Our second day in Toronto was spent at the Ontario Science Center. The science center is a short drive from downtown Toronto, but is easy to find and has free parking. We went to the "KidSpark" area first, as it is designed for young children.
They had an impressive Rube-Goldberg type contraption that the kids could feed small balls into. Matthew could have spent the entire day here!
Nolan and Grandma L. went to the top of a cave and looked through binoculars to see what an owl would see.
Both kids liked pressing on the giant pin board to make impressions of their hands (and faces and bodies).
Matthew made a hot air balloon fly.
He also made a cloud.
Nolan spent a great deal of time building a house out of foam bricks. Matthew joined him a little later and they spent quite a bit of time at this exhibit. There were two little boys who sat in a corner and guarded bricks, preventing other children from playing. Their mother sat nearby and would not intervene to help the little
jerks kids learn to share.
The kids learned about centrifugal force by riding on a spinning table.
They also learned about camouflage.
There was a children's store that both boys enjoyed, with a working cash register.
After lunch at the museum and the KidSpark area, we headed down to a different floor and saw the rainforest exhibit. The Science Center is built on a hill, and all levels descend from the main one. The "sixth floor" is at the bottom of the hill, and is the lowest level. It was a bit strange to go down the escalator to get to the sixth floor!
Matt enjoyed looking at the poison dart frogs and walking on the swinging bridge. This area was not very big, but the kids enjoyed it anyway.
On another floor, there were many exhibits about the forces of nature and physics. The tornado one was one of the coolest I have ever seen - the kids would run in circles to generate air currents, causing the mist to form into a vortex. The picture is a little blurry, but it was hard to capture the running kids in the dim light!
Matt also tried the steel drums in a (thankfully) sound-proofed room.
There was a space exhibit there, too. Both boys took a ride on a lunar rover (a hovercraft style vehicle). It moved very slowly and was very difficult to steer - they had fun, but Matt was a little frustrated by it!
Of course, we had to get the astronaut photo-op out of the way.
After a day at the museum, we headed out to dinner. We wanted to eat at Lai Wah Heen, a restaurant that had high reviews for its dim sum. It took us forever to find the restaurant - there was no signage on the street level! The sign for the restaurant is on the second floor of a hotel. We finally looked up and saw it, and went in for dinner. The dim sum was excellent!
The kids had chicken and noodles. Matthew declared the noodles to be the best he'd ever eaten.
The restaurant was pricey and a little fancy - fortunately the kids were very good and had excellent manners.
This was a nice way to spend our last night in Toronto! The following day we would head back to New York and home!
