Tidbits

Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…

Waterloo Tourism: Part 1

September 20, 2006, 2:36 am

So last weekend was Doors Open for the Waterloo Region, which is basically a weekend where places around the city open their doors to visitors for free. The one in Toronto is way better of course, since they have a lot more interesting places. However, I’ve never been around to visit any places. The places in Waterloo included exciting locations such as the Centre for Environmental and Information Technology (CEIT) at the University of Waterloo (gasp!), the Princess Cinema locations, and lots of churches and art galleries in the area.

Only two places on the list were remotely interesting on the list: Waterloo-Wellington Flight Centre and Wings of Paradise.

The places were only opened from 10 am to 4 pm, and we ran out of time because I had a dentist appointment back in Brampton at noon. The flight centre is at the Waterloo International Airport. It had a small but modern looking terminal building, accessible by GRT transit, and only costs $30 a week for parking. The flight centre had an 1 hr presentation and tour, but we did not have time. You can get a recreation license there for around $5000. I don’t think I’m that interested in learning to fly though.

Wings of Paradise is a butterfly conservatory close to the airport. It’s considered one of the major tourist attraction in the region, and charges $7 admission. So it was worth going for free. I’ve been to a few other butterfly places before, but I’ve never seen butterflies this active. Those guys were flying all over the place, landing on people, etc. I was cringing at all the little kids going around picking butterflies up and stuff, though surprisingly, I did not see a single little buggy corpse.

Then on Sunday, we stumbled onto a AYCE sushi place in Downtown Kitchener called Ye’s Sushi Japanese Restaurant. I guess it’s your typical AYEC joint, and I did not have any stomach problems afterwards, so thumbs up I guess. It’s 12.99 for lunch and 19.99 for dinner, with dinner offering sashimi and some better rolls. It opened in July or August I believe, so should go before the quality goes down and it goes out of business.

Finally! Flickr added detail view for sets!