williams, Yaz, Fisk and Rice, and the Yankees have retired jerseys of players like Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and Mantle, the Blue Jays have retired the numbers worn by Joe Carter, Dave Steib and the immortal Tony Fernandez. The only way any of these players are getting into the Baseball Hall of Fame is with a ticket.
We walked from lunch to the HHOF, which, similar to the Basketball Hall of Fame, is not its own stand alone building but is in the basement of an office building. I will readily admit that my knowledge of hockey is limited, and the knowledge of the rest of my family is minimal at best. So as expected the kids only really got into the HOF when they came across a handful of interactive exhibits where you could play goalie against both computerized and real pucks and another one where you try to score against a computer goalie.
Other than these activities, the exhibits of over 100 years of hockey was mostly wasted on them (sorry, Jack). But we did get a picture with the Stanley Cup.
We wrapped up at the HHOF (finishing it off with even more clutter to bring home) around 4:30 and then tried to figure out what to do. Most other places to visit were either closed or closing soon, plus the kids were tired, so we opted to go swimming in the hotel pool. So we headed back on the subway to the hotel.
When we got back to our room to change for the pool, we discovered that the room had not been made up yet. Here it was, 5:00 on Sunday, after spending the whole day out and they could not find time to clean our room and give us new towels? What if we needed to get ready for the night? We can't leave this hotel fast enough.
The kids had a nice time in the pool and made some friends from VA (while I took a power nap in anticipation of the 5+ hour drive to Michigan tomorrow), then we headed back up to the room around 6:45. Miraculously, the room was made up and we had new towels (although she didn't leave us the sheets we had asked for, but we let it go). The kids showered and we headed out for dinner. I had looked up some family friendly places to eat in the area, and found a sports bar near Dundas Square. We hopped on a street car to avoid walking through Little Beirut, and then walked a few blocks to the restaurant (passing on the establishment that advertised "Cold Beer. Naked Men."). The sports bar/restaurant wasn't quite as advertised online, but the food was good (and overpriced for what we ate - not helped at all by the 13% sales tax in Canada - no wonder they can afford to have universal health care). Amanda took a little nap at the table and woke up to eat her hamburger (maybe the 324th of the trip).
We skipped dessert tonight and headed back to the hotel to get some rest. We would have gotten everyone to bed earlier, but I had to go down to the lobby to try and borrow a plunger to fix an issue that arose after we got back to the room. Names will be withheld to protect the innocent, but anyone that knows our family can guess pretty easily what happened. When I got to the lobby to ask for the plunger - I didn't want anyone coming to the room because we had already set up the air bed - I had to ask the same Ms. Snooty that checked me in yesterday. At first she was going to call for the maintenance man to come up, but I asked if I could just take as I told her my family was sleeping. She looked at me like I asked to take the Stanley Cup up to my room and had to ask the manager. After getting the OK from the manager, the maintenance man gave me his coveted plunger and I was able to fix the problem pretty quickly. We then got everyone to bed, Debbie and I did a little work and called it a night.
Like I said, Debbie and I have never been so excited to leave a hotel as we are with this one. Oh well. Tomorrow we will be back in the U.S., and back online with our cell phones and mifi (we turned them all off for the weekend to avoid the nutty international charges). Tomorrow - Michigan (sorry, Jack).
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