Toronto Zoo!

It being Stephen's birthday, we decided to do our first touristy thing in Toronto to celebrate, so we headed to the Toronto Zoo, in hopes of assuaging Stephen's minor polar bear obsession.  It was a beautiful day - it hit 21 degrees and there was blue sky and sunshine!  Although I burned within 10 minutes of walking outside in Australia, here (at the moment) I seem to be able to walk around all day and get (shock, horror) slightly tanned!  Amazing!

True to form, the zoo had polar bears.  3 of them, huge and walking around (unlike the one in Australia which lies around looking very unimpressed with the weather most of the time).

This one just went for a dip :)  It was really cool to see them swimming around and sunbathing.

The board next to this suggested that in Churchill, MB (which is a polar bear tourist spot on Hudson Bay), polar bears sometimes walk down the main street, so they use these traps with food as bait to catch them before they run into humans.  I don't know whether to believe it or not - it seems too much like the story about crocs walking down the main street of Darwin (which I think is an urban legend?).

Bison, having a feed.  Check out the colours in those trees!  The whole of the city looks like this - it's really beautiful.

Capybaras!  Possibly my favourite animal :)  They look like dog-sized guinea pigs, and they live in South America.  The one on the right attacked the one on the left about a minute after I took this - no idea why.

Before we left Australia we were advised to try Beaver Tails, which are a type of deep-fried pastry - donut-esque only long, thin and flat (beaver-tail shaped to be exact), and with toppings.  We had an apple and cinnamon one - it was tasty, but I don't think we'll be eating many - I don't want to imagine the fat content of one.

So apparently a Drumstick in Canada is not like a Drumstick in Australia.  This looks like some sort of bizarre cross between a Choc-Top from the Cinemas and a Golden Gaytime.  Those crazy Canucks!

Zoo-time being over, we headed back and had some celebratory birthday reheated spaghetti bolognese from last night for dinner at the hostel - hooray.  Luckily I sneaked out and bought some very decadent chocolate tarts and some Haagen-Dazs Dark Chocolate and Raspberry ice cream which made for a delicious dessert ;)

Jess arrives tomorrow morning, so there should be some more touristy things coming up and probably some craziness knowing Jess's bad influence :)  We haven't heard back about our rental application yet - not sure if that's a good sign (they're checking things) or a bad sign (they've thrown our app in the bin) - we'll have to cross our fingers and wait and see I guess.