Tuesday, June 16, 2009 – Day 19
Citypass is a great value for anyone visiting the city of Toronto. With these passes you can visit up to 5 attractions for one low price and they are among the city’s best attractions too. Although we did have a limited amount of time we were able to visit 3 of the 5 popular attractions for families.
Parking a 31 Foot RV in Toronto
The Royal Ontario Museum (or as Torontonians call it the ROM) was our first stop. After looking for parking I decided I had better drop off my family otherwise it may be too late for us to see anything. I was driving our motorhome in downtown Toronto and as you can possibly imagine, it is not easy parking a 31 foot long RV in North America’s 4th largest city which has a population of over 2 million people. I circled around a number of times up and down the streets around the museum. Tiny alleys and regular streets were all packed full of cars. Although I did spot a few parking spaces occasionally, I was going to need something specific. I needed to find two parking spaces next to each other that were both empty so I could take up both parking spots. After almost 45 minutes I finally found my place right across the street from the front entrance, what luck (although the many prayers of desperation were more likely what helped). I parked as close as I could to the curb and the best thing about Toronto is that I only had to pay for one parking spot since there are only designated parking areas and not actual parking meters with lines marking the spots. Within a few minutes I ran into the museum to find the rest of my family.
The kids enjoyed the ROM’s dinosaur collection and our oldest daughter wanted to spend more time looking at the period costumes on display. There was so much to see and only a limited amount of time to see it all but we did our best and enjoyed it all.
Our next stop was the Ontario Science Centre in the outskirts of the city. Fortunately parking was easy here as it was an open parking lot! Much to my relief as the official driver. Once again our kids could have spent a full day in this interactive centre filled will hundreds of interactive displays. I had a hard time moving them from one place to the next as they wanted to test our every single display. They especially liked using the electron ball to charge themselves up and get their hair to stand up on end. A truly hair raising experience.
CN Tower
It was with a bit of trepidation that I drove into downtown Toronto a second time. This time however, it was during rush hour traffic to search for parking. Rush hour traffic however in the evening is easy when driving into Toronto… until you get into the city centre. Fortunately we didn’t have too far to go within the city. We went straight to the CN tower and I looked for the first open parking lot I could find. Fortunately there was a place across the street from the front entrance… although rather than the usual $10, the attendant told me I would have to pay for two vehicles. I didn’t have any luck or leverage in negotiating a single vehicle price as I sat in my massive RV. The attendant simply suggested a few other places to check as I looked at the traffic that was at a turtle’s on the street in front of us. I simply shook my head and took out my credit card to pay what he wanted for the space (although I did have the rest of the evening as the spot was reserved for me until midnight).
My kids had been looking at the CN Tower for days, since we drove by Toronto to get to Niagara Falls 4 days earlier. They were excited to finally get a view from the second tallest man made structure in the world (surpassed by the Burj Dubai tower scheduled to be completed in September 2009). I had the kids look at the glass plate in the floor as we rose up the first of two elevators in the CN Tower.
They squealed with excitement as they saw the floor move away from them and almost disappear off in the distance below them. They loved standing and jumping on the glass floor that let them hover over the city below them. They were amazed to be so high up looking over the city of Toronto and were even more amazed when they had the opportunity to go up another 45 second elevator ride to the Skypod platform. Teyauna our 1 year old had a hard time with the heights and preferred to stay near the elevator.
After the visit was over we capped off our experience with the Himalamazon simulator ride (an old simulator ride that entertained my 6 year old but was otherwise worth missing).
Falling Apart
I decided to get a bit of a head start on the drive to our next destination of Upper Canada Village and so I decided to drive into the night towards our next destination. As we drove I noticed a piece of plastic weather stripping flapping on the outside passenger side of our RV. I looked in dismay as I saw the 10 foot piece that looked like it was not in great shape. After pulling over in a rural neighborhood I realized that it was not as bad as I had thought. I was able to put the weather stripping back into place and continue on our drive into the evening.