after dinner, we walked back to the hotel and got toothpaste at a newsstand underneath the hotel that was miraculously still open considering the lateness of the hour. i am sure the hotel would have given us some tho. we went up to our room and watched canadian tv for a while before going to bed.
we noticed a funny thing about drug commercials; i guess in canada one cannot actually advertise drugs on tv. so, we saw some drug commercials that looked exactly like those in the states, but they had absolutely no reference to the drugs they were ostensibly hawking. i guess one really has to �ask your doctor� in canada.
then again, as our perusal of the canadian feed of the discovery channel proved, some things in the great white north were much more open. we saw a couple of talk shows on sex (gasp!) that had quite a bit of nudity and �adult stuff use your discretion� content that would never fly in the united states. but then canada shows softcore erotica on tv as well, so talk shows are hardly surprising. one was quite interesting and entertaining: people came to some person (a doctor? therapist?) and got instructions and homework on how to improve their sex lives.
the next day, we were going to work out in the fitness area in the hotel, but were completely lame. or to be more accurate, i was completely lame; i do not want my lameness to rub off on amanda�s character inadvertently. amanda had also made reservations for us for brunch at the hotel�s swanky restaurant. there was a special brunch going on that sounded like it would rival a brunch we had at the castle in banff, but we decided that the brunch would be too decadent for us. besides, we got a bed-and-bfast special on our room, one of the reasons we went to toronto, so a more placid brunch was already paid for in another restaurant in the building. we fed ourselves (surprisingly amanda much more so that i, so we got our money�s worth), and the headed out.
we went to the royal ontario museum, a place i had always wanted to check out (i like museums). it was pretty expensive ($35!), but you know i suppose we were supporting the arts and all. they had a great traveling exhibit there with various stone artifacts and statues and whatnot from egypt from the british museum. the exhibit was the most popular thing i had ever seen in a museum (expect for king tut�s tour in the seventies that i can barely remember); people were jam-packed into all corners of the exhibit space. there were so many people there, i did not really see everything, but it still good. i may never see the stuff again after all. when we got out, there was a huge line of people waiting to get in. crazy.
the rest of the museum was interesting, but eventually we got museum-ed out and had to leave. most of the place was under construction as they are making it bigger and better and whatnot, so things were a bit jumbled and most stuff was probably in storage. but, there is only so much museum visiting one can take at a time.
the was snowing and sleeting when we got out, and the roads around the museum were closed for a saint patrick�s day parade. all the participants were still very enthused, and there were still a lot of people lining the sidewalks to watch. amanda and i, however, waited out the parade in a chapter�s bookstore since we could not get our car out of the parking garage until the parade passed by. eventually, it passed, we got the car, and started back home to buffalo.
the drive back was uneventful. we dropped by a tim horton�s for lunch, crossed the rainbow bridge in niagara falls easily with nary a delay in customs, and arrived back home to our piglet. she was happy to see us.