On Sunday morning we started preparing to leave for our five to six hour drive to Toronto. Our first plan was revisit Montreal on Sunday and then take advantage of late check out (8:00pm) and spend the night in a Walmart parking lot that was half way to Toronto but we decided to leave by lunch and then drive straight to Toronto so we could visit downtown Toronto on Monday. There were not many campgrounds near Toronto so we decided on a city park called Glen Rouge Campground at Rouge Park situated on the Rouge River.  This drive seemed longer than others since we did not leave until after lunch due a wiring issue with our auxiliary braking system in the car (our brake buddy). We have a plug that looks like an extra lighter plug added that is wired to the car battery and this plug has electrical issues because when we plugged in the brake buddy, we saw sparks coming from the plug- oh no another issue! We then had to plug the brake buddy directly into the cigarette lighter which meant that we had to stop every two hours in order to charge the battery on the car which made our drive even longer (or at least it seemed hours longer).

We arrived at the campground around 7:00pm on Sunday night, one of the latest check ins we have had since we started traveling, so we used the travel brochures to finish planning our visit into downtown Toronto. We decided to leave the campground by 8:30, so we could try to miss rush hour at the train station but still find a parking spot. The first lot was full and we almost got discouraged when the second one seemed to have no empty lots either but just before we started to leave the parking lot we found a spot in the back of the lot. Now we had to go to the station to purchase tickets for the GO train into Toronto. The lady at the station counter was really nice and gave us a group discount ticket for $20 which could have normally cost $30 which entitled us to ride into Toronto and back to our car. We decided not to purchase subway tickets which would have cost $36 and walk around Toronto. We meet a very two very nice ladies on the train one of which told us that she owned a house in Myrtle Beach, SC and she even gave us her cell phone number so we could call her at work if we got lost or needed anything during our visit to Toronto. Both ladies gave us suggestions for things to do during our day visit to Toronto which helped us decide on what to do that day.  The train station which was called Union Station and it was also the subway, bus stations too. One of the ladies from the train showed which exit to take to head in the correct direction for our walking day.

Our first stop was the Eton Center which was a five story mall with too many stores to list but everyone in the family found at least one store to visit.  After the mall we started our walk on the crowded streets with all the people on the way to work shuffling across busy intersections like herds of cattle. The boys were fascinated by all the tall buildings as we walked through the financial district of Toronto noticing some of the same companies that we would see in the US. After the financial district we made our way into Chinatown and discovered that since we did not know Chinese we could hardly even pay for three Chinese donuts in a bakery. They had tongs and a tray and you picked your pastry and put it on the tray without any tissue paper, napkin or anything. Since we had seen H1N1 signs in every restroom (called washrooms in Canada) this made the parents slightly uncomfortable so we gave each child some hand sanitizer and handed them the donut in their hand without the try which caused us to get some dirty looks from the girl at the counter who did not speak English. There were many interesting things to see along the streets of Chinatown including cheap toys, herbs with the names in Chinese and whole ducks or chickens hanging in the meat market windows. Our next stop was Little Italy and of course Carson was looking for pizza, he has been able to recognize that word for over two years.  The first pizza place we saw in Little Italy, he decided that was where we needed to eat.

I do not think that anyone in the family could have walked much farther so the decision was unanimous we would stop, order pizza and rest.  The restaurant was called John’s Classic Italian Pizza  with wood fired pizza so we ordered a large cheese and sat down to wait for it and the other treat of the day which was four cans of coke, sorry no iced sweet tea in Canada.  The pizza arrived at the table and we could hardly wait to eat, our lunch was very good and the rest was wonderful too. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Toronto. We enjoyed two scoops of Gelato, one mint and one double chocolate and Zachary and Carson enjoyed a hot fudge sundae from McDonald’s at the Eton Center which was our last stop of the day.  We looked around a couple more stores in the mall and then rushed for the GO stop to try to catch a train before rush hour at 5:00.  We arrived at Union Station 8 minutes before the train left and were even able to get a seat on the top of the train.

Dinner that night was at a restaurant called Whimpy’s where were got a burger, onion rings and poutine as an appetizer. Poutine for anyone that has not traveled to Canada is French fries with cheese and gravy, depending on the restaurant this dish can be served with Cheese Wiz or shredded cheese and brown gravy; we had to try it once since we had heard so much about it. Once we finished dinner it was back to the motor home to get ready for our trip back into the United States. We took one last walk around the campground and discovered a large tee-pee at the back of the campground and of course Zachary and Carson had to go inside to take a look around. The tee-pee was manufactured by a company in Toronto; I guess there is a demand for tee-pees in Canada.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, September 19th, 2009 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Everyday Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.