CN Tower

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Arrived in to Toronto in the early afternoon in the train from Ottawa, nice train ride which came along side the great lake.

We walked to our accommodation in China Town, which took some 45 minutes, the accommodation was a house, run by chinese, so you needed to take you shoes off at the front door, all the house in the street seemed to be sloping towards each other, and walking up the stairs to our room it was no different, you leaned to the left, not much but enough to unsteady your balance. The room was basic, looked clean. We dumped our clothes and head out for a walk.

Dropped by Kensington Market and in to a cafe call Kensington, it is run by a French Moroccan lady who is a bit of a character, we had an all day breakfast and a cup of tea.

Then headed for a walk about to Bloor Street West, where we found lots of large shops, now being transports we are not really in to shopping and all the hype. So continued to walk along and then down Bay Street, where we found a nice bar for a quick beer, and to warm up too.

Walking to Dundas Square, which is very much like Times Square, bright neon and a big open space.

After our walk about we returned to China Town to settle in for the night at around 9pm, Jody had a shower and I stripped off and laid on the bed. After about 5 minutes I saw a small insect, gave it a closer inspection, NO, not calling out to alarm Jody, it looked like a bed bug (I'm scratching just writing about it). Okay perhaps it was not one as u had only seen one and it appeared clean in the room, no carpet, and cleanish bedding.

Jody came out of the shower, I said nothing as I had to be sure before alarming her. She sat on the chair getting dry and said her legs were itchy, buggers I've not heard that bed bugs make you itch, perhaps they were flees. But they were too big to be flees.

I looked over the bed for any more, trying hard not to let Jody see what I was looking for. It worked, I could not find anything anywhere, phew. Jody went back in to the bathroom, this gave me the chance to search for more, then I found another and another, buggers, it was about 10:30 at night now, what would we do, finding somewhere else to stay this late at night would be a nightmare. The thought if staying in a bed full of bed bugs, was short lived. Did I even think about sleeping in a bed with bed bugs....! Ahhhhh. NO!

I spoke to Jody and let her know what I had found and showed her the one u put inside a tissue. I said we're moving out if here tonight.

I went to find the owner and showed him the bed and the bugs, he was not too pleased. He offered another room, no thanks, he offered another accommodation just down the road. That sounded better, we agreed to take a look.

After a short ride in the car, with all our luggage, carefully putting anything that had been anywhere near the bed in a bag to be washed, this included Fred, he did not look too pleased to be packed in a bag with possible bed bugs, but in he went.

The new accommodation we horrible, dark, smelly and just not nice.

We then moved on to another building, once we got in, which was in a cellar of the building, a, what can only be described as a squat. It was now 12:30, we had been up since 6am and were getting very tired, it looked like we could sleep in the room do we agreed to take it for one night. Jody an I cuddled up on a small bed, finally at 2:30am, after washing the bed bug bag, including Fred in the washing machine.

Woke at 4am with tooth ache, oh this is fun, but has to just get on with it.

8am. I woke up iPhone in my hand searching for somewhere to stay. The cheapest hotel was way out of our price range. Then searching for hostels, I found four, within our budget, so costing around £20 a night each, where as the bed bug accommodation was just over £10 a night, and we only checked in because we needed to claw back some of our budget.

Okay the HI Hostel was the one we decided to go for.

We meet back up with Mike, the owner, and he refunded us the four days and was trying to charge us, the full price for last night, WHAT! We stuck to our guns and finally got £10 refund.

We carried our bags across town to HI Hostels in Church street, finally somewhere nice, we joined the HI hostels membership to save some money, as they are dotted around the world and I'm sure we'll need to use them again in our travels. Niagara falls trip and CN Tower trips also booked, now finally things were coming together.

After a short walk, as our room would not be ready until after 3pm, we returned back, checked in to our room and just hit the sack.

It's now 6pm on a Friday evening and I'm all refreshed and ready for Friday night.

Today was an experience I don't want to repeat, but with only two weeks in to our travelling I am sure this won't be the first it the last. Oh the fun if travelling.

At least now we know what to look for and we have a story to be told.

Friday night in Toronto, Jody is speeding the night in to recover from last night and pamper herself. So that leaves me, I have found an app for my iPhone which provides walking tours of Toronto, and have chosen the nightlife tour, which says it takes 2 hours, but I'm sure it does not take in to account stopping at each of the seven bars/clubs for a drink, so this could be a rather long night.

The walk starts just around the corner of the hostel, great, reservoir lounge a jazz bar, down a small stair case, very easy to miss, I almost walked right passed it. It seems to have an entrance fee, but does look like a very nice place to take a lady (perhaps something for Saturday evening with Jody?).

I moved on to the second on the list, beerbistro, now this is my type of place, so many beers a good vibe and great background music.

Okay the beerbistro beer is slight expensive, but they do provide a 3 draughts samples for $6, which is worth check out the many different draught beers.

Okay so I checked out a local 'publican house square nail pale ale' from Ontario, a 'Urthel Hop-it' from Belgium and 'Koningshoeven Dubbel Trappist Ale' from The Netherlands. Each beer a different flavour.

OMG I'm eating celery. What is that about?

Okay, it look like I'm only going to make two of the seven on the walking your tonight. Oh the 'Koningshoeven' is very nice, the best one tonight.

Quite Sunday, spent taking our time, breakfast and then for a walk to the old town of Toronto, formally called York. Very nicely decorated in a Christmas theme, youth band playing Christmas songs. All in all very jolly.

The evening we arrange to go with the HI hostel organised trip to the local irish bar, chatted with other residents in the hostel and in all we had a good night.

Today we are off to Niagara, to see the world famous Niagara Falls, something I have been looking forward to. The snow has fallen and the sun is shinning so fingers crossed for a lovely day.

We arrived at the falls and to go up the sky tower, but it was too windy and snowing by the time we arrived, so not advised to go up the tower.

We visited the main area of the falls, snowing and huge mist covered the main horse shoe falls. We bought a ticket to go behind the falls, by far the most speculator views of the falls, you go down some 50 metres down to near the base of the falls.

It was cold, so nice to find the shop which was heated to find shelter.

The bus took us to a sweet town, which was like a preserved can of Canada all bottled up, snow in the ground all the streets old and sweet.

Next stop the winery owned by Dan Ackroyd, 200 Bees, where they served us Ice Wine, very sweet 20% alcohol.

Last day in Toronto, found the Apple Store, nothing new!

Time to visit the CN Tower, okay it is some 1 mile away and we have just found out that we can talk underground all the way to the CN Tower, this is why we can not see anyone on the streets they are all in the rabbit warren.

Finally the CN tower, standing over 500 metres high, the second tallest building in the world now, as the Dubai building is now taller.

We waited around until after 3pm to go up so we could view the city from the day light and night lights once the sun had gone down.

It took us about a minute to reach the top. It was snowing do the views where somewhat white. Visited the revolving 360 restaurant, which the floor moved and made you feel quite giddy.

We sat down to have a soft drink while we waited for the sun to go down.

Watching and waiting as the city slowly falls asleep slowly getting darker and darker.

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