toronto islands...

i've lived in this city for just over 6 years now, and yet i've never made my way over to toronto islands. i really didn't know what was over there, but with the help of google, i found out that it's made up of multiple islands, there are beaches, a few restaurants, a mini theme park for kids, a few bed and breakfasts, and even some houses! a small group of people (i think there is about 280 small cottage-like homes on the island) actually live over there. when i saw how nice the weather was supposed to be, we decided to spend saturday over on the islands.

we left our place around 2:30pm or so just after dylan got in from work (he got a call from work friday evening asking him if he could go in for overtime for 6am, and so he did) and got himself ready. i expected the ferry to be busy, but holy cow, was it ever. we were in line to buy tickets for probably 45 minutes, and then waited about another 15 minutes for the next ferry to arrive. adult return tickets are only $7; i was surprised at how cheap. we chose to get off a centre island and made a bee-line for the kayak rentals because we weren't sure what time they let the last rentals out at. we went with a tandem kayak (because neither of us had done this before) and for 1 hour, it was $34. we found that to be a pretty good amount of time to kayak around and get ourselves into the rhythm.

here we go!

what a view.

if someone would have stopped rocking the kayak, i could have gotten a straight picture!

i must say, i'm surprised how much i actually liked kayaking; i think it's the only sport i've ever really liked and felt that i could potentially do. now, whether i would be able to get myself around in my own single kayak is a different story, but we did pretty good! and hey, it's quite the arm workout!

as for the island(s), let me just say that i grossly underestimated the size of it. all of the islands combined are about 570 acres. we decided to walk from centre island over to hanlan point (all are connected by bridges and walkways) to catch the ferry home at that dock and little did we know, it was a good 5km away. we just kept walking and walking and by the time we got there, we were beat. then, as luck would have it, we couldn't fit on the first ferry and had to wait another half hour for the next one.

we'll definitley be planning another day trip out there, this time for more beach time and to check out some of the homes.

info from wikipedia