As I think I mentioned, my biggest complain from my first full day spent in the heart of the land of the North was the lack of two words "hoser" and "ay," specifically as they might be combined in a sentence like "ay ya hoser." Despite my attempts to get in as many Tim Hortons conversations and Canadian art discussions as I could, no one called me any names of any sort, hockey related or otherwise. While I didn't fix that dilemma I did manage to overhear someone call his friend a hoser and, several times, was told that "It was a good day for ____, ay?" Which was totally awesome. It is an infintiely cooler expression than "huh?" as in "Nice day out, huh?" or "ain't it" or any of that shit. Not to mention that it allows for question to simply become a statement with the sound "ay" at the end of it and some questioning pronunciation and you are golden. It was especially cool when this early 20s-ish woman said "Ay, good choice, ay" regarding our weekend plans. It worked out really well.
Both those moments occurred on our way to or at the Royal Museum of Ontario, which we don't really have any pictures from, even though it was kinda interesting. We went through this exhibit which had alot of incredibly highly-detailed fossils from a dig site in China. The primary argument that the exhibit was making concerned not only the fact that most (if not nearly all) types of dinosaurs actually had feathers (including a scary ass set of feathered velociraptors and an enormous chicken-like dino, that seriously could have eaten at least three Nookie Supremes), nor that birds descended from dinosaurs, but that birds are dinosaurs. I'm not much of an archaeologist or anything, so I can't regurgitate it all, but it had alot to do with archaeoptrix, which was a pretty sweet little dinosaur as far as I was concerned.
Royal Museum, back to hotel, check out, tipped Mexican valet (according to his nametag), in Canada, with American cash, and headed for Casa Loma. I don't know if Katie has described her thoughts about Casa Loma on her blog yet, but she will and they are seriously in depth, so I will save them for her. Basically, its a castle built in the 1900s, in the middle of Toronto. A quick shot of the gardens and the architecture:
Its not downtown, but its clearly in Toronto. We climbed up into one of the towers, through a one (skinny) person wide cricular staircase of about 4 stories, and while exhausting, it produced the coolest part of the excursion. It was worth seeing once, but don't make it a must see Toronto attraction. Katie and I look pretty good atop the castle, at least:
The picture spectacular really begins now, at the Toronto Zoo, which as far as I was concerned, was by far the most important part of the trip. Before the Canadian Idol victory city ever came into the picture, after all, we were planning on a run down to the Buffalo Zoo-logical gardens which didn't have any of the rhino or hippo related things. I was all nervous since it looked like it was about to rain right as we arrived at the zoo, but Katie's continual optimism proved right as always. It was hot like a mother as we made our way towards the Austral-Asian area, passing a couple of cute camels who had been impressed into giving rides to children, which I would say sucks for them, but I guess its an improvement over full size people and long rides through the desert and such. We first got to the indoor section which featured some cute birds, some fishies, a water monitor, and a big ass komodo dragon. After that there was a dark area which featured nocturnal things, a little kangaroo-like hoppy rodent, a kookaburra bird, and a wombat, which was so incredibly cute that I can't even describe it. I had never seen one in person, but I couldn't take a picture, since the guy was in the dark and all. Imagine an immensely cute version of an ROUS with a shorter face, but an even better waddle.
So we were already off to a great start when we saw some large birds in the distance and approached their cage. The closer we got to the cage the more we realized that it was a fenced-in enclosure featuring a gate which we were encouraged to enter. We then walked up a hill along a narrow-ish path to see a herd of kangaroos and about 4 decent sized emus, walking freely in the area we were in. No walls or fences or gates or pits or moats or trenches or whatever, just the kangaroos and emus between 2-10 feet away. This doesn't emphasize how close the birds got, but shows the general atmosphere:
There were lots of herd animals and monkeys and polar bears and stuff near by. The most notable thing was this incredibly adorable red panda, who was doing its best Hippopotameow impression napping in the tree:
I have pictures of lions and rhinos and gorillas and jaguars and so on, but for the moment I will just include a couple. First off, Katie with a couple of gigantic elephants. I know I have seen elephants before, but I think maybe they were all Asian-speciated or something, cuz these folks were enormous. I mean gigantic.
This is a set of pictures intended to prove two things: 1) Hippos of all types are fricking awesome 2) My cat is well deserving of her title "World's Prettiest Hippo" (which she proudly sports on her favorite coffee mug)
Finally, a good story about the last animal of the day, the Indian rhino. This guy is a big sucker and at the point we got to his spot it was about 5 minutes to closing and the park had cleared out pretty significantly. I found a spot near a corner of the rhino area and watched him graze around for a couple minutes before he got within, literally, 3 feet of the fence. While Katie had backed up and started to make her way towards the exit, I followed the rhino around by the fence for a couple minutes and had a nice convo. I took this one right before I left with literally no zoom:
Anyway, we left around 6 and were home well before dark after a stop for Canada's signature donut at Tim Hortons. It was a really sweet little vacation and we will certainly go back. Sorry it took so long to freaking describe it.
We are back in Buffalo now and have been for a while. I swear I will get up to date soon. At least some Minneapolis stories before Katie leaves me on a month long excursion to summer camp. Hippo needs to play, so I bid you adieu.
Peace,
MB-K
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