Toronto II

12th of October, Sunday

We had a hard time finding the Toronto Zoo. It was also on our city pass so we figured, why don't we go? We looked at the pandas, giraffes, rhinos, but the most entertaining was the polar bear cub. 

  After the zoo, we spent a little time in the Royal Ontario Museum. It had a nice Korean and Chinese exhibition, but otherwise wasn't as interesting as the rest. But at least we used all 5 tickets in our city pass. We spent hours in the Eaton Centre. It's a huge mall. Ladies will understand how women can get lost in there. I didn't buy anything, other than a cup of coffee for Herb.

  We had dinner at Signs. It's a restaurant I've been wanting to go to since July. It's run by deaf people. It's supposed to raise awareness of the deaf culture, as well as to create jobs that would be normally impossible to find. We had a lovely Ukrainian waitress, she signed slowly, so I understood most of what she said. I've been preparing for quite some time for this. I borrowed a book from Anne, amd learnt the basic words and expressions. I could introduce us and make (extremely limited) small talk. The restaurant itself was gorgeous. It's brand new, modern, creative. The food was absolutely delicious! I had a thai chicken potato appetizer. It's like  a luxury restaurant with normal prizes. It's fun to order food signing (there's a cheat sheet), and there's no judging if you mess up (personal experience). So we had an amazing dining experience there.

  On the way home we stopped at Niagara Falls again. It was raining, and everything was cold, but it was beautiful. The whole waterfall was lit up with different colours. We arrived just in time for a firework show too. I was soaked within minutes, because the mist came up all the way to the viewing pavilon, forming a cloud of light rain. But I didn't care about it. I was mesmerized by the beauty of it. 

  Getting back to the US was easy, thank God. We arrived to Skycrest drive at 1 am. This was an incredible weekend. I had an amazing time with my wonderful host family. We bonded over this trip more than we have in the last month (and believe me, we have). We made a lot of pictures that I'm going to upload.