Casa Loma and Canadian History Museum
This day, we headed out on the Subway, like a true locals. We navigated to Casa Loma - a beautiful home built before the depression. Unfortunately, the owners lost their entire fortune and only lived in the house for 10 years. 2 years after having to move out, his wife died and he lived in his old caretaker's basement! Crazy how life changed for him! Eventually, the city fixed it up after years of disrepair and opened it for tours. Now, it is a very popular place to film movies and have weddings/events. It was fun to see all the clips of the movies from inside the house and how they switch it to fit different eras.
Oddly enough, the kids and I loved touring this house. They usually aren't into house tours, but this one was self guided and came with an audio tour. They enjoyed going at their own pace and not having to listen to a tour guide. Plus, they allowed you to go in the secret passage ways, and into both turrets, which was super awesome!
The conservatory was beautiful. He even had electrical lights (which were new at the time) put above the dome so that it could shine even at night. There was a bride getting her bridal photos here when we left.
There were secret doors from the owner's office. One led to the basement near where the safe was. The other led upstairs to the bedrooms.
The outdoor gardens and trails were very nice too.
The Ontario Museum was okay, but not really our thing. We had City Passes for them, so we roamed around, but we were kinda too tired to appreciate all of the cool artifacts they had there.
We did find time to haunt Brian's texts with photos of this Chinese statue. Hahaha. Grant did his best to imitate it.
After a full day, we ate some Tim Hortons on our way back to the hotel before dinner. We love Tim Hortons! That night we met up with Brian to go to a burger place. Haley and I weren't excited about Burgers and were going to go somewhere else...until the boy's burgers came and they were awesome...so we ordered 2 more!
On the walk there, we just happened to walk by a huge outdoorsy store that was having a going out of business retirement sale. After our burgers, we headed back and had the best shopping spree ever! The entire store was 30% off, and with the exchange rate, things were essentially another 25% off on top of it. We bought Haley a really nice backpacking pack - I'm jealous! I think I like it better than mine! I just might have to borrow it on my next trip. We bought tiny propanes for our burner, water bottles, and all sorts of other random stuff. It was awesome. We literally stayed until closing and then walked back to the hotel with our spoils. It was a great way to end the day!!
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