Toronto Christmas Weekend

The first weekend of December we booked to go to the Toronto Christmas market (a first for us!) and to take Logan to the aquarium in Toronto. We headed to Toronto on Saturday the 2nd during nap time so the car ride would be a bit easier. But then, Logan didn't want to sleep and we realized we forgot the playpen when already in Woodstock so we turned around to get it where Logan screamed the whole way home and all this added an hour to our trip. Smooth as ever. Did I mention he refused to sleep in the playpen that weekend?

But we got there around 3:30pm and he did sleep the whole way to Toronto after the playpen ordeal. We checked in at the holiday inn express hotel we were staying at then headed to the Eaton Centre. It was awesomely close and only took about 5 minutes to walk there!

And just outside the Hudson's Bay Company, they had these amazing window displays - a whole block of them!

The reindeer and Christmas tree in the Eaton Centre are way bigger than our Masonville! The crowds are too.

We didn't do much shoppingbecause Logan doesn't let us do that, but we wandered and made big purchases of some smoothies, which is our way of balancing the 2 year olds diet of timbits from the road trip.

We continued with supporting this balance with some quality Toronto street meat protein. Logan enjoys street meat the size of his head! I think he liked that he was given a whole massive hotdog more than the actual hotdog and he hardly put a dent in this thing.

We made another stop at the Nathan Phillips Square so we could see all the Christmas festivities - they had ice skating but also a whole area with rides, a Christmas tree and Christmas music playing.We grabbed some kettle popcorn for back at our hotel room and all were sleeping before 9pm like the party people we are.

The nice thing about 9pm bedtime is that the next morning, we are up bright and early and beat the crowds to the breakfast buffet (which we always pick out when choosing our hotel!). After our breakfast on Sunday, we headed to the distillery district for the Toronto Christmas Market. We bought our tickets in advance for the first time available because the 2 year old forces us to be morning people, and we made it there even before it opened at 10am! It was vacant at that time and even the shops weren't serving coffee yet.

The shops in the market were so festive and this is the one that we grabbed our latte/cappucino/cookies that Logan refused to eat at. So wonderfully Christmasy!

And on this sage, they had performances every hour or so, and this was the elves sing along. Logan was right into it! Anything with singing is a hit to Logan.

There were rides too! Logan got the big horsie and was really excited until the end when he was "all done horsie ride". Perhaps he's more of a thrill ride kinda guy.

So many amazing photo opportunities at the market! This ones my favourite.

After watching elves sing, watching some Christmas carolers, having a warm pretzel, purchasing the grand total of 1 Christmas ornament and 1 Christmas fruit cake for ourselves because the 2 year old doesn't shop, we finished off the market with this delicious chimney stack! Kind of like a churro but with icing inside. Deep fried goodness.

We headed back to the hotel room, only to find that Logan had fallen asleep in the stroller, so we decided to head back to the Eaton Centre and get some shopping in instead of go back to the hotel where we knew 100% that he wouldn't continue napping if we transferred him!

Logan woke up just in time for the big tree! And we were able to roam through the Bay and get a gift and browse some stores.

We had some fresh food in the hotel because we had hit the Metro to pick up vegetables, meat, cheese and yogurt lunch basics, but we wanted to make sure Logan was getting some fruit in him so more smoothies!

We left the mall after to head back to the hotel where we hung out for a bit, watched some tv and had down time before our big plan to take the street car (which is a train if you ask Logan) to Chinatown later that night!

We made it to China town! We (Aleksy) figured out the street car situation, and we realized we didn't need to pre pay for both ways since the transfer is good for a while, but it was worth the extra few bucks anyways.

First stop in Chinatown - the amazing pastry bakery where we got at least 10 amazing pastries for under $5!

Pretty exciting stuff. Logan required his own seat.

And one of our usual hotel carpet take-out picnics. Logan devoured the chicken fried rice! We definitely couldn't eat all of this supper for 4 that we bought (plus we bought soup on top of that) but we did pretty good.

We made it another 8:30pm night time.

And thank goodness... Goober decided 5:45am was a perfectly ok wake up time the next day. He was all thrown off sleeping in the big bed with me but refused both nights to go down in his crib. I totally caved when he said "im scared" - in Logan language and took comfrot in my presence.

Monday we had big plans to hit Ripleys Aquarium. It was the best possible time to go after having breakfast and getting there around 9am. Last time we were there, it was massive crowds and super busy and this time, it was pretty much empty. Logan wandered around and could look right away as long as he wanted at everything. He was very impressed by all the little things, although I think his favourite thing was the conveyor belt that takes you through part of the aquarium. He went up and down it a few times and din't look when we tried to show him the sharks and stingrays swimming over his head!

He did see some of them!

We tried to explain that this is the same friend as in his favourite movie Moana.

Logan amid the awesome jellyfish! Pictures like this would never happen at any other busy time!

We finished up at the aquarium around noon and knew that since Logan was up at 5:45am, he'd be in for an earlier nap on the car ride home.

One last stop to check out the CN tower, conveniently right beside the aquarium. Logan thought it was pretty "big and tall!".