Days and nights away: 11
Time on the road: approximately 37 hours (not counting short trips within the destinations)
Stops to refuel the car: 16 (haven't calculated how much spent)
Places visited: 6 -- town in Vermont, Montreal, Oshawa, Toronto, Niagara (ON), Rochester
Tourist Trap Attractions (TTA) visited: Canada's Wonderland, CN Tower, Niagara parking [20 dollars!!] and Behind the Falls
Money spent on TTAs: approximately $241.00 Canadian dollars.
Cultural Attractions: Ontario Science Center (not Harry Potter, though) and Strong National Museum of Play (I cannot thank my friend Aliki enough for her blog recommendation of this place!). Money well spent! (about $ 70)
Nights in hotel: 1
Fast food take out: 1 (Taco Bell on the last night of trip before returning to PA)
Eating out: 0
Yes, we ate at friends' houses or "picnicked" with food from friends' house or supermarket all trip long. That's how we can afford traveling at all in our family. Good thing the friends I went to visited are of the same thrifty persuasion. ;-) Oh, and even most of the water we drank was from house filter/ water fountains in our reusable metal bottles which I carry everywhere with an ice pack.
I think all that driving (and maybe water and food carrying too) is what caused the backache that I'm experiencing right now, not to mention pain in my wrists and arm and right knee. It was well worth it, though!
After this amazing event we spent two days with a friend I hadn't seen in 12 years, her husband and her daughters -- almost the same age as my sons. The children had a wonderful time together and we enjoyed catching up. They lives in New Zealand and I'm looking forward to visiting them when we go visit my brother (I'm hoping he doesn't move again before we visit, like it happened with China).
I was looking forward to taking the boys up the CN Tower and to Niagara Falls and they really enjoyed both things. I have some beautiful photos to share.
The drive back to our friends' house in the greater Philadelphia are after the museum in Rochester was exhausting. Driving was the hardest part of the whole trip and I had to stop several times to take short naps. I don't drink coffee, but I had to go through several bottles of lemon flavored iced tea to survive this trip.
Edited to add: To finish off the trip we went to the Barnes Foundation on Friday, our last official day in Philly, and then we spent the weekend at my brother-in-law's house in Maryland before coming back home on Sunday.
Well, let me post this and I'll come back with photos later.
P.S. the best thing was that the car survived the trip with only two full refills of oil (it's burning oil! I'm polluting the environment even more! How awful! how can I dare to drive so much! Oh well... ;-)
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