Toronto has a wonderful weekend festival each year called Doors Open. During that weekend around 100 architecturally interesting buildings or sites are open to the public and it's all free. It definitely gets people - including us - to go out and about.
This year we visited four buildings - a museum, a church, an assurance company, and a judicial building.
1) Gardiner Museum - A large ceramics museum that is just a few blocks away from where we live. Seemed like a great time to visit it as I don't think we'd ever pay to go in & having Helena with us meant we might have to leave after just 5 minutes!
A few fun things that we saw:
Suitcases. Amazing that both are made of clay and yet one is SO REALISTIC and one isn't.
An orchestra...
...made up of monkeys. The sign said these were incredibly popular in the mid-1800s - strange.
My favorite view from the veranda on top :)
2) Church - nothing that amazing.
3) Canada Life building - The lobby was used in the movie "Cocktail" with Tom Cruise. Nice.
But the draw of the building was the observation room on the 17th floor. It supposedly had a great view of Toronto so we wanted to get up there. After we got up there, we realized that it's not really much higher than we live. Still not used to living in a highrise! Anyways, the view was better than ours so it was worth it.
4) Osgoode Hall - This place has intrigued me from the first time we walked by. It has a beautiful wrought iron fence surrounding it and the grounds make it look like a palace. It actually houses a variety of judicial committees.
To be honest, it was a bit disappointing on the inside. The below room was BEAUTIFUL with original mosaic floors but otherwise really just a big building.
Helena loved Osgoode Hall on the inside, however, as there were many staircases to walk up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and - you get the point.
The grounds were great - shade and so much room outside for running around.
That's right - she's a runner now!
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