Ex
One of the fun things about a place like Toronto (and any big city, really) is there's always something interesting going on somewhere close. Right now, for example, we have the Ex, an annual end-of-summer festival, with a huge fair, amusement park, concerts and whatnot. Naturally, we can't really attend the concerts, because of Carmel (and because L isn't really into music, and will certainly not go and watch a bunch of bands neither of us heard of, though I would), but we went to the amusement park part today.

It costs 14 dollars per person for entrance, but I figure they only charge this as a warm up, because basically you're paying for the right to spend much more money on the inside. Some of the rides are free (at least, nobody asked us for a ticket) and L and I took turns on a couple (we couldn't do them together, naturally, cause, you know, Carmel), but the kiddie rides, those Carmel could go on, those cost extra. Not to mention the games: We spent, I guess, around 30 dollars and won something like five crappy dolls (three of them in a game that you can't lose, basically, we were going for a medium prize, which you can trade in for three small ones, but it turned out the medium prize sucked while the small ones were cute).
I'm crap at those games. Even the shooting hoops one, which I used to be better at. We were once in a fair in London and I won L a teddy bear which she is very fond of, but today I wasn't so lucky. I was quite embarrassing, really. Oh, well.

I was also a douche bag for reading the map upside down, so we spent the first half of the day in the grown up amusement park section, looking for the kiddies section. Only when I finally got oriented correctly, we managed to find it on the other side of the exhibition park (where the Ex is). We let Carmel run around a bit there and tried to interest him in some of the attractions, but I guess he's too small for that. He did enjoy the petting zoo, where we had to keep a sharp eye for him not to pull on any of the animals' hair, as kids his age are wont to do. We almost always succeeded, except for the one time he grabbed on a kid's tail (kid as in baby goat, silly people) and wouldn't let go, but the kid didn't seem to mind, really. There was also a fat little pig who was amusing, but Carmel, Kosher little kid that he is, ignored him completely.

When we here eating at the huge food hall, I chose an Anoush Shawarma stand for my meal (L ate dim sum). The guy asked me if I wanted hot sauce, and I said no. Do you want tziziki(?)? No. I asked him if they have tehina, and I accidentally pronounced it "tkhina", as we would in Hebrew. They guy said, "yes, we do," and then switched to Hebrew - "where are you from in Israel?" It was very amusing and we exchanged a couple of words. I wonder what language the people behind me in line thought we were talking. You hear so many languages around here all the time - Hebrew included.

Despite spending so much money, I don't regret this day, it was fun, and a great way to spend the weekend.