Hanging out at The Loft
/A few months ago there was a Worth a Visit post on Kids in the Capital about The Loft. Last weekend my husband and I finally got the chance to take our five-year-old, who we are hoping will share our love for board games.
We invited a cousin out, headed downtown and picked a few games to start. We ordered some food and started to play.
We ended up staying there for four hours. And I'm not sure any of us were entirely ready to leave when we did.
We started with the games we knew the kid would like – Hungry Hungry Hippos, Kerplunk and Jenga – games that require no real skill but offer lots of noise and action.
Being very, very careful
Then the kid and I walked up and down the shelves looking for something else that could be fun. There are so many options it's a bit overwhelming, but since we were looking for games suitable for younger ages, that narrowed it down a bit. We settled on Pictionary, teaming up in twos, which proved to be a good laugh as we critiqued each other's drawing skills.
Then moved on to Headbanz, in which Daddy got to be a toaster and a potato and Cousin Trisha was a turkey.
Potato
We finished up with a game of Trivial Pursuit – one of my favourites. And this was the family edition, which was much better than the circa-1970s Genus edition we had when I was a kid. This game is probably why four hours seemed to pass so quickly. And, though I got all my pie pieces first, the kid managed to win.
While we were playing we sampled from the menu. Though I didn't get to try the S'mores waffle (darn, I'll have to go back), we did get one of their pizzas, some good coffee and a most excellent brownie. When you order you give them a name – it can be your real name or a made up one – so we were the gymnastics family: Flips, Cartwheels and Somersaults.
The Loft is also licensed if you plan to hang out with grown-ups.
We will be going back, both with the kid and without. It's definitely a visit I'd plan for a rainy day. It's great to have such a wide selection of games for different ages and skill levels without having to store them in your own home!
