Ontario Trip - Day Three ...

We got up early and headed over to McD's for Breakfast (yes, not a good choice - but we WERE on holidays !!??), then made the two hour drive to the east side of Toronto where we met up with my cousin Tina and had a wonderful walk through the zoo.

I have taken each of my three to the zoo on the rare trips I've taken back to Ontario over the last 10 years. I have gone back for a variety of reasons, usually family funerals, or failing health of family members, and on those trips I've taken ONE of the children in turn. So this time I had all three, and we were going to the ZOO together !!

We went through the gate at 9:30 and began walking ... and walking ... and walking ...

We spent a fair bit of time in the Indonesian Pavilion where we watched with great delight the antics of the Orangutans. The baby, pictured above was cute beyond words ... my one frustration was just as I snapped this picture my camera's batteries died and I had to run back to the front gate (no mean feat) to get replacement batteries while Tina and the kids carried on to the African exhibits ...

The Great Apes are endlessly fascincating ... it's hard not to agree with Darwin that we share a common ancestor, and perhaps the proof of thier superior intelligence is that you don't see them contributing to such things as habitat degredation and global warming ...

The rest of the Zoo was a delightful walk. It was chilly and overcast, but warm for our Manitoba blood ... most of the animals were out and about, and with the new camera I was able to capture some wonderful images of animal like Lions and Tigers and Cheetahs (sorry, no bears !)

We stopped for lunch at the Harvey's and Pzza Pizza restaurant in the middle of the Zoo, and everyone got what they wanted ... Beetle has decided she doesn't like pizza, while Ms H and Noahkila wanted ONLY Pizza - so we established a pattern for our trip - "Here's twenty bucks ... go get your lunch and meet us over there ..." Noahkila and Ms H would get pizza while Beetle and I would pick up burgers, fries and salad.

We then said good bye to Tina who headed home while we finished the Zoo.

From the Zoo we drove west on the 401 and went down the Don Valley Parkway to the Ontario Science Centre (one of Santa's presents to the three kids was a 'City Pass' that gave us admission to six attractions in Toronto for one 'LOW' price ...we used them all). We had a long wander around the Science Centre and checked out most of the exhibits.

From the Science Centre we headed to Milton for a visit with the my cousin Paul and his family (his children Emily and Kate are favourites with our three), then we headed back to Stratford for the night ... a long, productive and delightful day ...