Sunday
The next day on the way to the museum we passed this interesting china shop. Unlike some other members of the Spindler family, this is the only Great Wall of China that any of us has visited. 
The Royal Ontario Museum, site of the exhibit "Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids" (archived page) which featured lots of art, sculpture, jewelry, and statuary; very well organized with a good audioguide CD. No pictures inside, of course... 
Afterward we headed for the waterfront where we wandered around, ate lunch, and explored some of the shopping. Here we are looking south across the lakefront to the Toronto Islands in the distance--this area is a park with a funky housing area mixed in (sort of an artists colony; no motor vehicles allowed). The islands are accessible by ferry; I went out and explored them the next morning (K and J left Sunday, I stayed around an extra day to be able to use a free airline ticket). We had excellent weather the whole time, although it was a bit chilly at times 
The CN tower, a landmark near the waterfront in the midst of a large open park area. No, we didn't. Strangely enough, on Saturday morning my running explorations brought me to this area where I encountered many people in running shoes and athletic gear as if they were going to a road race. I finally asked someone what was going on, they said it was the "annual CN Tower stair climb." Supposedly a good score was 15 minutes. No, I didn't. At right, the Skydome can be seen to the left of Kathyand Jeff...below is a view looking up the CN Tower.  
We took a tour of the Skydome--quite interesting and fun. The Skydome was built after the CN tower on more of the same area of filled land near the lakefront that formerly was occupied by railroad tracks and port activity. The place has a retractable roof, part of which slides horizontally and part of which rotates on a curved track; apparently it works rather well. 
Here we are on the stadium floor. The place is used for the Toronto Blue Jays baseball and the CFL Argonauts football team. They used to use it for NBA basketball too until a more appropriate arena was built nearby. They had two different styles of Astroturf for baseball and football--we got to sample walking on it. Above the outfield are several restaurants and a hotel with windows overlooking the field. The hotel rooms can be booked for a price for stadium events--a few years ago the occupants of one of the rooms were picked up by the TV cameras and displayed on the jumbo screen...they were doing things inappropriate for a family baseball audience. Hmmm. |