Toronto Zoo

Come on Stuart, I definitely saw you move that time, you're out!
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Yesterday we visited Toronto Zoo on a marathon day trip. Marathon because it took 7 hours of solid walking to see everything (plus it was 31 degrees & sunny) - but really worth it. The zoo is fairly expensive so we bought City Passes which entitle us to get into several Toronto attractions, as well as the zoo, saving lots of money and hassle (we hope).

The zoo is split into sections, with areas representing Eurasia, Americas, Africa, Indomalaya, a  Native Canada bit and an interactive Dinosaur exhibit. The dinosaurs exhibit is where we headed first - kids can operate the life sized dinos via electronic consoles which the boys throughly enjoyed, I think only I read the paleontologists comments (very informative, thank you) but Archie & Stan still seemed to get loads from it.

hundreds of multi-coloured butterflies

Creature comforts anyone?
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Next we systematically trawled the different sections of the park, each laid out in trails with loos, water fountains and (incongruously) Coke machines generously dotted throughout. The scope and range of the animals was fantastic, I always find zoos slightly spooky places but this one (simply by dint of size) seemed less like a prison, and the conservation projects were impressive.

Highlights for the boys included otters, rhinos, orangutangs, elephants, grizzly bears and an amazing moment when we walked into the Malayan pavillion to be greeted by hundreds of multi-coloured butterflies.

there's my one, no - that one, no - this one...
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It was a very long day but good fun and all that walking helped burn off the ubiquitous fast food that was the only food option available (bummer).