My 12-year-old, C., has been proclaiming (frequently) his desire for two things: to go to a different country, and to visit and explore a big city. (For the record, he had very specific ideas on what constituted a “big city” — I think “millions of people” was part of the definition.)

And because I’m the best mom in the world (or so I’ve been told), I gave in to his incessant demands polite requests, and we all spent last week in the lovely city of Toronto.

We packed up the car on July 31st and hit the road bright and early. Okay, it was actually about 8:00 a.m., but in my opinion, that’s bright and early enough.

We made a few stops along the way — exploring some smaller towns and sights, and getting me a Starbucks Mocha because I am generally more pleasant to be with when I have a Mocha in hand.

As we crossed the Peace Bridge and approached the Canadian border crossing, L.(5) was not impressed, but C.(12) was very excited. This was it. He was actually in another country. Granted, that country is only a matter of hours from our home, but still. Another country. (For the record, C. was in another country — Mexico, to be exact — when he was two years old, but since he can barely remember it, it doesn’t really count in his book.)

Before heading to the thriving metropolis of Toronto, we spent the afternoon at Niagara Falls. We’d never been to Niagara falls; Chad and I had never even gone there during our growing-up years. So we couldn’t resist stopping to see this magnificent piece of nature.

And yes, the falls are amazing. They are loud and misty and overwhelming and huge and incredible, and I’m so glad we went.

Also, Niagara Falls itself — the town, the surrounding area — is a very busy tourist trap. At one point, I wanted to stand up on a pillar and tell everyone to move out of the way so I could get a decent picture. I didn’t of course, but I wanted to. Everywhere we went — every lookout, every walkway, every grassy expanse — there were tons of people. And it was hot.

I found out later that there were to be fireworks at the falls that evening, which could have contributed to the immense crowds of people. So I will give you some advice: if you choose to go to Niagara Falls someday, and if you care more about the falls than fireworks, do some advance research and go on a non-fireworks day.

So while I enjoyed the falls themselves (very much), I was hot and tired and sweaty and ready to be away from all the people by the end of the day. Somewhere around 7:00, we finally began our last leg of the journey — on to Toronto!

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C. had been pretty very clear in his request to actually stay in a big city, as opposed to near a big city or even right next to a big city. So we chose to stay right downtown in Toronto, only about 2 blocks from the CN Tower.

If you’ve never heard of the CN Tower, scroll back up to my first picture. See that gigantic tower-thing in the Toronto skyline? Yeah, the big one? That’s the CN Tower. And that was C.’s top priority when it came to Toronto Sights to See.

Needless to say, Monday morning found us getting tickets to go to the top of the CN Tower.

There are several levels you can visit in the CN Tower. You have the basic Observation Level, the Glass Floor Level, and the Sky Pod (which, if you care to scroll back up to that first picture, is the little bump about half-way between the observationy-looking part of the tower and the very tippy-top of it). We did it all, and I admit, it was very cool.

[Don't ask me about L.'s "smile" in that picture -- he wasn't exactly feeling cooperative at that moment in time.]

We were there on a clear day and could see forever.

Coincidentally, the day we went was the CN Tower’s grand opening of their new “Edge Walk” attraction — whereby guests suit up and get strapped into harnesses and actually walk outside, on top of the observation levels, with no railings. We considered doing the Edge Walk. For about 0.02 seconds. And then quickly agreed that we weren’t even remotely interested in doing anything that insane, thankyouverymuch. We were quite content to stay behind railings and in nice safe enclosed spaces while viewing the city from more than 100 stories up.

We spent hours at the CN Tower that day, and though most of us were happy to be gazing at the surrounding city and Lake Ontario for most of the morning, one of us got a bit bored. And admittedly, I handed him an iPod touch and let him play Angry Birds in a corner while the rest of us continued our gazing.

You gotta do what you gotta do, sometimes.

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I initially planned to tell you all about our vacation in one blog post. But it seems that I’m feeling a bit talkative, and I’ve most likely bored you enough for one day. So I’ll save the rest of our vacation exploits and pictures for another day. Thanks for reading!