Our last full day in Toronto – Museums, Swatow, and Summers Ice Cream

Mommy insisted that we do something educational on our trip.  So we 1.) spent the morning at AGO, the Art Gallery of Ontario, 2. )had lunch at Swatow in Chinatown, and 3.) spent the afternoon at the ROM, the Royal Ontario Museum.  For some reason, mommy likes to walk so we walked EVERYWHERE.

Here is a picture of us on our walk to AGO.  It is of the war memorial.:

Here is a picture of us in front of AGO:

AGO was built by a famous architect named Frank Gehry.  Here is a picture of the staircase in the museum.

Anya had to do a write-up for her class on a work of art in the gallery.  She chose one by an artist named Toulouse-Latrec. We don’t have many photos of artwork because no photography is allowed in the art gallery.  But believe us, we saw A LOT of art!!

SWATOW

We were STARVING from all of that walking and looking at artwork.  Luckily, AGO is in the middle of Chinatown.  We were told of a great Chinese restaurant called Swatow.  They make all their noodles fresh.  Here is a wall with all of their awards:

With all of those awards and our gurgling stomachs, we ordered a beef and noodle soup dish, a flat noodle dish with black been sauce, and fried rice.  Here are pictures of the dishes:

Karsen liked the flat noodles best and Anya liked the fried rice.  We all agreed that this place was better than Spadina Gardens.  However, we couldn’t help but be disappointed because of all the awards on their wall.  We were starving and looking forward to something spectacular.  It was perfectly competent (that’s one of Karsen’s old spelling words).  In other words, there was nothing that blew us away but we left the restaurant FULL and with fortune cookies.

Anya:   🙂 🙂 🙂

Karsen:   🙂 🙂 🙂 1/2

We would recommend this place if you are in the mood for noodles and happen to be in Chinatown.  There is a place across the street called The Dumpling House that looked great!  That’s where we will be headed next time we are in Toronto.

Royal Ontario Museum (ROM)

After lunch, we had enough energy to walk to the ROM.  On the way, we bought some fruits in Chinatown.  Karsen loves the ROM because he is a paleontologist-in-training.  Here are pictures of Karsen with dinosaurs:

Above is a picture of Karsen and the Hadrosaur near the entrance of the ROM.  A Hadrosaur (greek for “bulky lizard”) is known as a duck billed dinosaur because of its flat nose.  They were the cows of the jurassic.  Some hadrosaurs were crested like the lambeosaurus and the parasaurolophus.  Interestingly, the Maiasaurus (also part of the hadrosaur family) was very good at taking care of its young.  Karsen used to call that one the mommy-saurus.  Another famous hadrosaur is the edmontosaurus.  It was found in Canada – where the ROM is located!

This second picture is of Anya and Karsen in front of the famous T-rex and deinonychus.  Everyone knows about the T-rex.  We think one of the most interesting debates going on in the paleontology world is whether the T-rex was just a scavenger, rather than a ferocious predator (ferocious was also one of Karsen’s old spelling words).  Karsen thinks that all the evidence points to T-rex being a scavenger.  In fact, the little deinonychus could be much scarier than the T-rex because it hunts in packs.

Finally, this is a picture of the first ichthyasaurus ever found.  It was found by a little girl named Mary Anning in 1811. She was only 12 years old! Karsen has dreams about being the first to discover something.  Maybe he’ll call it the Karsenosaurus.

Summer’s Ice Cream

After our afternoon at the ROM, we decided to reward ourselves with some ice cream.  Summer’s makes their ice cream fresh everyday.  Here is a picture of Summer’s:

It is in the Yorkville part of Toronto (near our hotel – and near Utsav).

Here is a picture of us enjoying our ice cream:

Anya had cookie dough ice cream and Karsen had almond toffee crunch.  Both ice creams were perfectly creamy and not too sweet.  It reminds us of Sweet Republic, our favorite ice cream place in Scottsdale, Arizona (where we live). Here is a link to it:

http://sweetrepublic.com/

Here is a picture of our server.  Her name is Ina and she told us that Summer’s is a family run business:

 

Finally, here is a picture of the inside of Summer’s Ice Cream.  The sign says that everything is made fresh everyday.  There are also awards and pictures of famous people who have been to Summer’s.  Maybe someday, they will have a picture of us 😉

Anya: 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Karsen:   🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

If you’re in the ice-cream in Toronto, you will not be disappointed with Summer’s!!!!!