Day 8 - Toronto

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After a breakfast of crepes, banana and maple syrup, Lyn arrived and we headed off to Aldershot to catch the train.

I told you that you’d see more of Lyn J Lyn is one of Susan’s besties and they’ve known each other for around 10 years. She’s a beauty aesthetician (therapist in the UK), with skills in facials, pedicures, manicures, various facial balms, creams and oil, and she trims Susan’s hair on demand. A good person to know IMHO!

As we drove east to Aldershot we saw 5 parachutists floating down from the sky into a field. I was fascinated by how slowly they appeared to be descending. We saw one of the parachutists make contact with the ground, as the small plane we assumed they’d jumped from came into land only about 15m away from them.

The trains in Canada are HUGE! They’re really long, and the carriages are double-deckers. I was really excited to sit on the top level and watch the landscape pass by. They may be massive, but they’re not very fast – it took us just over an hour to cover around 65km (approx 42 miles). Coming into the city of Toronto was very similar to coming into Paddington station in London, with grafitti on the walls lining the railway, scrubby shrubs and bushes, houses and high-rise flats. As we got closer to the city though, the high-rise buildings just kept rising up and up and up! Much taller than I recall seeing in London, UK (yes, there’s a London in Ontario!).

Once we’d arrived at Union Station in Toronto we marched along the roads between the modern, towering condos, often clad in reflective glass. Older buildings made from more traditional building materials were dotted along the roads, illustrating the history of the city. One of the most imposing older buildings is the Fairmont Royal York Hotel. Apparently, this is where royalty stay if they visit the city, and we were told that if you book the royal suite you have to sign a contract to agree to move out if a member of a royal family arrives. And you don’t get any refund. Hmm...I’m a bit sceptical about that.

We arrived at the HOHO meeting place just in time to board one. It is based on Yonge Street, the longest street in the world; it runs almost 2000km from Lake Ontario to the Canada / Minnesota border. We sat upstairs on the bus and enjoyed live commentary from a young woman whose name we didn’t catch. Regardless of this she was bright, entertaining and knew her stuff. Except maybe the bit about the royal suite at the Fairmont. The route took around 2 hours from start to finish and we passed many interesting places including a hotel that’s so exclusive you can’t even enter the lobby without a reservation, a club that costs $20000 for an annual membership, the hotel where Mark Zuckerberg lives, a hotel where presidents stay which has bullet-proof windows, and Casa Loma, a castle overlooking the city which is now a museum (casaloma.ca). Oh, and the CN Tower.

I had wanted to go up the CN Tower, but entry is quite expensive and the glass floor is currently closed for renovation so I opted not to. Instead, we went for a wander around the Distillery District. It’s called that because it’s based in a collection of Victorian industrial buildings which were part of the Gooderham & Worts distillery, and has now been skillfully renovated into beautiful and contemporary shops, galleries and restaurants. We had lunch in a rather lovely Mexican restaurant, then we introduced Lyn to geocaching, completing an Adventure Lab cache focused in the area.

There’s a huge amount of construction going on in the city. Allegedly Toronto currently has more building cranes than any other city in the world. Building developers aren’t allowed to knock down the frontage of any old buildings, but can build behind and inside them. New buildings have to have some art added to the front of them. It’s a really vibrant city with lots of captivating things to see.

Once we left the Distillery District we walked along the lake shore. Lake Ontario is the smallest of the five great lakes of North America. The HOHO commentator told us it is always too cold to swim in – ho ho, I said!! Sadly I couldn’t prove her wrong because I didn’t have my cossie with me – and there are signs saying no swimming.

We managed to get another couple of Ad Lab caches completed on our wander. Lyn enjoyed helping me count some fish in a pavement (sidewalk) as an answer to one of the questions. We had a drink at a shore side restaurant while watching a few planes land and take off from Toronto’s second airport, Billy Bishop airport, a regional airport located on the Toronto islands. I recalled watching planes land in Nice airport with Dee just before lockdown, although then we had Espresso Martini and snacks rather than the diet Pepsi and Sap Sucker. Sap Sucker, not the most attractive of names, but is made from sparkling water naturally sweetened with organic Canadian maple sap. Lyn had the lime flavour because the waiter said he didn’t like the grapefruit flavour.

We then headed back to Union Station. It has got to be one of the most confusing railway stations I’ve ever been in! Finally, we found where we needed to be, caught the train back to Aldershot, and Susan then drove us all home. A very enjoyable day – thank you so much to Susan and Lyn for making it so!

Tomorrow we’re off to Halifax.

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