Tochi's Hut

Last year's Chinese Lantern Festival at Ontario Place was spectacular.  I could not stop recommending it to everyone.  Some photos from last year are here. 

This year, the crew from China was back again for the second Roger's Chinese Lantern Festival.  The theme this year was the Qin dynasty and the 2008 Olympics.

I had really high expectations for this year's show.  Took tochicam and tripod and headed down to Ontario Place.  Thanks to the OCT, we got discounts to the festival.

The pictures speak for themselves, so I'll save the commentary for the end.  Btw, these photos are DouDou's present!  What a great uncle, eh? XD  I'm still waiting... haha.

More photos can be found on flickr.

In truth, I was quite disappointed with this year's show.  The scale seemed to be a lot smaller than last year's.  The designs were not as sophisticated - i.e. last year's pottery dragon was truly amazing.  Inevitably, people would compare with last year.  Listening to other people's reactions, it was pretty much along the following lines... "Last year, the twelve zodiacs stood here and it was so much better."  Also, the Qin dynasty stuff wasn't impressive at all.

I will admit, there were some lanterns that I particularly liked.  The pandas, the silver dragon, the pandas again.  But overall, something was lacking from the show.  Still worth going if you missed the one last year.

One last thing.   The stupid DVP northbound was closed tonight for maintenance.   I've never driven on the city local arteries uptown before, so I decided to take the 427 up to 401.  I had such a hard time finding the entrance to Gardiner westbound from Ontario Place.  427 was also a lot further west than I thought.  I hate road closures.