Canada Day

July 1st is Canada Day.  We celebrated with a large number of other Torontonians by taking a trip to Toronto Island.  We took the subway into Toronto as we didn't want the hassle of finding a park.  We arrived quite early as we were meeting our friends Michael and Rebecca so we sat people watching.  There were some very interesting sights including one man pushing a full sized BBQ onto the ferry!

Once Mike and Rebecca arrived we boarded the ferry, standing room only but we managed to squeeze our way to the railing so we could look out and take photos.

The island itself is quite large.  It was a lovely day, not too hot so we really enjoyed walking around.  There were heaps of people of bicycles that they had rented and there was an open sided tour bus circling the island also.  Our first stop was for food.  Of course there was the inevitable Pizza Pizza (I wonder if there's anywhere in this country that doesn't have a Pizza Pizza!) with hugely inflated prices.  Note for next time - bring own food.  Jenna and I ate a very expensive tiny punnet of fries.

Jesse really wanted to go on some of the rides so we decided that a trip on the Sky Ride was in order.  It's like a ski lift which goes around a small part of the park.  There are photos which Jenna took from way up high as we flew across above the other rides and the petting zoo.  

After our ride, we wandered down to the petting zoo (much to Jesse's disappointment as one ride was not enough).  There were tiny horses taking small children for rides around a very small track.  There was a gigantic pig and Jenna's comment was - "what a lot of bacon".  Poor pig.  There were a few sheep lying in the shade looking like they were dead.  For the most part it was a little sad to see these animals in their small enclosures in the hot sun.  There was not much "petting" to be had as most had signs saying the animals might bite.

We wandered off to the lake and the beach where there were a lot of people in swimsuits and not many swimming (you wouldn't want to swim in Lake Ontario).  Jesse enjoyed skimming stones across the water.  After that we headed off to one end of the island and then back to the ferry.  This took us most of the afternoon.  

We arrived home about 6pm and then set to BBQing for Mike and Rebecca who had very generously offered to lend us their Bissell cleaner to clean our new sofa (acquired from the side of the road as per my previous post).  I was very impressed, the greasy marks came out and the couch is now looking quite respectable.

Andy had taken Friday off as well so he got a four day weekend.  It was lovely to have him home with us without a thought for work.  The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing and enjoying the nice weather.  We went swimming on Saturday and Sunday.  Jenna and Andy got sunburned on Sunday but I didn't.  Jesse spent the day at a friend's house where they have a pool so he's looking very tanned.  Was hard to get up on Monday morning after such a lovely long weekend. Link to photos.

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