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Our wedding (5/20/2000)
Canada

Photo album

Photos from Our Very Limited Trip to a Small Part of Ontario

   
Friday May 23, 2003:

We left on a morning flight to Toronto, but because of the time difference, didn’t arrive till a bit after noon. We picked up our rental car and asked for directions to the Hilton downtown. No one seemed to quite know and it wasn’t on the tourist map of hotel locations. Weird. All the streets in downtown Toronto are one way the wrong way! We ended up going round in circles as we drove, looking for the Hilton,; with the trolleys and slow traffic, it was a bit tedious. Eventually, we did reach the Hilton and quickly checked in.

The concierge recommended a very chic restaurant with an extremely friendly and gregarious owner who took good care of us while we planned out our afternoon. We decided, as it was getting on towards three, that would will just go ahead and spend our evening at the Royal Ontario Museum, which has late hours on Friday nights and free admission after 4pm. They were also holding a special event for “Doors Open Toronto,” an architectural event where all the buildings in the city are open to the public for tours. There was a local jazz musician playing on the stage at 6, so we stayed to listen for a while. The museum includes a wide array of exhibits from Korean art to modern furniture to geology and culture, and was quite a sight to see. The totem poles and Egyptian frescos were the most memorable (see the included pictures).

  An ancient Persian fresco. Some old buddhas.
A saint. Or Princess Leia. An amusing old man. Really.
An oriental mosaic. Dome of the ROM foyer. A totem pole. View from our hotel.
Primordial Christy.
Saturday May 24, 2003

This morning we decided to take a day-trip to Niagara Falls. We hopped in the rental car and drove into St. Catherine for brunch, before heading on to the tourist bureau in Niagara Falls to check out any special tours or deals in the area; ultimately, we just decided to take the Niagara Day Pass, which gets you into all the attractions and transportation for the day. It was pretty reasonably priced, but we probably could have enjoyed the park by itself. Journey Behind the Falls, one of the featured tours, was a bit disappointing; it did have a nice viewing deck that was close to the falls, but we were expecting a bit more than a cement tunnel with a gated view of nothing but a wall of water. The Maid of the Mist was pretty fun, and I think it gives you the closest and best views of the falls as you approach. It was fun to be in the spray and feel the power of the rapids from the falls. Best of all, I brought my binoculars and stood on the path for a while just looking at the falls and the river upstream, while Tom took many photos. We walked the path near the falls, but decided to take the bus to the Whirlpool, which was a bit further away. Wow, that was a fun hike -- absolutely beautiful. The churning water is crystalline blue, and it was entrancing to watch the crests and falls for a while. It was hard to tell if there were actually rocks causing the display, or if it was just the power of so much water creating the swells and undercurrents.

Another perk of the day pass was the butterfly conservatory. (Who knew that Niagara had a butterfly conservatory?) We heard several people jeering about it on the bus, but I thought it was one of the best attractions of the day. We both happen to love conservatories, though. As we walked in, there was another woman in front of us who stopped to watch a fluttering butterfly. Much to her surprise, she was able to coax it to land on her hand. She giggled in glee -- and after her husband and we had taken several photos, offered it up to anyone else who might want a butterfly on their hand. Next, we went chasing a certain elusive blue butterfly. It was bark colored and mottled on the down (closed) side of the wing, but a brilliant blue on the upside. Unfortunately, it was very hard to coax to open its wings once landed. We did manage one picture, though, after I prodded it gently but insistently with the corner of my brochure.

As if the excitement of the day already wasn’t enough, we resolved that we still had some energy left and tried to get into a show, Blood Relations, at the Shaw Theater in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Amazingly, at 7pm (the show started at 8), they had one pair of tickets – and in the second row, no less! We grabbed a quick nibble at one of the cute restaurants and wished we had more time to wander through the shops. The play used a unique form of storytelling, putting a character who merely asked about the events of that fateful day in the position of the main character and using the “actual” main character and narrator to fill in the events as they happened – all while playing the role of the maid. In the end, the question isn’t technically answered, but you definitely know where the author’s sympathies lie. “Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks. When the job was nicely done, she gave her father forty-one.”

We made it back to Toronto that night after a nice Canadian policeman pointed us in the right direction home.

  Horseshoe Falls. Corner of Horseshoe Falls.
More of Horseshoe Falls. Side of Niagara. Niagara. Christy, looking goony. The Niagara tower
Christy at the rapids. More of Christy and rapids. *grin* Rapids. More rapids. Still more rapids.
Maid of the Mist. More Maid of the Mist. Still more Maid of the Mist.
Tom at the wall. More than we need of Tom. An old pumping station. A rainbow.
More rainbow. Rainbow Bridge, connecting the U.S. and Canada.
Blue butterfly. Another blue butterfly.
Butterflies mating. Butterfly flowers.
A giant butterfly net. More net. A butterfly in the hand...
A statue covered in grey butterflies. Christy and butterflies. An enormous butterfly. An interesting butterfly.
Orange butterflies. Whitish butterflies.
Sunday May 25, 2003

Today we drove up to Algonquin Park, a four hour drive from Toronto. Sadly, the weather was iffy, but the driving was beautiful through the park towards our resort on the far east side; we even escorted two town girls home when it started to pour as we reached Whitney. We checked in and decided to play a round or two of shuffleboard and darts (cricket) in hopes that the weather would clear up a bit later. To our fortune, it did, and we were able to take a quick canoe jaunt across the lake before dinner. The resort is very posh and has a evening dress code, so we felt very chic as we dined and then retired to our Jacuzzi and fireplace for the evening.

  Christy in a canoe. The resort.
Trees. More trees.
Monday May 26, 2003

After an enormous breakfast and Christy’s bout with the sniffles, we decided to take a short but difficult 2km scenic hike up a bluff to overlook the entire park. The weather was still a bit stormy, so we resolved to do short trips so we'd have less of a chance of getting soaked. The hike was a bit more difficult than we had expected, but did hold gorgeous views off granite and gneiss bluffs that looked for miles across untouched forest and marsh; we hiked along the stream that ran down the bluff, which bubbled happily and was very picturesque. The huge boulders that had been deposited from the glaciers randomly across the trail were amazingly large. Sure enough, after the hike, it began to storm, so we decided to check out the visitors' center; it was pleasant enough, full of natural habitat and animal displays and some local artwork. Christy even was convinced to crawl through an artificial fox hole and look up at the wolf who was peering down to find his prey.

The weather cleared again, so we decided to take a spin around the beaver trail -- which looked on the trail map like a short jaunt. It ended up being longer and more strenuous than the first trail, even though it wasn’t rated as such, thanks to all the vertical climbing. We didn’t see any beavers, but lots of lodges and dams. We did see a grazing buck moose, though, who was very serene and just beginning to grow his new antlers. On the way to the trail, we had seen a grazing female along the roadside who'd looked at us quizzically when we stopped. As it rained again, we retired to the Jacuzzi for a bit. Just before dinner, again, the weather cleared and we were able to take a much longer paddle to the other side of the lake. There were some quite surprising rapids in an area that ran to a small waterfall, and with the strong, stormy winds, it was rather an invigorating trip. You could really feel the difference between the calm and rough water, and when the wind blew, it just turned the canoe aside as if it were a floating twig. The weather made the canoe trip seem more adventurous, though, and we really enjoyed ourselves. Finally weary, we took our dinner in our room that evening and turned in early to get up for the drive back to Toronto.

  Christy, crawling through a foxhole. Hiking. Hiking. A boulder. Hiking up a stream. Christy on an overlook. Neon swampgrass Looking across a lake. Clifftop. An overlook. More overlook. A dam. A second dam. Moose. More moose. Canoeing in the rain. A shoreline.
Tuesday May 27, 2003

Driving, flying, and more driving. What a day. We got up early and drove back down to Toronto to catch our plane back to the U.S. We were so worried about making the long drive in time that we were two hours early. We drove through downtown again looking for a way to kill an hour or so, and finally settled on the Harbourfront; it wasn’t quite as happening as Christy thought it would be, sadly. We wandered through a residential mall for a bit, then dropped off our rental car and caught some lunch before boarding. My dad picked us up from the airport and wanted us to stay for a meatloaf dinner, but we decided that we should get home, do our laundry, and settle down from the trip before work the next morning. Sadly, the suburban traffic was so bad that we didn’t make it home till close to 8pm, so we didn’t get much relaxing or laundry done.

  The CN Tower.