Epic East Coast - Day 4

I'm writing this on the train, somewhere in upstate New York.  The wireless works, but it is pretty slow, so I don't know if I'll be able to upload any pictures immediately or not.

We started off this day by heading for Union Station and using the subway to travel a bit north of downtown Toronto to visit Casa Loma, a large castle built by a rich man a long time ago.  It is a pretty impressive castle, especially as you see it rise above the trees while you climb the 180 stairs to the park outside.  The castle was big and elegant - I really liked the conservatory with its marble floors and stained class ceiling, while the huge all marble bathrooms were equally impressive.  Sandra liked all of it, since she really loves castles, and this part of the trip was for her.

On the very top floor was a museum for the Queen's Own Rifles, which Alex enjoyed, followed by a trip to the top of one of the towers, which the kids might have enjoyed, but Sandra and I did not, as it involved herding all four children up two flights of a tiny spiraling metal staircase. After exploring the castle, we headed out into the garden so that the boys could complete a scavenger hunt they were given.  With that complete, they got their free suckers from the gift shop for completing the hunt and we headed back to our condo for lunch.

After lunch, we put the kids down for a nap while I went out to explore Toronto's downtown.  I had a mission - find a BMO and get US cash for the next leg of our trip and go to the Amtrak ticket station and pick up our tickets for tomorrow (and find out where we are supposed to go).  I was successful on both tasks, though I realized that even at its busiest, Regina's downtown cannot rival the sheer number of people on the streets in a big city.

I arrived back at the condo, woke the kids up and then we headed out to Rogers Centre for the ball game.  We stopped for pizza at a small restaurant on the way there, as we had walked by it earlier in the week and Sandra had been impressed by the smell.  We then walked up to the ballgame and discovered a massive line at the gates.  Evan really wanted a shirt, so we took the time to buy him one at a kiosk outside the diamond.  Unfortunately for me (and Nana), they only had a Bautista shirt in his size, so that's what he got.  The other three kids chose hats, so we actually looked like Blue Jay fans as we walked in.

The ballgame was fun, even though the Royals lost.  Sandra made us take a family selfie and I was able to tweet that to the Blue Jays so that they put our picture up on the big screen before the game started, which made the kids super excited.  We were sitting down low, in far right field, so the view wasn't the greatest, but I had a good time.  A couple of foul balls came pretty close to us - one in the seventh inning hit the deck above us and then fell into the hands of a lady a few rows behind us.  She immediately gave the ball to a young kid, who promptly tried to throw it back on the field, to the chagrin of his father.  However, a nice person farther down ended up with the ball and brought it back.

Once the game was over, we fought our way out of the stadium and headed back to the condo for our final night in Toronto.  The game was way quicker than we thought, so we were able to have the kids in bed shortly after 10:00pm.  Tomorrow morning we board an 8:20am train for New York - a 12 hour trip.