A magical mystery tour

Do you ever get urges to just up and leave? To head for the hills and never look back? To throw caution to the wind and see where the road leads ahead of you? Nope, i didn't decide to up and move to deepest darkest Peru alongside Paddington Bear, and I haven't gone bush in the Aussie desert, and I haven't found Prince Charming in his Antarctically wanderings and gotten married, phew, now that the major options are covered, i'll leave you to guess what might have gone on. Nope? No guesses? C'mon, anything's worth a try. Okay, stuck? Well, i hate to disappoint you all but my wanderlust has taken me no further than Toronto, our provincial capital. Perhaps someday in the future there will be grander and more glorious exploits to be had, but for now, this had to suffice. My friend Joyce and I decided to play hookie, go awol, jump ship and head for the hills for a dagje uit. We made a few plans on Friday evening, looking into heading overnight to New York City and Florida and all other manner of grand schemes but we were brought back down to earth and being the practical, penny-pinching Dutchies that we are, we decided on heading northeast to the bustling metropolis of Torawna.

In the ever-changing light hallway, Joyce feeling yellow
Our destination in fact was the popular Ontario Science Centre. We left bright and early Saturday morning, encountering next to no traffic and made it to our goal at 9:30, the centre opened at 10, which left enough time for a bathroom stop, a quick recce around to see what there was to be seen that day and to manage to be the 6th and 7th people in line. Such eager beavers. A very nice ticket man helped us out and even gave us the discount for the ticket we found online, thrilling us to the cockles of our Dutch hearts. So with proper authorization in hang, we trekked into the centre.

Our first goal was the Titanic exhibition, complete with all sorts of artifacts from the actual ship, costumed interpreters, sound and visual effects and an overall wonderful display. If you have any interest at all in the history of this great ship, it's worth a peek. I must say i really enjoyed the "iceberg" and the girl wandering around in the dress similar to what Rose (of the "Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, I'm flying" fame) wore in the movie. We received boarding tickets of actual people who sailed on Titanic and thus went through the entire exhibition with a personal connection. Joyce had married a multi-millionaire and was travelling first class, whilst my fifteen year old self was married to a wonderful man who loved to sing. When we reached the end of the exhibit, we found out, to our dismay, that we were both widows now. We were quite awed by the numbers on the survivors/victims board, so many first class passengers made it out, and so many of the crew and the third class passengers did not survive. Shows what sort of priorities existed in those days. After leaving Titanic behind and a not so impressive IMAX film, we spent the day wandering through the many displays in the rest of the museum. Sadly, the wonderful suspension bridge thing which was one of my most solid memories as a kid had been torn down and no longer existed... after all the hype i told Joyce about... sadness indeed. Even the tour guide girl seemed sad about that. I guess there is always progress.

Seeing a bit of red.
We marvelled at the displays on the human body, enjoyed learning all about the human mind, why we make decisions that we do, how our mind plays tricks on us sometimes and how we are so intricately created. We played along with the little kids in the sports section, learning just how weak we were... sadly out of shape, both of us were. We skimmed through space, not being too interested and tried to adopt some children so that we could see the children's play area, but alas, again, no one was interested in sharing with us and that rotten sign said "Adults must be accompanied by children". Rats. No fun for us. Next time better.
Fiddling around with something or other.
We were fairly footsore and tired by the time 6:00 rolled around, closing time. So we managed to get our money's worth for sure... there from opening to closing time. But we had a very enjoyable dagje uit and hope to do so again in the future...
We came up with a few things which we would like to do in the future as fun things... to go to a tractor pull, to the highland games in fergus, to go to Medieval Times with a group of people and to attend the Battle of Stoney Creek reenactment. There are indeed lots of interesting things to do in the area if we only take advantage of them.